Sotomayor's story more than Bronx girlhood

WASHINGTON — There are two sides to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: a Latina from a blue-collar family, and a wealthy member of America's power elite.

The Obama administration portrays Sotomayor as a living image of the American dream, though its telling of the rags-to-riches story emphasizes the rags and plays down the riches.

Discussions about Sotomayor and her ethnicity, gender and tax bracket carry risks for supporters and detractors. Unartful criticism by Republicans risks offending voters they'd like to win. Democrats need to be cautious about how they conduct the debate in a nation uncomfortable talking about matters of race and gender.

On ethnicity, Sotomayor herself has recognized — and contributed to — the dichotomy. She highlights her Puerto Rican roots but hasn't always liked it when others have done the same. She once took issue with a prospective employer who singled her out as a Latina with questions she viewed as offensive, yet she has shown a keen ethnic consciousness herself.

Controversial speech

In a California speech in 2001 under renewed scrutiny, she remarked that, on a court, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." On Friday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Sotomayor acknowledges she made a poor word choice.

In that same speech, "A Latina Judge's Voice," Sotomayor drew attention to cultural differences between Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans, and between Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico and those born on the U.S. mainland, and narrowed her ethnicity beyond American, Hispanic and Puerto Rican to "Newyorkrican."

"For those of you on the West Coast who do not know what that term means: I am a born and bred New Yorker of Puerto Rican-born parents who came to the States during World War II," she explained.

Yet years ago, during a recruiting dinner in law school at Yale, Sotomayor objected when a law-firm partner asked whether she would have been admitted to the school if she weren't Puerto Rican, and whether law firms did a disservice by hiring minority students the firms know are unqualified and will ultimately be fired.

Afterward, Sotomayor confronted the partner about the questions, rejected his insistence that he meant no harm and turned down his invitation for further job interviews. She filed a discrimination complaint against the firm with the university, which could have barred the firm from recruiting on campus. She won a formal apology from the firm.

In speeches, Sotomayor has referred to her and her brother's beginnings in a poor Bronx neighborhood, roots President Obama highlighted in introducing her.

"Born in the South Bronx, she was raised in a housing project," Obama said. "And even as she has accomplished so much in her life, she has never forgotten where she began, never lost touch with the community that supported her."

Rise began in youth

Yet Sotomayor did not live her entire childhood in a housing project in the South Bronx; she spent most of her teenage years in a middle-class neighborhood, attending private school and winning scholarships to Princeton and Yale.

And Sotomayor's life and lifestyle after law school largely resemble the background of many lawyers who rise to powerful positions.

She climbed her way up through New York's Democratic power structure, boosted by its ultimate brokers over those years: Gov. Mario Cuomo, Mayor Ed Koch, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. That's the access of a partner in a corporate law firm, not a kid from the South Bronx.

She earns more than $200,000 a year and owns a condominium in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood of million-dollar-plus homes. Her brother, Dr. Juan Sotomayor, is a physician in North Syracuse, N.Y., whose practice doesn't accept Medicaid or Medicare — programs for the poor and elderly — according to its Web site.

Her ethnic consciousness was apparent in the earliest days of her career, in the New York City prosecutor's office.

"What I am finding, both statistically and emotionally, is that the worst victims of crimes are not general society — i.e., white folks — but minorities themselves," she told The New York Times in 1983. "The violence, the sorrow are perpetrated by minorities on minorities."

The "riches" part of Sotomayor's rags-to-riches story began when she left her low-paying job in the prosecutor's office and joined the Pavia & Harcourt law firm. Her clients included Fendi, maker of luxury purses.

Still, she kept her hand in the Puerto Rican community.

She served simultaneously on New York's campaign-finance board and the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, an advocacy group that took legal action in 1991 to fight what it called discriminatory redistricting. Sotomayor didn't recuse herself from a finance board's discussion of the redistricting battle, despite the involvement of her own advocacy group.

Also during this time, Sotomayor served on the state board that makes mortgages available to low- and middle-income New Yorkers.

Republicans are scrutinizing her full record and background — carefully.

With Hispanics a growing voting bloc, and ethnic sensitivities high, few are willing to be as blunt as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said of her comment that a Latina woman would rule more wisely than a white man: "New racism is no better than old racism."

Associated Press writers Cal Woodward, Sara Kugler and Jessica M. Pasko contributed to this report.