Sotomayor to become campaign fodder?

WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee today is expected to vote overwhelmingly to back the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court — and conservatives are mobilizing to use the vote against vulnerable Democrats in next year's elections.

All 12 Democrats and at least one of the panel's seven Republicans, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, are expected to vote for the 55-year-old federal appellate judge. The full Senate will probably debate, vote and confirm her on a largely party-line vote next week.

Conservatives see the votes as important political ammunition in the 2010 campaign.

"Republicans can reap significant political benefits by voting against her confirmation and making her an issue in key races next year," conservative activist Ralph Reed told his supporters in a memo.

Voters will remember that "it is a gun vote, and this was not a judge vote. It was a racial quota vote. She is for quotas," added Grover Norquist, a leading conservative activist, in an interview.

Thirty-six Senate seats are at stake next year, and 22 are now held by Democrats. Reed listed four likely Democratic targets: Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln, Colorado's Michael Bennet, North Dakota's Byron Dorgan and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter.

One Republican who's planning to vote against Sotomayor, Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky, dropped his re-election bid Monday, citing fundraising woes.

Monday, Sen. Jeff Sessions, the committee's top Republican, said he would vote against Sotomayor.

"I don't believe that Judge Sotomayor has the deep-rooted convictions necessary to resist the siren call of judicial activism," he said. "She has evoked its mantra too often. As someone who cares deeply about our great heritage of law, I must withhold my consent."

Sessions listed three appellate rulings from Sotomayor that troubled him: a 2006 private-property decision, a decision last year on affirmative action, and this year's decision giving states the power to ban firearms.

Not all Republicans agree. Graham, the only southern Republican to back Sotomayor so far, called her "well qualified."