Bush holds the record on Hispanic federal judges

controlledImmigration · ALIPAC Hero Joined: Aug 10, 2007 Posts: 1438

Sept. 21, 2007, 10:00PM

Bush holds the record on Hispanic federal judges

Latino advocacy groups are pleased; DNC stays mum

By KEN HERMAN
Cox News Service

WASHINGTON — President Bush has had more Hispanics confirmed for federal judgeships than any president in U.S. history, a record that earns him praise from Hispanic organizations but is downplayed by the Democratic National Committee.

Of the 282 Bush judicial appointees confirmed by the Senate, 27 — almost 10 percent — have been Hispanics. President Clinton held the previous record, having appointed 23 Hispanics (just over 6 percent of his 367 appointees) who won confirmation.

With about 16 months remaining in his term, Bush now has appointed more than one-fourth of the 95 Hispanics confirmed for the federal bench. The first Hispanic federal judge was Reynaldo Garza of Brownsville, who was appointed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy.

Chronologically, the record-breaker for Bush came in a jurisdiction in which it is difficult to appoint a non-Hispanic. Gustavo A. Gelpi Jr. became the 24th Bush-appointed Hispanic federal judge when the Senate confirmed him in July 2006 for a Puerto Rico bench.

Just under 7 percent of the nation's approximately 1,300 federal judges are Hispanic. About 15 percent of the U.S. population is Hispanic.

Kenneth Manning, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, said a review of Bush's judicial appointees shows a pattern.

"First of all they have to be conservative," Manning said. "But the second variable that comes through in the data is that clearly diversity is a big thing in this administration."

Overall, Clinton appointed more minorities to the bench. Seventy-five percent of his confirmed appointees were white, while 6.3 percent were Hispanic and 16.2 percent were black.

Eighty-three percent of Bush's confirmed appointees to the bench were white. Only 6.7 percent were black.

The Hispanic numbers have won praise from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the League of United Latin-American Citizens (LULAC).

But in the zero-sum political game, the Democratic National Committee has not offered a positive word about Bush's Hispanic judicial appointees.

"It is a sign of Hispanics as a population that is growing in a lot of different ways," said DNC spokesman Luis Miranda. "I don't think you can credit the Bush administration for that."

The Hispanic appointee record "is really counteracted by the harmful policies" of the administration, Miranda said.

"The irony here is that this is the same Bush administration that politicized the Justice Department to make it harder for minorities, including Hispanics, to vote," he said.

But LULAC and MALDEF welcome Bush's record on judges.

"We are generally pleased to see the judiciary becoming more diverse," said Peter Zamora, MALDEF's Washington regional counsel. He added, however, that MALDEF is disappointed Bush has not picked a Hispanic for the Supreme Court.

Like Bush, MALDEF looks at other qualifications before it looks at the ethnicity of judicial appointees, according to Zamora.

"Race and ethnicity are not the sole or really the primary consideration," he said, noting his group's opposition to Bush's selection of Miguel Estrada, a Bush federal appeals court nominee who was not confirmed, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

"We would have liked to have seen the first Latino on the Supreme Court, but we wouldn't have supported any candidate merely because he or she would be Latino," Zamora said. "Our sole consideration is not that we have Latino judges. We want judges within a diverse judiciary who are supportive of civil rights protection for the Latino community."

LULAC Executive Director Brett Wilkes said Bush's record on appointing Hispanic judges is "fairly good, especially for a Republican president."

"He has made a conscious effort to include diversity in his judicial picks and he has done pretty well picking Hispanic federal judges," Wilkes said, adding that Hispanics remain underrepresented on federal benches.

He said he is not surprised that Bush has appointed more Hispanics than the Democrat who preceded him.

"Clinton was good on minority issues overall but wasn't so strong on Hispanic inclusiveness — not as strong as we would have liked to have seen," Wilkes said. "Democrats see minority issues in terms of black and white."

Like MALDEF's Zamora, Wilkes said ideology is more important than ethnicity in picking judges.

"I think it's more important having somebody who agrees with us ideologically. However, our experience is this tends to go hand-in-hand," he said. In Puerto Rico, Gelpi says his ethnicity is irrelevant on the bench.

"I'm applying the federal law and the Constitution. The thought doesn't come to me that I'm a Hispanic," he said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/5155928.html

zeezil · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:20 pm Post subject:

Rawhide · ALIPAC Titan Joined: Jul 29, 2007 Posts: 925

Zeezil, isn't their answer hidden in plain sight in this quote-

"We would have liked to have seen the first Latino on the Supreme Court, but we wouldn't have supported any candidate merely because he or she would be Latino," Zamora said. "Our sole consideration is not that we have Latino judges. We want judges within a diverse judiciary who are supportive of civil rights protection for the Latino community."

Note that he doesn't say supportive of civil rights protection for everyone,Zamora says blatantly- for Latinos.That there says it all.

Head 'em up,move 'em out Rawhide!