Republican Georgia Sen. [crscore]David Perdue[/crscore] is under fire from Democrats and liberal activists for blocking President Obama’s nomination of a Latino state judge to the United States District Court for Georgia.
In his announcement Wednesday that received almost no national attention, Perdue said he was “uncomfortable” with Judge Dax Lopez’s longtime service for the pro-amnesty Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.
Democrats and civil rights activists are claiming Perdue was unfair to use the GALEO ties against him. Plus, opposing any Latino for the bench is obviously racist.
Their argument about Lopez’s association with GALEO might be compelling were it not coming from the same kinds of people who feverishly tried to keep Samuel Alito off the Supreme Court because in 1985 he belonged to an anti-affirmative action Princeton alumni group.
Alito played no role in the activities of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton and it was disbanded the year after he listed his membership on a Reagan administration job application. But Lopez served for 11 years as a board member of the GALEO, which supported Obama’s possibly illegal executive orders on immigration.
Nevertheless, over at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which tried to bork Alito for his tenuous ties to the Princeton group, executive vice president Nancy Zirkin complained that, “Working with a highly respected, bipartisan Latino organization should not disqualify anyone from being a federal judge.”
Then she threw in the race card. “Senator Perdue can hide behind immigration politics all he wants. But the reality is that no Latino has ever been confirmed to the federal bench from Georgia despite the state’s growing Latino population. And as long as men like Senator Purdue [sic] are the gatekeepers, it’s unlikely that one ever will.”
Her suggestion that Republicans are bigoted louts reflexively opposed to Latino judges is particularly deceitful because Georgia’s other GOP senator, [crscore]Johnny Isakson[/crscore], has said Lopez deserved a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Plus, Lopez, himself a Republican, was supported by GOP elected officials and lawyers in Georgia.
Nevertheless, other activists were even more explicit than Zirkin.
Latino National Bar Association Robert Maldinado said, “We find it difficult to see how his association with GALEO can be somehow disqualifying. Our only inference is that he’s unacceptable to Senator Perdue because he is a Latino who believes in Latino participatory democracy.”
In a statement, Georgia Democratic Party caucus chair Antonio Molina lobbed the most racial stink bombs at Republicans. “These kinds of partisan games only reinforce what we already know about the GOP — there is no room at their table for Latinos.”
“They’ve now gone from blocking commonsense immigration reform and opportunity for DREAMers to depriving Georgia of a talented legal mind for no other reason than his association with the Latino community.”
Perdue’s office did not reply to a request for comment.
