The Senate voted in favor of “wise Latina” Sonia Sotomayor. Clearly she won a majority of the votes to her side, as the majority Democrats obviously voted for her, in addition to 9 Republican senators, making the final tally 68 aye votes versus 31 nay votes. The Senate even went so far as to actually physically assemble at their respective desks to give their winning votes of aye and the unfortunately lesser spoken nay votes.
Senator Robert Byrd
Even 91 year old veteran senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia made the trip to the Senate, wheelchair and all. The only senator not present for the vote was Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., due to his brain cancer condition.
The Republicans who voted in favor of Sotomayor’s confirmation were the self described moderate Republican members: Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Kit Bond, R-Mo., Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Dick Lugar, R-Ind., Mel Martinez, R-Flor., and George Voinovich, R-Ohio. The remaining 31 Republican senators voted along the party line against Sotomayor’s confirmation. Independent senators, Joseph Lieberman, ID-Conn and Bernard Sanders, I-Verm. also voted in favor of Sotomayor’s Supreme Court Justice confirmation.
So based on the 100 total U.S. senators, 58 of them are Democrat, 2 are Independents and 40 of them are Republican. In other words, even if all 40 of the U.S. Republican Senators, plus the 2 Independent U.S. Senators voted against the confirmation, she would still have been confirmed because of the Democratic majority. It is a bit disheartening though, that almost one-third of the U.S. Republican Senators voted against party lines.
