WASHINGTON
Sonia
The 55-year-old daughter of Puerto Rican parents was raised in a South Bronx housing project and educated in the Ivy League before rising to the highest legal echelons, spending the past 17 years as a federal judge.
A majority of Republicans lined up against her, arguing she would bring personal bias and a liberal agenda to the bench. But Democrats praised
Obama, the nation’s first Black president, praised the Senate’s vote as “breaking another barrier and moving us yet another step closer to a more perfect union.”
Minutes before the vote, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Senate’s lone Hispanic Democrat, said, “History awaits and so does an anxious Hispanic community in this country.”