GOP promise quick vote on Sotomayor

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sonia Sotomayor sped toward confirmation as the nation's first Hispanic justice Thursday, encouraged by Republican promises of a quick vote and cheered on by a Democratic senator's challenge to take on the Supreme Court's conservative wing when she arrives.

"Battle out the ideas that you believe in, because I have a strong hunch that they are closer to the ones that I would like to see adopted by the court," Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a Republican turned Democrat, told Sotomayor.

Even two of her Republican critics called the 55-year-old appeals court judge's rulings "mainstream" - noteworthy concessions for President Barack Obama's first high court nominee.

If confirmed, Sotomayor would become the first justice appointed by a Democratic president in 15 years, and the hearings were as much a prelude for future Supreme Court fights as a battle over the judge herself. Republicans repeatedly criticized Obama's past assertion that he wanted a justice with "the quality of empathy," and Sotomayor disavowed Obama's statement as a senator that some decisions would be determined by "what is in a judge's heart."

Republicans, expressing concern that she would bring bias to the court, gave Frank Ricci, a white New Haven, Conn., firefighter whose reverse discrimination claim was rejected by Sotomayor and two other appeals court judges, a speaking role at the hearing. He complained that the ruling showed a belief "that citizens should be reduced to racial statistics," but declined when given the chance to say Sotomayor's nomination should be

rejected.

Her panel's ruling was overturned last month by the Supreme Court she hopes to join.