Is PRLDEF to Sotomayor, what ACORN was to Obama?

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In Sonia Sotomayor’s hearing for nomination to the Supreme Court today, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took up the conservative criticism of Sotomayor’s involvement in the civil rights group, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Sotomayor’s seat on the group’s board from 1980 to 1992 as chair of the litigation committee had been a recent last-minute critique from Republican senators.

In a floor statement to Congress in late June, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the group an organization “clearly outside the mainstream of the American approach to matters.” Sessions cited the fund’s critique of New York City Mayor David Dinkins’ reference to a group of Puerto Rican nationalists, who had shot at five members of Congress, as “assassins.”

The attacks on PRLDEF seem eerily familiar to those leveled against President Obama for his work as a community organizer for Project Vote, a group then loosely tied with Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN, a group frequently targeted by conservatives for so-called voter fraud. During the 2008 campaign, many conservative groups attempted to tether Obama to the most radical aspects of the ACORN, despite his tenuous connections. So to, it seems, is Sotomayor being made guilty by association for her involvement with PRLDEF.

The sudden critique comes as a bit of a surprise to PRLDEF, whose civil rights mission has been relatively benign and apolitical – and where Sotomayor played a limited role.

“She never initiated law suits,” said Cesar Perales, PRLDEF’s president and general counsel, “never told us who to sue, or who not to sue. That is all done at the staff level. As head of the litigation committee she heard the broad reports about the litigation and spoke to the general policies, but had nothing to do with the specifics. It would have been clear conflict of interest.”

Despite this, Graham still attempted to tether Sotomayor to PRLDEF’s more radical cases involving affirmative action during his questioning — and though he ran out of time today, he intimated he’ll return to it during his second round of questions.  If Obama’s experience with ACORN is any measure of how PRLDEF will affect Sotomayor, expect this Republican tactic to be as spectacular a failure now, as it was then.