McCollum Refuses To Support Sotomayor By Ducking Issue

From FDP:

Yesterday was Sonia Sotomayor's first day on U.S. Supreme Court. And Bill McCollum who:

Ran for U.S. Senate twice,
Served for many years on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee,
And is the highest ranking law enforcement official from a state with one of the largest Hispanic populations
still hasn't said a peep about whether he thinks Sotomayor should have been confirmed or not.

Why do you suppose that is? Well, it seems pretty obvious. McCollum opposes Sotomayor but doesn't want to offend the 1.2 million Hispanic voters who will help decide whether he becomes governor or not in 2010. So he's ducking.

Florida Today recently published a lengthy editorial on the importance of the Hispanic vote. In 2008, one-in-seven Florida voters were Hispanics. Of states with the greatest Hispanic populations- California, Texas, New York, Illinois and Florida - Florida saw the largest increase in Hispanic voters, up 48.9 percent from 824,000 in 2004 to 1.2 million in 2008.

And (supposedly), embattled RPOF Chairman Jim Greer and the Florida GOP "is reaching out to minorities to widen its tent following Obama's defeat of John McCain in 2008."

But McCollum apparently didn't get the memo from Greer. Opposing Sotomayor is not going to help Republicans - and the fact that McCollum refuses to publically support Sotomayor in particular won't help him win friends among Hispanic voters. So McCollum has decided to keep his opposition out of the newspapers. He's apparently not keen on doing much outreach to Hispanics.

Interestingly, Charlie Crist -- who also did not get Greer's memo - did make his views known about Sotomayor. He opposed her confirmation.

So if Crist is willing to speak up, why has no one heard a peep from McCollum. The reason is that Crist has to win the support and confidence of the Republican base. McCollum, however, as a long-time far-right hard liner who even served as co-manager of the effort to impeach Bill Clinton, doesn't have to worry about the far-right. They are already in his pocket. He has to worry about the 1.2 million Hispanic voters who aren't. And so the last thing he wants to do is say out-loud that he was against confirmation of the nation's first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court Justice.