A New York state Senate committee has deemed Gov. Kathy Hochul’s nominee unfit to lead the state’s highest court, saying that the Democrat is not progressive enough for the job.
In a 10–9 vote, the progressive wing of the Senate Judiciary Committee successfully torpedoed Hochul’s nomination of Hector LaSalle to lead the New York State Court of Appeals. Three Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in supporting LaSalle’s bid to become the first Hispanic to hold that position.
“The nomination is lost,” Senate Judiciary Chair Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat who voted against LaSalle, said after Wednesday’s vote.
Not to long before the vote, the 15-member committee was packed with three more Democrats and one Republican, a maneuver largely seen as designed to give progressive Democrats just enough votes to prevent the nomination from reaching the 63-member full Senate, where LaSalle would very likely secure a bipartisan simple majority and get confirmed….