Sotomayor hearings: A Joe Biden connection to the committee proceedings

Television viewers might have been wondering about the blond woman who sat behind Sonia Sotomayor during the confirmation hearings. She has been there every day, trying hard to look impassive and -- near the end of the day -- to keep her eyes fully open. She’s Cynthia Hogan, the top lawyer to Vice President Joe Biden and the person responsible for shepherding Sotomayor through Congress.

She has plenty of experience, having gone to work for Biden as a young lawyer for the Judiciary Committee in 1991, just as Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court.

Hogan played an important behind-the-scenes role in the Anita Hill affair, particularly in privately questioning Angela Wright, who was initially prepared to testify that she had also been sexually harassed by Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission  but backed out at the last minute. Had Wright testified, Thomas might not be on the court today.

-- Timothy M. Phelps

Photo: Cynthia Hogan, right. Credit: Karen Bleier / AFP/Getty Images

The Ticket goes inside politics several times a day. Click here for Twitter alerts. Or follow us    @latimestot

Comments

[kamren b]

I think your reporting is very bias, you make it seem like becasue she has diabeties she deserves to be nominated, that is not a good reason to puther on the bench, you people at the la times are so left leaning its sickning, why don't you try some objective reorting for a change and maybe then you will get some readers and since when did diabeties become a disability

[B James]

I talked to her in the elevator. She was very evasive about who she is and what she was doing at the hearings. Seems odd not to be upfront. What is she hiding?

[anonymous]

The best Lawyers are always the most deceitful.