New Haven Independent

Both takes on history were on display during day three of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on whether Sotomayor should be confirmed as the U.S. Supreme Court’s first Hispanic justice.

Vargas, a New Haven fire lieutenant (pictured), showed up at the committee hearing room Wednesday flanked by 10 white city firefighters, all plaintiffs in the Ricci v. DeStefano case.

Vargas and named plaintiff Frank Ricci are set to testify Thursday against the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

That led two Latina leaders from back home, who were also at the Senate hearings, to criticize Vargas for allegedly advancing himself at the expense of his community at a proud historic moment.

Vargas and 19 other New Haven firefighters convinced the Supreme Court last month — but not Sonia Sotomayor, serving on an earlier appeals panel — that the city shouldn’t have ignored the results of promotional exams just because no African-Americans scored well enough.

In the hall outside the hearing room Wednesday, Vargas came across Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, the publisher of La Voz Hispana weekly newspaper. Both are New Haveners of Puerto Rican descent. They have different personal takes on what kind of history is being made.

As he left the hearing room, Vargas found himself beset with Spanish-language reporters inquiring why he’s speaking out against Sotomayor’s nomination.

“We’re here for all firefighters and all police throughout the entire United States,” replied Vargas. “We’re giving promotion or jobs to those who deserve them.”

He and fellow members of the New Haven 20 declined further comment until Thursday. He and Ricci are two of 14 witnesses chosen by Republicans to testify on a panel Thursday against Sotomayor.

As Vargas stood at the center of a media horde, Rodriguez-Reyes suggested a question to nearby reporters: “Is he the product of affirmative action?”

Vargas was whisked away before the question was raised.

Rodriguez-Reyes (pictured), who attended the hearings as a guest of Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, expanded on her feelings.

“It surprises me that he would take this public stand against Judge Sotomayor,” said Rodriguez-Reyes, who’s also vice-chair of New Haven’s Democratic Town Committee (and chairwoman of the board of the Online Journalism Project).

“To come and testify against her being nominated is really damaging to all of the people who have their hopes” lifted by the judge’s nomination. Sotomayor’s story — a Puerto Rican-American woman raised by a single mom in Bronx public housing — is about the American dream, said Rodriguez-Reyes. She’s an example that “you can achieve anything.”

She said Vargas’ actions have “gone against” the “entire Hispanic community.”

The Hispanic and African-American communities are “extremely disappointed in him taking a stand, especially when he was a product of affirmative action.”

Vargas, she noted, was among a group of 10 Hispanic firefighters who joined the New Haven department at the same time, a breakthrough for an underrepresented minority group. Leaders in the city’s Hispanic community at the time urged for the recruits to be hired, she said.

She said she is “flabbergasted” that Lt. Vargas didn’t stay at home out of respect to his fellow Hispanics. “I can’t believe that Benji Vargas would do something like that.”

Vargas and Ricci weren’t taking any more press questions Wednesday. Vargas spoke in this recent New York Times interview about the racial dynamics in the department and how he felt that race-based policies and lawsuits held back his career.

Asked Wednesday about Rodriguez-Reyes’ comment, New Haven fire union President Pat Egan recalled joining the department in the same class with Vargas.

“I know that in 1993 there was a test for entry-level firefighter. Benny took it. I took it. Everybody who got hired took it,” Egan said. “There was a list promulgated of who passed. People were hired off it. To whatever degree there was [political] dialogue about people being hired, I’m not aware of. I know we both took an entry-level test along with the other 38 or 40 individuals who ended up getting hired.”

At the Senate Wednesday, Rodriguez-Reyes said she recognizes that firefighters put their lives on the line every day. “But to me, this has to do with the entire country,” especially minorities and women, “being proud” of the historic candidacy of a “fair and just” judge, she said.

During the hearing, Rodriguez-Reyes sat next to another Latina leader from Connecticut, Yvette Melendez (pictured). Another guest of Sen. Dodd, Melendez recently retired from her post as the former chief of staff of the Connecticut state university system. Her career has been devoted to issues of equity and access: She headed Connecticut’s affirmative action efforts in the mid-1970s, sat on a school desegregation task force, and guided charter school reform.

As a Puerto Rican woman from a working-class family in New York City, Melendez shares much with the judge on a personal level, she said. Like Rodriguez-Reyes, Melendez was the first one in her extended family to go to college.

“So much of what the judge says resonates with me,” she said. She was visibly glowing not just from the blazing TV lights in the hearing room, but from a professed sense of pride in the nominee.

She noted that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito escaped criticism during his own hearings for having said that his own Italian heritage would lend him empathy on the bench. (Alito’s quote: “When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.”) So, Melendez argued, it’s hypocritical for senators to criticize Sotomayor now for her similar comment about being a “wise Latina.” (In that now-famous comment, Sotomayor said she hoped a “”wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”)

She called “unfortunate” Lt. Vargas’s choice to oppose Sotomayor’s nomination.

“I’m sure his interest is in the advancement of his own career,” she said, “but you have to put it in the context” of a larger community.

His case “has the potential for damaging the opportunities and the hopes and desires of the Latino community,” she said.

Past stories on fire department promotions and the Ricci case:

• Sotomayor: I Didn’t “Hide” Ricci Case
• Is Ricci Being Smeared?
• Sotomayor Speaks On Ricci
• Ricci Takes Center Stage
• Watley: I’d Have Promoted Ricci
• Firebirds, NAACP: Ricci Won’t Stop Us
• “If You Work Hard You Can Succeed In America”
• Was He The Culprit?
• Supreme Court Overturns City On Ricci
• On Page 25, A Hint
• Minority Firefighters Vow Post-Ricci Unity
• Ricci Ruling Won’t End Quest
• Ricci, Sotomayor Brand DeStefano
• Firefighter Case Reveals Surprise Obama Stand
• Justices Zero In On Race-Based Distinctions
• Rights Groups Back Black Firefighters
• The Supreme Stakes: Title VII’s Future
• Dobbs v. Bolden
• Latino Group Backs White Firefighters
• Black Firefighters: Ricci Case Poses Grave Threat
• NAACP Backs City In Firefighter Case
• Paging Justice Kennedy
• Fire Inspectors Promoted
• Fire Inspector List Approved
• U.S. Supreme Court To Hear Firefighters’ Case
• Fire Promotions Examined in Supreme Court