May 29 (Bloomberg) -- Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor made a “poor” choice of words in a 2001 speech on gender and national origin that has been seized on by her critics and probably wouldn’t repeat them, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

“I’ve not talked specifically with her about this,” Gibbs told reporters in response to a question at his daily briefing. “But I think she’d say that her word choice in 2001 was poor, that she was simply making the point that personal experiences are relevant for the process of judging.”

Opponents of Sotomayor’s nomination by President Barack Obama have singled out remarks she made in the speech at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.

“I would hope that 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 said, according to a text of the speech published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal.

Some conservatives, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and talk show host Rush Limbaugh, have seized on those comments to suggest that Sotomayor is a racist.

Republican lawmakers have tried to distance themselves from the charge that Sotomayor, 54, whose parents were born in Puerto Rico, is a racist. Texas Senator John Cornyn, who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called that kind of language “terrible.”

“This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent,” he said today on National Public Radio. “Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials.”

Meetings With Senators

Sotomayor will meet with top Democratic and Republican senators next week as the administration lines up support for her confirmation, Gibbs said.

The administration has scheduled meetings June 2 for the nominee with Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, and Alabama’s Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the panel Gibbs said. She also may meet that day with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the chamber, he said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Edwin Chen in Washington at EChen32@bloomberg.netHans Nichols in Washington at hnichols2@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: May 29, 2009 17:33 EDT