By Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff

Senate Democratic leaders are planning a new and perhaps symbolic effort to salvage the nomination of Mari Carmen Aponte to be ambassador to El Salvador.

Senior Democratic aides said that Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will try, perhaps as early as Wednesday, to set aside the pending farm bill (S 3240) long enough to bring up Aponte’s nomination for a confirmation vote.

But since opponents are unlikely to grant the unanimous consent needed to allow the nomination to come up without a cloture vote — and because there is no indication of widespread softening of GOP opposition that would allow Democratic leaders to muster the necessary 60 votes — Reid’s move is likely to be seen as primarily an election year gesture to Hispanic voters.

An effort last December to limit debate on the nomination fell short on a party-line 49-37 vote.

“We need some help on the Republican side,” said Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat.

Fourteen senators did not vote in December, and Reid and his team are hoping to pick up a vote from Marco Rubio of Florida. A Rubio spokesman said that the first-term Republican would likely vote for cloture and for Aponte’s confirmation, although he voted against cloture in December to register concerns over unrelated policy issues, mainly having to do with Nicaragua.

“Since the administration addressed his policy concerns, I expect he will vote for the nomination,” the aide said.

But Roy Blunt of Missouri, vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said that the 60-vote threshold remains out of Reid’s reach. “I don’t think they can get her confirmed,” he said.

Aponte, an attorney and former federal affairs director for the government of Puerto Rico, received a recess appointment from President Obama to serve as ambassador to El Salvador in 2010, but the duration of recess appointments is limited, and hers expired at the end of 2011.

Aponte’s nomination is backed by the Hispanic National Bar Association, which has praised her work in promoting development, security and human rights during her temporary tenure as ambassador.

The group represents Hispanic attorneys, judges, scholars and law students in the United States and its territories.

Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has led opposition to Aponte’s nomination, citing her former friendship with Roberto Tamayo, who has been accused of being a Cuban government intelligence agent.

Similar Republican objections prevented Aponte’s confirmation when she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be ambassador to the Dominican Republic.