Washington Post: “Republicans look to rebuild traction with Hispanic voters”

America's Voice Blog

Posted 02/22/10 at 12:59pm

GOP Last week we argued that Republicans are facing a major fork in the road on immigration. It's been a long time coming, as you can see here.

Peter Slevin of the Washington Post now reports on GOP efforts to reach Latinos, in "Republicans look to rebuild their traction with Hispanic voters:'

AUSTIN -- Henry Bonilla, a Texas Republican whose district ran along the Mexican border, won seven straight elections to the House by relying on retail politics in Hispanic communities where GOP candidates had rarely bothered to tread.

He thrived in Congress and co-chaired the two Republican National Conventions that nominated George W. Bush. In a period when the party sought to telegraph a vision of diversity, however spotty its record, the effort yielded Hispanic votes in Texas and beyond. That was then.

After back-to-back hammerings in the 2006 and 2008 elections, the GOP is trying to figure out how it slid so far behind with Hispanic voters. With their traditional white-male base shrinking, Republican strategists talk with increasing urgency about wooing Hispanics, who are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population and who vote mostly Democratic.

"If you don't go out and bring more Hispanics to our party, the math isn't there to win, no matter what the other side does," said Bonilla, who has argued the case in one-on-one meetings with Republican leaders in Congress. "If they're too blind to recognize that, it's their own selves doing them in."

Bonilla should know. He lost in 2006 to another Hispanic candidate, a Democrat.

The way immigration has been handled by most Republicans has badly damaged the GOP brand. And while immigration is not the number one issue for most Latino voters, it is a defining issue. So much so that an overwhelming 87% of respondents in a 2009 Bendixen poll said they would not consider voting for a candidate who was in favor of forcing most of the undocumented population to leave the country and only 23% trusted congressional Republicans to “do the right thing on the immigration issue.”

It's no secret that the way immigration has been handled by most Republicans has badly damaged the GOP brand with Latinos. An overwhelming 87% of respondents in a 2009 Bendixen poll said they would not consider voting for a candidate who was in favor of forcing most of the unauthorized immigrant population to leave the country and only 23% trusted congressional Republicans to “do the right thing" on the immigration issue.

According to the Post, this could be disastrous-- here's why:

The Hispanic population is expected to increase by nearly 200 percent by 2050, with non-Hispanic whites accounting for about half the U.S. population, down from 69.4 percent in 2000. From 1988 to 2008, the number of eligible Hispanic voters rose 21 percent -- from 16.1 million to 19.5 million.

"The numbers don't lie," said Whit Ayres, a GOP consultant. "If Republicans don't do better among Hispanics, we're not going to be talking about how to get Florida back in the Republican column, we're going to be talking about how not to lose Texas."

Fewer Hispanics view the Democratic Party favorably than did a year ago, according to NBC-Wall Street Journal polls, when they had recently voted in record numbers for Barack Obama. But by many measures, including candidate recruitment and vote totals, Republicans continue to struggle. The most vexing problem is the immigration debate, in which hard-liners and "tea party" activists have alienated many Hispanics with their harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric.

"That's the word that got back to folks on the street: 'They don't want us,' " said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele, who is looking for ways to tamp down fiery anti-immigration language.

One lesson of Republican Robert F. McDonnell's win in his race last fall for Virginia governor was to "run inclusive campaigns," said Ed Gillespie, a McDonnell adviser and former RNC chairman. He said McDonnell reached out to Hispanics, "instead of indulging in the anti-immigration rhetoric of past Republican campaigns."

The Wall Street Journal also reports on Republicans' need to woo Hispanic voters, in "GOP's Demographic Wager: Courting Latino Candidates:"

In Texas, George P. Bush, the half Mexican-American son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, has founded Hispanic Republicans of Texas, a political action committee to promote Hispanics running for state and local offices.

In California, GOP gubernatorial front-runner Meg Whitman, the former eBay Inc. chief executive officer, tells Hispanics she would have voted against a Republican-backed 1994 measure barring illegal immigrants from receiving social services.

And Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee and an opponent of past efforts to make a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, has been meeting with Hispanic leaders to find a new tone on that and other points of contention between Hispanics and conservatives.

For Republicans, such efforts carry risks, especially as conservative activists try to push GOP candidates to be more ideologically pure. Opposition to "amnesty," a buzzword used by critics of proposals to legalize the 12 million illegal immigrants believed to be living in the U.S., remains a reliable applause line.

Nonetheless, many in the party have concluded that opposition to immigration legislation, a debate that is sometimes racially charged, has alienated millions of otherwise conservative Hispanic voters.

Ya think?

Politicians of all stripes would do well to read our recently-released report, "The Power of the Latino Vote in America: They Tipped Elections in 2008; Where Will they be in 2010?"

The good news for GOP operatives is that fixing our dysfunctional immigration system is not just a big deal for Latino voters, but a winner with a clear majority of Americans, who are sick and tired of federal inaction on the issue and want to see real, comprehensive immigration reform.