Latino Republicans rethink party loyalty

Conservative Latinos Rethink Party Ties
By MIRIAM JORDAN
May 3, 2010

Adam Bustos, a third-generation Mexican-American, has voted Republican since Ronald Reagan ran for president. But he has been reconsidering his party affiliation since Arizona State Gov. Jan Brewer signed the nation's toughest immigration law last month.

"I've been thinking I might leave the party," said Mr. Bustos, a 58-year-old Arizona native. "A lot of my Latino Republican friends have been talking about it after this law."

The new Arizona law requires police to question people whom they suspect are in the U.S. illegally. Supporters say the law is necessary to combat rampant illegal border crossings. Opponents say it can't be enforced without violating civil liberties.

Many Hispanic-Americans say they feel stung by a law they allege invites racial profiling, incites hatred and discriminates against all Latinos.

The law in Arizona was passed by a Republican legislature and signed by a GOP governor. Republican lawmakers in Texas, Utah and several other states have said they would consider introducing laws similar to the one passed in Arizona.

Conservative Hispanic voters, in particular, say they feel betrayed by Republican Party leaders who have supported the law.

About 30% of Arizona's population is Hispanic, the fourth-highest proportion nationally, behind New Mexico, California and Texas. Latinos account for 17% of the state's eligible voters, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. They represent a small percentage of registered Republicans in Arizona.

Anger over the Arizona law has emerged in such states as Nevada, home to a swelling population of Latino voters, as well as in Texas, which has a well-established and sizeable Latino Republican constituency.

"When the Arizona law was passed, it quickly became the single most important issue to all Latinos in Arizona and nationwide," said Matt Barreto, a political science professor at the University of Washington who studies Latino voting patterns.

"Either party that pushes the issue too hard risks moving centrist voters in the other direction," said Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist and director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.

Massey Villarreal, a Houston businessman and past national chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, an independent group with chapters nationwide, said, "It's insulting to have Republican leaders across the country applauding this racist law. I'm sure this is going to hurt the Republican Party."

Latinos are the fastest growing demographic group in the U.S. After spending the first part of this decade loosening their historical ties to the Democratic Party, Latinos have been returning to the Democratic fold over such issues as the economy and immigration.

President George W. Bush clinched 40% of the Latino vote in 2004 with a message that struck a chord with a group that is generally family-oriented, religious and socially conservative. In 2008, President Barack Obama won two-thirds of the constituency's vote in an election that confirmed Latinos' emerging political clout.

Some Democrats in Congress have tried to cement that support by pushing for legislation that would overhaul immigration policy and create a path to citizenship for some of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the U.S.

But Latino conservative voters are split over the idea of offering amnesty to illegal immigrants.

Rodolfo de la Garza, a political scientist at Columbia University, said Republicans with an eye on midterm elections have overlooked the long-term negative impact of supporting an immigration law "that paints all Latinos with the same brush." He cautions that the Republican Party may feel the effect of these decisions at the polls for years to come, as was the case in California after that state attempted to enact a similar law in 1994.

But even some of the most conservative Latinos were jolted by the Arizona law. Deedee Blase, a Mexican-American resident of Phoenix who served in the Air Force, said she favored tighter border security and a conservative political and economic agenda. "Now I feel like we are living in the 1960s, and Arizona is the new Alabama," she said.

Ms. Blase last year helped found a group called "Somos Republicans," which translates to "We Are Republicans." The goal was to raise support for Republicans among fellow Hispanic voters. In a letter urging Gov. Brewer not to sign the bill into law, the group described it as "a direct slap in the face to Hispanic-Americans."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703969204575219402083722816.html
Ricardo A. Ramírez
Regional Press Secretary
Press Secretary for Hispanic Media
Democratic National Committee
202-863-8148
ramirezr@dnc.org