HispanicVista Columnists

National Immigration Forum
Nov 21, 2005

Since Election Day, a number of articles and editorials have appeared analyzing the results of the Virginia gubernatorial race in which Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore lost to Democrat Tim Kaine. This analysis includes the conclusion that Kilgore’s hard-line stance on immigration not only failed to deliver a victory for him, but may have turned some voters against him.

Those who seek to make illegal immigration a red meat issue would do well to pay attention to the lessons from this race. Mr. Kilgore ran an anti-immigrant campaign calling illegal immigration a public-safety emergency, while trumpeting his opposition to allowing in-state tuition for children of undocumented immigrants. He promised to give local police the authority to enforce federal, civil immigration laws and even invoked the hackneyed anti-immigration sound bite, “what part of illegal don’t you understand?” in his commercials.

While immigration may not have been the only reason Kilgore lost, the fact that anti-immigrant rhetoric failed to deliver a mass of Republican base voters, much less the center of the electorate, shows that people want real solutions and not knee-jerk platitudes.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page put it this way:

Mr. Kilgore ran instead on the death penalty and especially immigration, which ought to be a warning to Republicans in Congress who think getting tough on the border is the key to victory in 2006. At times Mr. Kilgore seemed to be running for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Commissioner, not Governor. But immigration is an issue, like trade, that always looks better in the polls than it does on election day; very few people vote because of it. (Wall Street Journal, “GOP Wake Up Call”, Nov. 10, 2005)

The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial page adds:

Kilgore may have lost the election, but what triumphed in the end were common sense and maturity. Common sense because the state party was right that this [immigration] is a federal issue and candidates for governor should keep their mitts off. And maturity because, apparently, even those voters who agreed with Kilgore proved they won't simply fall in line behind the politics of old when politicians offered emotional appeals instead of real solutions on real issues of paramount concern to voters, such as the economy, health care, education, growth and development. (San Diego Union-Tribune, Editorial, “A failed issue,” Nov. 11, 2005)

Apparently, the one thing Mr. Kilgore’s campaign succeeded at was inflicting greater damage to the Republican party by alienating immigrant communities with his message:

[Virginia] Beach Councilman Ron A. Villanueva, a Republican, said Kilgore’s campaign may have alienated some GOP voters. Villanueva said he heard complaints from other Filipino-American Republicans who were turned off by what they perceived as Kilgore’s hard-line stance on immigration. “A number of people I ran into were offended” he said “They felt that the Kilgore campaign was negative and some of the ads were snide. (Hampton Roads.com, “Local bastion of GOP power helped Kaine win governorship,” Nov. 10. 2005)

Mr. Kilgore’s staunch opposition to the construction of a day laborer site in Herndon also touched a nerve in the large Latino community in the state:

Loudoun voters Jorge Sanchez, 42, and his wife, Marleny Palacios, 38, said they used to vote Republican pretty reliably—until this year. Kilgore’s strong stance on illegal immigration bothered the two, each of whom immigrated to the United Sates from El Salvador more than 20 years ago. “They tried to use scare tactics. We have bigger problems than immigration,” Sanchez said at a precinct in Leesburg. “Right now the biggest problem… is not people trying to work for a living.” (Washington Post, “In the Suburbs, Backlash against Republicans Hits Hard,” Nov. 9, 2005)

Politicians who seek to scapegoat immigrants have something to learn from this race: the politics of fear and division offer no guarantees of job security. As Mukit Hossain, president of the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee, a group that endorsed Governor-elect Tim Kaine, said:

“If the politicians have any sense, I hope they’d pay attention” (Washington Post, Newcomers Swing Suburbs, Nov. 10, 2005)

So do we.

Read below for the complete editorials and articles.

WALL STREET JOURNAL (Editorial): GOP Wake-Up Call, National lessons on taxes and immigration.
Thursday, November 10, 2005 12:01 a.m.

About the best thing Republicans can say after Tuesday's election debacle is that at least it happened in an off-off year. This was a Democratic rout any way you look at it, from the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey to the ballot initiatives in California. If the GOP learns the wrong lessons, it'll happen again next year, when a lot more will be at stake.

The press corps and Democrats will play up President Bush's drag on the party, and his low approval rating certainly didn't help. On the other hand, the one notable Republican who did win, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, owes more to Mr. Bush than he or anyone else will admit. The 2003 tax cuts helped to revive financial markets and thus the city's economy and revenue coffers, allowing him to rebate some of his earlier and unpopular tax increase. Mr. Bloomberg also benefited from his laudable attempt to reform education in the face of union opposition.

In Virginia, Democrat Tim Kaine's defeat of Republican Jerry Kilgore shows what happens when the GOP loses credibility on taxes. Virginia is a state that Mr. Bush twice carried comfortably. But the GOP divided over Democratic Governor Mark Warner's record tax increase last year, and Mr. Kilgore never said he'd repeal it. He tried to straddle the difference between business lobbies who liked more money for roads and the rank-and-file who hated giving more to the government. The result was that there was little real difference between the candidates on fiscal issues--and Republicans lose those campaigns nearly every time.

To his credit, Mr. Kaine also avoided the common Democratic mistake of condescending to culturally conservative voters. His personal opposition to capital punishment (and abortion) is on religious grounds, and Mr. Kaine said he would nevertheless uphold state law if elected. Mr. Kilgore's nonstop death-penalty demagoguery might have backfired with social conservatives who saw a man being attacked for his religious beliefs. But the broader point is that Republicans who think they can count on Democrats to nominate cultural kamikazes like Howard Dean are fooling themselves.

To no one's real surprise, Democratic Senator Jon Corzine will be the next governor of New Jersey. The disgraced former governor, James McGreevey, greased the wheels for fellow Dems by timing his resignation last year to prevent voters from picking a replacement right away.

Even so, Republican businessman Doug Forrester's defeat this week shows that the Jersey GOP is as weak as advertised. Despite corruption and the highest property taxes in the nation, Mr. Forrester still couldn't prevail. He didn't help his cause by using Mr. Corzine's embittered former wife in a last-minute TV ad on "family values." Like Mr. Kilgore in Virginia, he'd have been better off talking more about property taxes, which polls show rank highest by far among voter concerns.

As for California, voters handed the permanent political class in Sacramento a big victory by voting down four good-government referendums--on teacher tenure, state spending, redistricting reform and limits on how unions could spend member dues. Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger backed all four of the measures, and the "paycheck protection" loss was especially regrettable because public employee unions won't need permission from members to spend dues money on political activities. The redistricting defeat (and a similar one in Ohio) also entrenches political incumbents, who will continue to pick their voters rather than vice versa. Reformers are going to have to think about other ways to make the political class more accountable.

For Arnold, the loss was as much personal as ideological. He picked this fight in the wrong year, and the unions used an advertising-media assault to demonize him. His causes did worse the more he was associated with them.

We wouldn't count him out for re-election next year, however, since voters may think twice before handing Sacramento back to the same politicos who brought on the 2003 fiscal and energy crises. At least no one can say Mr. Schwarzenegger coasted on the sky-high approval ratings he enjoyed after being elected. Instead, he spent his political capital (and even $7 million of his own capital) trying to lead, and voters may decide they like that next year as well.

All in all, after several bad years, Tuesday was the Democrats' turn to smile. And if Republicans in Congress now start to splinter and look out only for themselves--instead of fighting for the ideas that won them power--the same could happen next year.

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE (Editorial): A failed issue

November 11, 2005

This is how it's supposed to work in politics: A candidate for elective office tosses out slabs of red meat to his base by seizing upon and exploiting some emotional issue, and his followers are so incensed that they can't wait to head to the polls and vote. The candidate wins in a landslide.

It's what might be called the E-rule: Emotional issue plus excitable electorate equals election victory.

And it works. Well, maybe not always.

It didn't work this week in Virginia, where Republican Jerry Kilgore tried to ride the illegal immigration issue to victory and wound up getting trampled in the process. It's not that he wasn't warned. The state Republican Party advised him to drop the tactic and leave the immigration issue where it belongs - in the federal arena. But Kilgore didn't listen.

Specifically, Kilgore tried to make an issue out of day laborers - those often illegal immigrants who congregate on street corners, and in front of big-box hardware stores in cities like Herndon, Va. - and what cities are doing to accommodate them. In Herndon, the accommodations include proposals to build day labor centers equipped with clean water and toilets, paid for by city tax dollars. Kilgore thought that was a terrible idea, and he said so repeatedly on the campaign trail.

That got the Republican candidate applause from crowds, favorable mentions on right-wing blogs, and glowing coverage on cable television shows like "CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight," which specializes in sensationalizing the illegal immigration issue for the sake of ratings.

But Kilgore didn't get enough of what he really needed: more votes than went to his opponent, Democrat Tim Kaine. Sorry, after Tuesday, make that "Gov.-elect Tim Kaine."

This isn't to say the election turned on a single issue and the issue was illegal immigration. It doesn't appear this was the case. Even in GOP-friendly Virginia, there were probably various reasons that the Democrat won and the Republican lost. It is simply to say that Kilgore didn't get the bump from the issue that many political observers might have expected.

Kilgore may have lost the election, but what triumphed in the end were common sense and maturity. Common sense because the state party was right that this is a federal issue and candidates for governor should keep their mitts off. And maturity because, apparently, even those voters who agreed with Kilgore proved they won't simply fall in line behind the politics of old when politicians offered emotional appeals instead of real solutions on real issues of paramount concern to voters, such as the economy, health care, education, growth and development. Let's not be naive. There will always be red meat and emotionalism in politics, but here's hoping there are also equal measures of common sense and maturity. For those politicians everywhere who are tempted to simply run on emotional issues and appeal to voters' darker instincts, we have two words of friendly advice: Remember Virginia.

HAMPTON ROADS.COM: Local bastions of GOP power helped Kaine win governorship

By Mike Gruss And Marisa Taylor, The Virginian-Pilot

November 10, 2005

Stephanie Vega, a 39-year-old administrative assistant from Virginia Beach, voted for George H.W. Bush once and his son George W. Bush twice.

She comes from a family of staunch Republicans, but has soured on the war in Iraq. In Tuesday’s election, she backed Republican candidates William T. “Bill” Bolling for lieutenant governor and Robert F. “Bob” McDonnell for attorney general.

But in the governor’s race, she supported Democratic nominee Timothy M. Kaine , not Republican Jerry W. Kilgore .

“I felt like Kilgore didn’t sell himself well,” she said. “I never knew where he stood except that he was smearing Kaine.”

Kaine connected with South Hampton Roads voters such as Vega to chalk up all five cities and break through the traditional Republican strongholds in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake.

The win makes him the first Democrat to sweep the region since Charles Robb performed the feat in 1981 .

But the victory was no easy task.

Kaine narrowly edged out Kilgore in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, both of which are represented by Republican members in Congress and both of which heavily supported other Republicans in Tuesday’s election.

Upon closer examination, Kaine’s victory came on the backs of just 15 heavily Democratic precincts – eight in Virginia Beach and seven in Chesapeake. Many are largely black districts and many were Chesapeake precincts that Kaine visited with Del. Lionell Spruill Sr. just weeks before the election in a whirlwind 14-church tour one Sunday.

Without a strong showing by Kaine in those precincts, Kilgore would have won Virginia Beach and Chesapeake by a combined 4,800 votes. Instead, Kaine finished the evening about 2,500 votes ahead, collecting an overwhelming 74 percent of the vote in the 15 Democratic precincts.

Consider Jean Mayes , a 75-year-old born-again Christian who opposes gay marriage and serves as the president of the Providence Square Civic League in Chesapeake. Her neighbors don’t like to talk about their votes, she said, but signage on the area’s streets showed that their political leanings were no mystery.

Mayes’ precinct, the Providence area, supported Kaine. In the final count, Kaine outpaced Kilgore 809 votes to 62.

She sees the victory as a backlash against the Republican Party, nationally and statewide.

“All Democrats are not sinners,” she said. “We’re Christians just like anybody else.”

In Virginia Beach, Kaine’s victory was razor-thin.

Kaine drew about 700 more votes than Kilgore out of about 96,000 votes cast. After including votes for independent candidate H. Russell Potts , Kaine captured just 49 percent of the Beach vote.

But he netted lopsided victories in several key precincts, some with large minority populations. He won by 200 votes or more in eight precincts . Kilgore matched that margin in only two precincts .

Kaine attributed his strength in the Beach and other traditionally Republican, suburban areas to the platform he pushed: targeted real estate tax relief for homeowners, continued economic growth, education and transportation.

“I think those are issues people in Virginia Beach care about,” he said. “Virginia Beach is a place where there are a lot of folks who take their faith seriously – and I do, too – and I think that may have also been a reason why we did well in Virginia Beach.”

Beach Councilman Ron A. Villanueva , a Republican, said Kilgore’s campaign may have alienated some GOP voters.

Villanueva said he heard complaints from other Filipino-American Republicans who were turned off by what they perceived as Kilgore’s hard-line stance on immigration.

“A number of people I ran into were offended,” he said. “They felt like the Kilgore campaign was negative and some of the ads were snide.”

Kaine won the Indian Lakes and Glenwood precincts, two areas with a large number of Filipinos who regularly vote Republican.

John McGlennon , a professor of government at The College of William and Mary, said many suburban voters – especially highly educated and affluent voters – feel uneasy about the social agenda of hard-core Republicans. That may have swayed many Republicans to vote for Kaine and led to wins in other large suburban areas, such as James City and Loudoun counties, neither of which Gov. Mark R. Warner carried four years ago.

But McGlennon and Chesapeake Democratic Committee Chairman Robert Rigney said the victory wouldn’t have been possible without a smaller gap between parties in other precincts.

Rigney points to the Pleasant Crossing precinct in Chesapeake, “right in the middle of Randy Forbes country” where Kilgore won with 59 percent of the vote. In the same precinct, GOP ticketmates Bolling and McDonnell each collected at least 67 percent.

Even though Kaine lost that precinct, the closer contest shows progress, Rigney said.

“It means people didn’t start at the top of the ballot and go down,” he said. “They’re saying,

'We’re not going to listen to the party.’”

News researcher Ann Kinken Johnson and staff writers Marc Davis and Christina Nuckols contributed to this report.

Reach Mike Gruss at (757) 222-5207 or mike.gruss@pilotonline.com.

WASHINGTON POST: In the Suburbs, Backlash Against Republicans Hits Hard

By Steven Ginsberg
November 9, 2005; A14

An anti-Republican sentiment spread across Northern Virginia yesterday as voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Democrats, sweeping aside the traditional Virginia formula in which Republicans carry the outer suburbs and Democrats win the inner ones.

In winning the election for governor, Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) took Loudoun and Prince William counties, something Mark R. Warner (D) couldn't accomplish when he was elected governor four years ago. Kaine also received nearly three in four votes in Arlington and seven in 10 in Alexandria.

Kaine, a Richmond native with no ties to the region, collected a higher percentage of Northern Virginia votes -- nearly six in 10 -- than that compiled by Alexandria resident Warner when he won the governorship.

Meanwhile, several area House of Delegates races that were expected to be close or go to Republicans were instead won easily by Democrats.

Del. Richard H. "Dick" Black, one of the House's most conservative members, lost to David E. Poisson in a Loudoun district dominated for years by the GOP.

In western Fairfax County, C. Chuck Caputo had little trouble beating Chris S. Craddock, and David L. Bulova defeated John Mason by a solid margin.

Democrats nearly picked up a seat in Prince William, but county Supervisor Hilda M. Barg was edged by incumbent Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick.

"I feel that the anti-Republican tide was too strong to fight," said James E. Hyland, a Republican House candidate who lost in Fairfax County. "I personally knocked on thousands of doors . . . but it was difficult to overcome a Democratic tide like this."

Hyland, who lost to District 32 incumbent Stephen C. Shannon, said he suspected that problems on the other side of the Potomac River hurt Republican chances. "We're close to Washington . . . so we're closer to national trends," he said.

Democrats agreed, saying voters in the region were strongly motivated to send a message of dissatisfaction with President Bush and the direction of the country -- a point made repeatedly at Kaine rallies in the final days of his race against Republicans Jerry W. Kilgore and Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr., who ran as an independent.

"Obviously, the president's ratings hurt Kilgore seriously," said Mary A. "Mame" Reiley, who runs Warner's political action committee. "People like the message of Tim Kaine."

Political observers said the vote totals were a reflection of a changing Northern Virginia, where thousands of new residents are tilting the political landscape to the left.

Kaine's success in the exurbs, it was suggested, could be explained by his proposal to tighten restrictions on development.

But local voters said yesterday that Kilgore's campaign was as much a factor as anything Kaine did.

Calvin Spratley, an insurance salesman in Fairfax County, said he has backed Republicans in recent elections. But he said he was turned off by Kilgore's campaign, and, as a fan of Warner's, he was swayed by the governor's endorsement of Kaine.

"On a lot of the ads, [Kilgore] was more attack than substance," Spratley said at a Herndon precinct.

Loudoun voters Jorge Sanchez, 42, and his wife, Marleny Palacios, 38, said they used to vote Republican pretty reliably -- until this year. Kilgore's strong stance on illegal immigration bothered the two, each of whom immigrated to the United States from El Salvador more than 20 years ago.

"They tried to use scare tactics. We have bigger problems than immigration," Sanchez said at a precinct in Leesburg. "Right now, the biggest problem we have is the economy and the war we have. The biggest problem is not people trying to work for a living."

Republicans were able to hold several area House seats, including District 42, where incumbent David B. Albo fought back a challenge from Gregory A. Werkheiser.

WASHINGTON POST (Op-Ed): Virginia's Message to the GOP

By Leslie Sanchez
Saturday, November 19, 2005

Republicans nationally should draw a number of lessons from the party's unsuccessful effort to take back the Virginia governor's mansion this month. One of the more obvious ones is that the anti-tax party has to lead with an anti-tax candidate. Republican Jerry Kilgore, in his effort to win the backing of the Northern Virginia business community, played down his historical anti-tax leanings. He got the business support but lost the election.

There is, however, a more subtle but potentially as important lesson for Republicans that could be drowned out by the tax discussion: When it comes to immigration, dropping the word "illegal" into any anti-immigration proposal is not likely to work electoral magic.

In his stump speeches and in his television ads, Kilgore hit his Democratic opponent, Tim Kaine, on the immigration issue but was careful to use the word "illegal" in his rhetoric at every turn, as if that alone were some kind of magic bullet.

This is the stuff of GOP consultants and pollsters, who advise that even legal immigrants are opposed to "illegal" immigration. That's true, of course: Nobody defends those who flout the law, and resentment is especially acute among those who have gone to extreme lengths to comply. What these advisers miss, however, is the question of intensity: Substantial numbers of immigrants (not to mention their children and grandchildren, too) hear attacks on "illegal" immigration as attacks on them -- so that a discussion of, say, day laborers can quickly turn into an anti-Hispanic free-for-all.

Hispanics know from experience that most people can't tell the difference between legal and illegal immigrants or, in many cases, between immigrants and U.S.-born, Spanish-speaking Hispanics -- so they just assume the worst absent proof to the contrary.

It's not just Hispanics, though. Kilgore lost reliably Republican and conservative Prince William and Loudoun counties -- places where he issued a strong call for a "crackdown" on illegal immigration. Why? One reason may be that close to 15,000 Muslims -- many of them immigrants -- live in those counties, and, according to some post-election survey data, they supported Democrats by close to 30 to 1. Kilgore is the first Republican since 1989 to lose those two counties.

Republicans embrace anti-immigrant fervor at their peril. The party is perilously close to adopting as its immigration policy the hanging of a "closed" sign on the border. To do so would be a gross mistake that would oversimplify the problem and set back all the efforts of President Bush to build bridges to America's growing population of Hispanics while finding a workable solution to a complex problem, one with far-ranging political consequences for the party over the long run.

To be sure, the issue of illegal immigration is a serious one that needs and deserves to be addressed: No one should make light of the genuine resentment some people feel. Almost 40 years of immigrant vote-buying by advocates of the liberal welfare state has only made matters worse. The point the party must absorb is that while it's one thing to talk about specific policies, it's quite another to issue broadsides that reinforce the perception of a Republican Party that is, in its soul, intolerant.

Republicans would do well to recognize the folly in the approach used by Kilgore before recommending it to other candidates. Rather than a comprehensive approach to the problem broadly defined as immigration, they would do well to break it down into its constituent parts: border security, public policies that inhibit assimilation, the issue of guest workers and the problem of illegal immigration itself. It is time to recognize that the problem may be too big and too complex to approach with one big bill.

Ham-fisted attacks by Kilgore and others on illegal immigrants, while political red meat for some, cause many in our coalition -- particularly Hispanics and suburban women -- to recoil. For them, such attacks run counter to the Reaganite image of America as a welcoming land of opportunity, a place where anyone can -- through hard work, smarts and a little luck -- pursue happiness as the Founding Fathers intended. Immigrants from around the world made this country, and immigrants will continue to make this country a better place, a fact that no great political party can ignore for long.

The writer is president of Impacto Group LLC, a communication research firm. She previously served as executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.

_________________________________
Source:
Douglas G. Rivlin
Director of Communication
National Immigration Forum
50 F Street, NW, #300
Washington, DC 20001 USA
http://www.immigrationforum.org/
rivlin@immigrationforum.org