POLITICS & GOVERNMENT

DISSECTING THE HISPANIC VOTE

The surest road to political irrelevance
is to be written off by one party
and taken for granted by the other.

By Ruben Navarrette, Jr.

Conventional wisdom is that the Republican Party has cooked its goose with Hispanic voters for the 2008 election and beyond, not just because it took a hard-line on immigration reform but because some conservatives actually helped lead a debate that became anti-Hispanic.
Many will remember when Colorado’s Rep. Tom Tancredo, GOP presidential candidate and perhaps the most unabashedly nativist lawmaker in Washington, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “We are becoming a bilingual nation, and that is not good.” He suggested ending even legal immigration until we assimilate the immigrants who are already here, and “We no longer have to press 1 for English and 2 for any other language.”
Or when Rep. Steve King (R-IO) suggested that we build a border fence with electrical wiring “to provide a disincentive for people to climb over the top.” King said he envisioned something “with the kind of current that would not kill somebody, but would be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it.” Explained King, “We do that with livestock all the time.”
What a surprise, then, that some polls now show Hispanics are more likely to identify with Democrats by a nearly a three-to-one margin.
Of course, Hispanics don’t vote as a bloc. Puerto Ricans tend to be loyal Democrats, and Cuban Americans dependable Republicans. In fact, many of the stories about the “Hispanic vote” really center on the voting tendencies of Mexican Americans. Particularly in the Southwest, those of Mexican ancestry tend to be more of a swing vote—registered Democrats who reserve the right to vote for moderate Republicans now and then.
Don’t misunderstand. We’re not talking about a scenario where Republicans win the majority of the Hispanic vote. Not on their best day. But, as political experts will tell you, in a presidential race, for a GOP candidate to get anything over 30 percent of the Hispanic vote is a good showing. Anything approaching 40 percent is a blowout that all but ensures that the Republican will be elected. Conversely, if Democrats can keep the Republican candidate to under 30 percent of the Hispanic vote—as they did with Sen. Bob Dole in 1996—they stand a good chance of winning.
The tragedy for Republicans is that if they are about to give up ground with Hispanic voters, it’s ground that was hard-earned. George W. Bush made historic inroads into the Hispanic community. In his 1998 reelection as Texas governor, he won—if you believe some surveys—as much as 49 percent of the Hispanic vote. Nationwide in the 2000 presidential race, Bush won 35 percent. And in 2004, it was 44 percent.
What was Bush’s secret? He made the effort, invested the money and refused to concede the Hispanic vote to Democrats. In doing so, he convinced Hispanics that they were part of his worldview.
In 2008, it will all be different. Chances are that whoever winds up the Republican nominee, he’ll be lucky to get 25 percent of the Hispanic vote. Perhaps sensing that their party isn’t all that popular with Hispanics at the moment, not a single GOP presidential candidate opted to address the National Association of Latino Elected Officials or the National Council of La Raza at their annual conferences this summer.
All that spells doom for the GOP, but it could prove even more damaging to Hispanics. That’s because the surest road to political irrelevance is to be written off by one party and taken for granted by another. Unfortunately, that is where Hispanics seem to be headed. They would be much better served if they spread their chips all over the table, and let both political parties compete mano a mano for their support.
If there is a competition, Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez still thinks the right Republican candidate with the right message could do well with Hispanic voters. One reason: Hispanics are not all that partisan.
“With Hispanics, we don’t make connections to parties,” Sanchez told me in an interview. “We really don’t. Hispanics make connections to individual people.”
The author of the new book, Los Republicanos: Why Hispanics and Republicans Need Each Other, Sanchez insists that Hispanics are still in play whether the parties realize it or not.
“I think it is wishful thinking on the part of Democrats to think that hordes of Hispanic voters are going to rush back into the arms of Democratic candidates,” she says. “It’s naïve, and it’s shortsighted. It misses the point that Hispanics are open-minded, independent conservatives who will exercise that flexibility to support candidates who speak to their values.”
Sanchez is right. The trouble is, Republicans aren’t exactly doing that. And before long, Democrats may decide they don’t have to. And then comes political irrelevance. So, for Hispanics, the current situation is lose-lose. It’s up to them to change that and to make their voices count.

Ruben Navarrette, Jr. is a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune, a nationally syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group, and a regular contributor of commentary to CNN.com and USA TODAY.