November 7, 2002
SPICING THE WONDER BREAD:
Disillusioned blacks hurt Democrats (Ellen Sorokin, November 7, 2002, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)Republicans won their seats, with a lot of help from the Hispanic community.In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush was re-elected with more than 60 percent of the Latino vote. In New York, Gov. George E. Pataki was re-elected with nearly 50 percent of the Hispanic vote. In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry was re-elected with more than one-third of the Latino vote, according to figures compiled by the Republican National Committee (RNC).
Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, of Colorado, won El Paso County, which has about 58,400 Hispanics, by 53,445 votes.
In Georgia, Rep. Saxby Chambliss won Gwinnett County, which has the largest Hispanic population, by 39,346 votes. In North Carolina, Elizabeth H. Dole won Wake County, the county with the state's second-largest Hispanic population by 22,405 voters, the RNC numbers show.
Anti-immigrationists on the Right have derided the notion that Latinos can be made a GOP voting bloc. These numbers should at least make them stop and think, especially the seemingly worst one: recall that Rick Perry got his 33% against a Hispanic Democrat who spent $60 million on his own campaign. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 7, 2002 6:17 PM
Hispanic immigrant voters, by definition, are American citizens (absent fraud, of course). Most oppose the disorder we call an immigration policy and are hostile to illegal immigrants who have flouted the very laws they solemnly submitted themselves to in becoming citizens.
Posted by: Paul Cella at November 7, 2002 10:21 PMI hope those people in the Republican Party who derided efforts to reach out to the Hispanic-American community will now shut up.
Posted by: Steven Martinovich at November 8, 2002 7:47 AMAnother thing to note is that the Hispanics who are voting GOP are NOT Cubans. So, the claim from both Dems and some GOP that non-Cuban Hispanic votes are a lost cause to conservatives are what I've always believed them to be——a crock.
Indeed, many minorities' beliefs would shade them into at least moderate GOP voting bins: belief in God, church-going, pro-law-and-order, and disinclined towards welfare EXCEPT as a last resort/safety net. They WANT to learn English, they WANT to have a chance at succeeding w/o reference to a ward boss or a floor boss (union). It's not at all clear that they necessarily wind up in blue-collar positions any more.
Blacks, of course, fit the same pattern, but have allowed themselves to be sold the bill of goods that says that any GOP vote is the equivalent of committing racial suicide/treason. If the GOP allows the same attitude to permeate the Hispanic vote, they've no one to blame but themselves....
The GOP doesn't help itself by being incessantly timid on a disastrous social policy like bilingual education. In Colorado, for example, Gov, Owens, a wildly popular conservative, came out against Ron Unz's anti-bilingual amendment, thereby allying himself with the likes of Latino radicals and a wealthy leftist who financed the campaign against Unz through lies and bigotry. Owens is occasionally touted as an up-and-comer, but his poistion on this was a disgrace.
If the GOP cannot shed this kind of tremulousness on tough but noble causes, it will indeed lose the Hispanic vote to the panderers and racialists.