For Hispanic GOP donors, 2016 is an embarrassment of riches.
Always-reliable boosters for the party, this election offers Republican donors and bundlers of Hispanic descent their first opportunity to support one of their own for president. Unlike Democrats — who own the Hispanic vote, Republicans have tended to shy away from identity politics. But Hispanic Republicans say there’s no denying the pride and pull of the three candidates with Hispanic ties that are vying for the GOP presidential nomination.
The dilemma is figuring out in whom to invest: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, whose father was born in Cuba; Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida; who speaks fluent Spanish and whose mother and father were born in Cuba; or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who speaks fluent Spanish and whose wife, Columba, was born and raised in Mexico. Bush and Rubio, deemed more electable and in touch with Hispanic concerns, could have the edge.
“[It’s] not only something that fills us with pride — that we’re getting to that political level in the most powerful democracy in the world — but it shows that Republicans are starting to get it,” said Jose Fuentes, a Washington attorney and GOP donor who previously served as Puerto Rico’s attorney general. Fuentes, during a telephone interview on Monday, said he was not ready to reveal his choice for the Republican nomination.
Republican support among Hispanic voters cratered in 2012. President Obama beat GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney 73 percent to 27 percent, fueling his solid re-election victory. Romney’s weak performance with this growing voting bloc, worse among Hispanics than Sen. John McCain of Arizona four years earlier and at least 15 percentage points behind President George W. Bush’s finish in 2004, was credited to his tough stand on immigration issues. However, the former Massachusetts governor’s positions helped him win the primary.
Romney opposed comprehensive immigration reform, particularly proposals to provide a path to legalized status for illegal immigrants. In one debate, he put now-former Texas Gov. Rick Perry on the defensive when he criticized him for backing in-state tuition college rates for some illegal-immigrant students. In another debate, Romney proclaimed that his solution for illegal immigration was to make it so difficult or illegal immigrants to work in the U.S. that they would “self-deport.”
Hispanic GOP donors, at the forefront of pushing their party to retool its approach to immigration and Hispanic voters generally, are optimistic that 2016 could be different, and possibly mark a turning point.
In Bush and Rubio, they see candidates who in tone and policy will project a Republican Party that is more welcoming to ethnic minorities. Hispanic donors and bundlers, as interested in teaming with a winner as any other campaign financier, also see in them candidates that can beat presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Cruz is still a value-add, contributing to a cast of GOP candidates more diverse than anything the Democrats ever fielded.
“It sends a powerful message,” said Rosario Marin, a Mexican-born American from Southern California who was appointed U.S. Treasurer by President George W. Bush. The first Hispanic to hold that post, Marin said she wasn’t quite decided on whom she would support for the GOP nomination between Bush, Cruz and Rubio, but said of her conundrum: “I think it’s a great problem to have.”
Cruz, 44, and Rubio, 43, both represent a new generation of post Reagan-era Republicans. Rubio was elected senator in the Tea Party wave of 2010; Cruz followed two years later. On fiscal and national security matters, their Senate voting records are nearly identical. But Cruz’ rhetoric is more strident and uncompromising in tenor, and the two Republicans part ways on a key immigration issue.
Although Cruz advocates for robust legal immigration, only Rubio has expressed support for legalizing illegal immigrants. Old guard Hispanic GOP donors and those from the business community who prefer a fresh face to challenge Clinton, Obama’s former secretary of state, could gravitate toward Rubio. They view him as a figure that could unify the party while making inroads with minorities.
Bush partisans argue that the former two-term Florida governor, 62, will pull the most support from Hispanic GOP donors because of his national reach and connection to the Mexican American community, which constitutes the overwhelming majority of U.S. Hispanics. Bush’s Hispanic support is anchored in his hometown of Miami, where Cuban Americans dominate Republican politics.
Bush benefits from the vast national network of Hispanic GOP donors that supported his father and brother, Presidents George. H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, who was governor of Texas when first elected in 2000. Jeb Bush’s policies also are closest to where most Hispanics are on immigration reform; he advocates a comprehensive overhaul that includes a path to legalization. George W. Bush had pushed the same policy when he was president.
That’s essentially the case immigration attorney and Hispanic Bush bundler Jacob Monty made in an interview with the Washington Examiner. Monty hails from Houston (Cruz’ hometown), and if he doesn’t answer his cell phone, a recording of his voice plays in English and Spanish inviting the caller to leave a message. Monty, who bundled for the most recent President Bush, conceded Rubio was a solid candidate and that Cruz is “a nice guy.”
But he dismissed Rubio as a regional candidate who largely appeals to Hispanic donors who are Cuban American and from South Florida. He said Cruz doesn’t have a following among Hispanic donors at all. In Bush, Monty said, he has a candidate he can sell to Hispanic donors in Texas and California, among Americans of Cuban, Mexican and Salvadoran extraction. Hispanics are sophisticated voters looking for more than just a candidate with a similar heritage.
But even for those for whom that it important, Monty said of Bush: “He’s not Latino, but he’s really the Latino candidate because of the way he’s lived his life. In Bush we have someone who gets the Hispanic experience and who has not run away from it.”
