Republican Party leaders, every two years, explain that they need to increase Hispanic outreach. That outreach usually begins and ends with an “immigration reform” proposal that conveniently lines up with the desires of the business lobby.
And then the party leadership neglects to actually go out and ask Hispanics for their votes.
In the Republican National Committee’s 2013 autopsy, party leaders dedicated a section to reaching immigrant voters, mostly Hispanics. The one policy proposal in the section: “We must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. …”
“Comprehensive immigration reform” typically involves increased legal immigration and a guest-worker program. It’s the same cry you hear from the revolving-door GOP lobbyists who moonlight as “Republican strategists.” And if you measured the party’s seriousness by how aggressively its leadership pursued increased immigration in the face of grassroots opposition, you’d believe the GOP is serious about getting the Hispanic vote.
When it comes to actually campaigning for Hispanic votes, though, the Republican leadership barely even tries.
Think of it this way: If you ran a party that sought Hispanic voters, you would actually field congressional candidates in Hispanic districts. For the most part, Republicans don’t do that.
Hispanics make up a majority in 32 of the 435 congressional districts, going by Census data compiled by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report. Two of those 32 districts are based in Miami and predominately Cuban-American. Cubans are a special case — much of their vote is driven by who is more hawkish toward the Castro regime.
So, if you bracket the Cuban districts, Republicans hold 2 of the 30 majority-Hispanic districts. This jibes with the problem everyone diagnoses: Hispanics aren’t voting Republican.
Here’s the telling detail, though: In the other 28 majority-Hispanic districts, Republicans aren’t even trying to win — or even campaign, really. In many of these districts there is no Republican candidate on the ballot. In most of them the national party is providing no money or air support for the GOP nominee.
Texas, for instance, has nine majority-Hispanic districts (all held by Democrats) and the Democrat is running without a Republican opponent in four of them. In four other races a minor GOP candidate is running with no support from the National Republican Congressional Committee in the form of contributions or independent expenditures, according to a review of data gathered by the Center for Responsive Politics. Only in the 23rd District — a sprawling, rural border district — is the GOP playing, backing Will Hurd.
All told, 13 of the 30 Hispanic districts outside of Miami have no Republican on the ballot. This includes an open seat: Arizona’s 7th District. A party chasing the Hispanic vote wouldn’t leave an open seat uncontested. Even if the race is a long shot, fielding a candidate is deploying a messenger. Fielding no candidate amounts to ignoring the population.
The NRCC has chosen 45 challengers or open-seat candidates to support with its Young Guns program. Of those 45, only Hurd is running in a majority-Hispanic district. Only two others are in districts that are more than 30 percent Hispanic.
There are exceptions. Rep. David Valadao wrested California’s 21st District (70 percent Hispanic) from a 20-year Democratic stranglehold in 2012, and this year he came in first in a multiparty primary with 63 percent of the vote. Rep. Steve Pearce’s New Mexico district is 52 percent Hispanic, and Republican Reps. Blake Farenthold (Texas) and Gary Miller (California) hold districts that are barely under 50 percent Hispanic.
But the GOP norm is failure to even compete in Hispanic districts — and that has a cost. A new book, Latino America, by social scientists Matt Barreto and Gary Segura, argues that Hispanics vote at much lower levels than other ethnic groups in part because they receive far less attention from politicos. Fewer than one-third of Hispanics say they have been contacted by a party or politician before an election, compared to nearly half of whites, according to the book.
Instead of reaching out to Hispanic voters by fielding candidates in Hispanic districts, Republican Party leaders are pushing for increased immigration. Leadership hasn’t yet explained how giving President Obama a signing ceremony on an immigration bill will convert the Hispanic population to the Grand Old Party.
Putting the GOP on the record for increased immigration, meanwhile, runs the risk of alienating a much more gettable group of voters that also has been staying home of late: blue-collar whites.
The leadership’s most important point is this: Republicans need to stop driving Hispanics away. Conservative opposition to immigration reform often takes ugly forms, such as racially-tinged rants or branding of illegal immigrants as “invaders.”
Republicans do need to improve their performance with Hispanics. Nobody really knows how to do it, but this much is obvious: Republicans are never going to win the Hispanic vote if they don’t ever campaign for it.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.
