Hispanic Republicans toiling to boost their party’s Image in the community are hopeful that 2016 could be transformative.
Even as the immigration tripwire looms, Republicans are poised to field three presidential candidates who might alter the visual optics of the majority white Republican Party and are uniquely positioned to make the kind of personal connections with Hispanics that are so important in presidential politics.
Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are set for prime-time exposure in American living rooms through a series of up to a dozen televised debates that could help shape the outcome of a competitive primary. They share a mixture of cultural experiences, ethnic heritage and Spanish language fluency with the fast growing, increasingly influential Hispanic voting bloc.
“It’s a window of opportunity. How you leverage it is really critical,” said Daniel Garza, executive director of the Libre Initiative, a political nonprofit that advocates for conservative policy in the Hispanic community.
The Republicans never stood a chance in 2012.
The party’s nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, took a hard line on immigration. He criticized GOP primary opponents who took a centrist approach while infamously saying in one of the primary debates that his solution was to tighten employment enforcement so that the 11-12 million mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants would “self-deport” from the United States. Romney finished with an abysmal 27 percent of the Hispanic vote.With Bush, Cruz and Rubio, 2016 offers the Republicans a chance for improvement.
Bush, the former two-term Florida governor, supports overhauling U.S. immigration law, including stricter border enforcement and a path to legalization for illegal immigrants. But his potential for rousing Hispanic support runs deeper. Bush, who is white and based in Miami, speaks fluent Spanish and is married to Columba Bush; they met in Mexico, where she was born.
Cruz, the first-term Texas senator, was born in Canada to a white, native-born American mother and a Hispanic father who fled Fidel Castro’s Cuban dictatorship. Cruz is tougher on immigration than Bush, opposing any policy that smacks of amnesty. But the Houston resident supports streamlining and beefing up legal immigration. Cruz is conversational, not fluent, in Spanish and like so many whose parents came to the U.S. for a better life, can identify with the immigrant experience.
Rubio, a first-term Florida senator, was raised mostly in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents. His mother worked as a housekeeper, his father as a bartender. He is fluent in Spanish, often giving news conferences in English and Spanish, as he did Wednesday when he introduced his tax overhaul plan. Rubio, who previously championed broad reform, has staked out middle ground on immigration, signaling support for legalizing illegal immigrants once the border has been verified secure.
“The medium is often the message. The candidate makes the difference,” said Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, who as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee is depending upon his party’s 2016 nominee for help defending the House majority. “A candidate who is bilingual makes a difference.”
The Republicans’ effort to attract more Hispanic voters faces challenges that better candidates won’t necessarily solve, particularly their party’s ongoing row over immigration in Congress.
The GOP is divided between supporters and opponents of broad changes to U.S. immigration law, generally referred to as comprehensive immigration reform. Disagreement centers around how to deal with illegal immigrants and whether to offer them a pathway to legalized status or citizenship, derided as amnesty. To a lesser degree, Republicans also are in the midst of a debate about whether to support legal immigration.
Hispanic voters, like most Americans, are more concerned about jobs and the economy, education and healthcare, foreign policy and national security, than they are about immigration. But GOP strategists fixated on turning Hispanics into Republicans describe immigration as a “gateway” issue. If a Republican candidate loses Hispanics on immigration, the strategists argue, they won’t listen to anything else he or she says even if they are inclined toward conservative policies.
Garza said support for comprehensive reform that simultaneously legalizes illegal immigrants and bolsters border security isn’t mandatory for Republicans to up their performance with Hispanics. But leadership on the issue is.
The Republican who succeeds with Hispanics, possibly returning the GOP to 2004 levels, when President George W. Bush garnered around 40 percent of their vote, will acknowledge that immigration is a problem that needs to be solved, and approach the matter in a way that is welcoming and inclusive in tone. Especially with Bush and Rubio in the race and front and center on the debate stage, Republican insiders are hopeful about 2016.
The expectation is that the presence of both Floridians will serve to curb inflammatory rhetoric during the debates and offer a counter message to candidates who might try to gain traction through opposition to immigration. Republicans also see ancillary benefits in terms of fundraising from Establishment donors who want the Republicans to embrace Hispanic voters. In the general election, the GOP could be positioned to run more effective advertising in highly rated Spanish language media.
“The key impact of having top tier candidates tied to the Hispanic community will likely be shaped in three ways: during the televised primary debates, at the big donor level, and maybe on the [advertising] side,” said Lenny Alcivar, a Republican digital consultant. “It’s hard to accurately gauge because there is no real precedent for this.”
