Is California a warning for GOP on Hispanics?

The GOP won control of Congress for the first time in 40 years and picked up a raft of state houses and governors’ mansions. But in California, the 1994 midterm elections were a harbinger of the party’s future, with lessons for the Republicans that are seeking the presidential nomination 22 years later.

In 1994, Gov. Pete Wilson won a tough re-election contest in what was then still a battleground state partly by staking out a hawkish position on illegal immigration. Also a winner: Proposition 187. The ballot initiative denied state services to illegal immigrants, but was later overturned in court.

The results were part of the Republican wave that swept the country in 1994, and they appeared to put the Golden State in play for the GOP heading into President Clinton’s 1996 re-election bid. It didn’t quite work out that way.

Wilson and Proposition 187 accelerated California’s existing march leftward by activating the dormant power of Hispanic voters. Combined with other factors, their support for Democrats solidified the state as a liberal stronghold and locking the GOP out of power. How? Hispanics who were registered but barely voted started showing up; those who weren’t registered did so in greater numbers; and Hispanics who hadn’t bothered to become American citizens did so to take advantage of the franchise.

“It was, without question, a defining moment,” Antonio Villaraigosa said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. Villaraigosa, 63, is the former Los Angeles mayor and ex-speaker of the California Assembly. Elected to the assembly in 1994, he quickly advanced to the leadership positions of Democratic whip and majority leader, and in that capacity was intimately involved in his party’s drive to register new Hispanic voters.

Republicans could be on the verge of sparking another political realignment — this time nationally, thanks largely to GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and his immigration policies and harsh descriptions of illegal immigrants. That’s the gleeful assessment of Villaraigosa and other California Democrats who were around in the 1990s and saw the growth of the Hispanic voting bloc. Of course, it’s a self-serving prediction. But that doesn’t mean it’s completely without merit.

In late January, Buzzfeed News reported that Trump is motivating Hispanic immigrants in Nevada, Colorado and Florida — three swing states in presidential elections — to become naturalized citizens. They hope to be eligible to vote by November of this year, particularly if Trump wins the Republican nomination. The celebrity businessman from New York proposes forcibly rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants, and has referred to illegal immigrants from Mexico as “rapists.”

“We’ve seen more people this year that want to become citizens and specifically because they want to vote against Trump,” Mi Familia Vota executive director Ben Monterroso told Buzzfeed.

In California, the effect of Hispanics becoming more consistent voters was pronounced. Since 1994, the Republicans have won just three statewide races there, and only two of them were regularly scheduled elections. Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor in 2003 in special contest held to recall Democrat Gray Davis. Schwarzenegger was re-elected in 2006. That same year, Republican Steve Poizner was elected insurance commissioner. Other than that, Democrats have dominated the state’s politics.

In his 1994 gubernatorial campaign, Wilson ran a television spot that showed video footage of illegal immigrants running across the state’s southern border with Mexico.

“They keep coming, two million illegal immigrants in California,” the ad’s voiceover begins, before Wilson, speaking straight to camera, concludes: “For Californians who work hard, pay taxes and obey the laws, I’m suing to force the federal government to control the border, and I’m working to deny state services to illegal immigrants. Enough is enough.” Trump, for his 2016 presidential campaign, has run a spot with similar visuals and rhetoric.

Wilson’s message, and Proposition 187, combined to energize Hispanics. But Democrats say that, over time, the impact has been further reaching, because the Republican Party has become more hawkish on immigration. In other words, less likely to support comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants. In California, it’s not just Hispanics that have largely rejected Republicans, it’s also Asians, another fast-growing ethnic minority.

“The two fastest growing groups in CA, that constitute over 50 percent of the population, were alienated and offended by the anti-immigrant campaign that Wilson ran in 1994 to save his ass,” said veteran California Democratic operative Garry South, who used to advise Gray Davis and ran his race for lieutenant governor that year.

Democratic presidential candidates haven’t garnered less than 60 percent of the Asian vote since before 2000. President Obama scored 79 percent of their vote four years ago. Meanwhile, since 1994, the lowest percentage of the Hispanic vote achieved by Democratic candidates for president or governor was 61 percent, by gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides in his 2006 loss to Schwarzenegger. In 2012, Obama received 79 percent of the Hispanic vote, to GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s 27 percent.

For conservatives who believe the GOP has to soften its tone toward illegal immigrants and embrace some form of immigration reform, California in the mid 1990s is a cautionary tale — especially as Trump came to rest atop the state and national polls in the presidential race. Trump has since lost the Iowa caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and appears to be losing ground in New Hampshire.

Longtime California politicos say that the state’s transformation from purple to blue is more complicated, and not simply the result of choice made by Wilson, or Golden State voters who passed Proposition 187. By 1994, state that launched Presidents Nixon and Reagan, and regularly voted GOP for president, had been slowly trending Democratic for years. Republican insiders in California point out that the GOP hasn’t ousted an incumbent Democratic U.S. senator since 1976.

The Democrats also claimed ownership of the legislature long before 1994, controlling the state house in Sacramento for most of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

California’s population also underwent shifts, with conservative-leaning white middle class voters being replaced over time by Hispanic working class union members. The Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters discussed the changes in a Jan. 13 column:

“One major factor was the end of the Cold War, which clobbered Southern California’s aerospace industry, resulting in migration from the region of more than a million persons, mostly conservative-voting industry workers and their families,” Walters wrote. “Los Angeles County, with a quarter of the state’s population and an emerging service worker union movement, shifted strongly leftward and tilted the entire state toward Democrats.”

A senior California Republican, who requested anonymity in order speak candidly, said that Wilson’s campaign and Proposition 187 might have sped things up, but the Golden State was going to go blue eventually, anyway. Noted this GOP operative, when California first started tracking voter registration by party, in the 1920s, the GOP led with around 60 percent affiliation. By 1988, the last time a Republican won California’s 55 Electoral Votes, that number had dipped to 38.5 percent.

A year ago, Republicans accounted for 28 percent of registered voters, according to a report issued by the California secretary of state.

“To suggest that Prop 187 turned us into a blue state is mythology,” the senior California Republican said.