MUST READ: After Immigration Bill’s Fall, Republicans May Pay in Latino Votes
July 2, 2007
After Senate Republicans and their right-wing allies defeated bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform last week, The New York Times reported yesterday that the GOP will pay a price in 2008 and lose support from Hispanic voters. As the report notes, “…Hispanics may have been deeply alienated by the heated rhetoric that wound around the axle of the debate, most of it stemming from a few Republican opponents and the loud echo chamber of talk radio.” The Times also reports that the defeat of immigration reform at the hands of the GOP sends a message to the growing Latino population that they are not welcome in the Republican Party, a message with huge implications for 2008 and beyond. As former Reagan Administration senior official Linda Chavez notes, the GOP’s defeat of comprehensive immigration reform “...is disastrous for the Republican Party” in terms of attracting or keeping Hispanic voters.
After Bill’s Fall, G.O.P. May Pay in Latino Votes
By Jennifer Steinhauer
The New York Times
Below are excerpts of The New York Times report. To read the entire report, visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/us/politics/01immig.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin.
“‘The tone of the debate, and the way it was framed in sort of an ‘us against them’ way, has done great harm in wooing Hispanics to the party,’ said Ms. Chavez, who was the director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights under Reagan.
“‘I think it’s bloody for the Republicans,’ said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute, a Latino-oriented research and policy organization with offices in San Antonio and Los Angeles. ‘The Democrats said pro-immigrant stuff, and even if they didn’t support it, it was because they said it wasn’t good enough. The Republicans said anti-immigrant stuff and so now they are going to get killed with this.’
“In an interview on Friday, Mr. Martinez, who is chairman of the national Republican Party, called the bill’s defeat ‘a bipartisan failure.’ To win favor with Hispanics in the future, ‘We’ve got our work cut out for us,’ he said. ‘I consider it serious.’
