California Republicans are in the Toilet Without Hispanic Voters

Posted On August 22, 2013 0 Comment

The California Republican Party is in the toilet today. It holds no statewide office, it has lost two/thirds of the legislature allowing Democrats to pass any bill, any law they wish without a single Republican vote. Of 53 seats in the House of Representatives and two senate seats, the GOP has a tenuous hold on a handful of seats in the House and both senate seats are held by Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.
From Politico: “Eleven of the 15 districts held by Republicans are a quarter or more Hispanic — and some of them are prime targets for Democrats who need 17 seats to take back the House in 2014.”
New California GOP Chairman, former State Senate leader Jim Bruilte told Politico: “Republicans in California ignored demographic changes…As a result, we’re a significant minority.” His statement is kind and meant not to be hurtful with the truth.
The truth is the Party has been destroyed by Republicans who have targeted Mexicans with hate and politics by attacking Mexican illegal aliens; it started with Governor Pete Wilson in 1994.
Wilson, a Yale and UC Boalt Hall law graduate who failed the Bar exam five times, behind in the polls for reelection in 1994 ordered the California state GOP to finance a signature drive to place what became Proposition 187 on the ballot; he ordered an expenditure of $300,000 dollars. It made the ballot.
In 1990 when he defeated Dianne Feinstein for Governor he received 50% of the Hispanic vote. In 1994 he was reelected but other than Steve Poizner (Insurance Commissioner, one term) and Arnold Schwarzenegger two victories for governor no Republican has been elected statewide.
The legislature is now two/thirds Democrat and it can pass any bill it wants without Republican input. That is Pete Wilson’s gift to Californians, a one party state.
Helping Pete Wilson was State GOP Chairman Ron Nehring who hired two illegal aliens, a Canadian and an Australian to run the State Party.
When the San Francisco Chronicle and this writer in CalNews.com broke the hiring of two illegal aliens by Nehring, the Party died on the spot. The State GOP could not field a ground game in 2010 or 2012. It didn’t even have a state headquarters. A handful of employees worked out of their homes.
This because the CA GOP decided in 1994 to write off Mexicans in the state who had always supplied 40-45% of their vote to Republicans like Richard Nixon, Governor Earl Warren and Governor/President Ronald Reagan.
They weren’t even nice about it. Congressmen like Orange County’s Dana Rohrabacher viciously attacked Mexican illegal aliens and raised money for Prop. 187 and cried like a little girl when the courts threw it out as unconstitutional.
His big mouth is still at it suggesting that if Comprehensive Immigration reform passes the House of Representatives (it has already passed the Senate) that Rohrabacher, a lifelong back bencher, has enough votes to throw the Speaker out of his job.
He doesn’t have that kind of support in California for California Republican leadership (of which Rohrabacher is not part of) has abandoned the Pete Wilson model and is striving politically for immigration reform for no other reason than to eliminate it as an issue. With California Hispanics now over 40% of the population, they aren’t political chopped liver, they have real power.
“As decimated as the Republican Party has been in California, the opportunity here is to figure this out.” So told Rob Stutzman a top Republican operative during the Schwarzenegger years to Politico.
Internal GOP polling shows 65 percent of California voters have a negative view of the party which leads to despair among wise Republicans.
New State Chairman, former Senate leader Jim Bruilte says,” “Republicans in California have now become experts at getting 25 percent of the Hispanic vote…”
Politico: “Some Republicans are beginning to get the message. Andy Vidak…beat Democrat Leticia Perez in a state Senate special election in the heavily Hispanic, heavily Democratic Central Valley. He endorsed a pathway to citizenship and ditched his party’s aggressive chatter about immigration — and he won in a district where 50 percent of the residents are Democrats…“I shudder when I hear that kind of stuff,” Vidak told POLITICO, speaking of his party’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. “I live it.”
Jon Fleischman, who runs the popular Flash Report told Politico. ““The path for a winning scenario escapes me…It’s a lose-lose scenario for Republicans at this point. It’s not clear to me how to win on this issue for our party right now. I can’t figure out what the win is. Because I see the problems, I see the challenge before me, so I don’t know what these individual members of Congress are going to do. I hope it works out.”
The problem, then is not among the tiny minority of people like Rohrabacher, it is among a larger group led by people like Fleischman (former Executive Director of the CAGOP). They need to break for the future with immigration reform not to relive 1994 over and over to guarantee losses forever.
Extinction or victory, Jon et al, take your pick. ###