Republicans have a real chance at winning both the White House and the Senate in November, victories that if they can also hang on to control of the House would give them unfettered control of all three levers of the federal government for the first time since 2004.
If the GOP can pull off that feat in the fall, expect lots and lots to be written about how the country has been and always will be a center-right one where, if Republicans simply play their political cards right, they will be a permanent majority party. But a look at demographic and electoral trends over the past two decades suggests that Republicans are more likely headed to permanent minority status unless they find a way to address their growing problems with the Hispanic community.
The population growth among Latinos is the demographic story of the past decade. Between 2000 and 2010, the country’s Hispanic population grew by 15.2 million people, more than half of all population growth (27.3 million) in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Hispanic population grew by 43 percent, more than four times as fast as the population as a whole. (Latinos are now 16 percent of the overall population in the country.)
That growth was not limited to a specific region of the country, and, in fact, it was the South and Midwest—two areas not traditionally considered a hotbed for Hispanics—where Latino population increased the most over the past decade. (The Hispanic population grew in the South by 57 percent and in the Midwest by 49 percent.) While more than half of the country’s Hispanics still live in three states—California, Florida, and Texas—there were eight states (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) in which the Hispanic population doubled between 2000 and 2010. Hispanic population increased in every single state as well as the District of Columbia over the past decade.
Those growth statistics make clear that the Hispanic community will soon be—if it’s not already—the single most coveted voting bloc in the country by politicians of both parties. And that’s a very large problem for Republicans. To understand why, you need to look back first before looking ahead. If you go all the way back to 1992, you quickly see that Republicans have been losing the Hispanic vote at the presidential level by overwhelming margins. Bill Clinton carried Hispanics by thirty-six points over President George H. W. Bush and won the group by fifty-one (!) points over Bob Dole four years later. George W. Bush made a concerted effort to court the Hispanic community both in Texas and at the national level; Al Gore beat him among Hispanics by twenty-seven points in 2000, but Bush did narrow his losing margin among Latinos to just thirteen points in 2004. The 2008 election, however, was a return to form as Barack Obama won the Hispanic vote by thirty-six points over Arizona senator John McCain. In 2010, Hispanics went for House Democratic candidates by twenty-two points over House Republican candidates.
Losing the fastest-growing community in the country by somewhere between twenty-five and thirty points in each election is simply not a sustainable model for future electoral success, particularly as Latinos begin to age—it is a remarkably young population—and more and more of them become eligible and registered to vote. And that movement is already happening. In 2004 there were 16.1 million Hispanics eligible to vote; four years later there were 19.5 million, an increase of more than 20 percent in the space of just one presidential election. And in every election since 1992, Hispanics have cast an ever-increasing percentage of the overall vote. In 1992, Hispanics accounted for just 3.8 percent of all votes, but by 1996 that number had risen to 4.7 percent. In 2000, Hispanics were 5.4 percent of all voters, and that number shot up to 6 percent in 2004 and all the way to 7.4 percent in 2008. The trend line for white voters during that same period was headed in the opposite direction; in 1992 white voters were responsible for 85 percent of all votes cast, but that number had dipped to just 76 percent by 2008.
Given the stark reality of the rapid growth in the Hispanic community and the Republican Party’s past difficulties in capturing any significant portion of the Latino vote, you would expect the party’s candidates for president to be pushing for policies that can attract Hispanics to their cause. And you’d be wrong. During the primary season, the candidates by and large took a hard line on immigration, which is, without question, the dominant issue for most Hispanic voters.
Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, advocated “self-deportation” for illegal immigrants during the primary season, which, according to the former Massachusetts governor, is “when people decide that they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here.”
Both Newt Gingrich and Texas governor Rick Perry were pilloried for even the slightest willingness to acknowledge that rounding up the eleven million (or so) people in the United States illegally might not be feasible or humane. (Perry called those who opposed offering in-state college tuition to the children of illegal immigrants “heartless” during a presidential debate in the fall of 2011; he later apologized for using that language.)
The simple reality is that the conservative base of the Republican party (aka the people who tend to decide the identity of the party’s presidential nominee) are vehemently opposed to the idea of any sort of comprehensive immigration reform that creates a path to citizenship for anyone who entered the country illegally. Look at the political journey of Arizona senator John McCain for evidence of the perils of crossing the base on the issue. McCain was a major advocate for some sort of comprehensive overhaul of the immigration system in 2007. He walked away from that position as it became clear that it was obliterating his chances of being the Republican presidential nominee in 2008. And then in 2010, when faced with a challenge from his ideological right in a Senate primary, McCain seemed to take on the same absolutist position he had rejected less than three years before. In one ad that ran in the primary campaign, McCain is shown walking with a border agent and insisting that we need to “build the danged fence” to cut down on illegal immigration. McCain won that race easily and now has moved back to his previous centrist position on immigration reform. He criticized Romney’s “self-deportation” plan and added that “it has to be a very humane approach to this issue, and we have to come up with solutions to it” during an interview with Univision in early February 2012.
McCain isn’t the only powerful voice within the party making the case for a fresh start for Republicans with the Hispanic community. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has been the most high-profile figure calling for a dialing-back of the rhetoric within the party on immigration, going as far as to warn the candidates prior to January’s Florida presidential primary that heated talk about illegals was doing their side no good. Bush also penned an op-ed in the Washington Post in January laying out the stakes for his party when it comes to the Latino vote. “In the 15 states that are likely to decide who controls the White House and the Senate in 2013, Hispanic voters will represent the margin of victory,” wrote Bush. “Just eight years after the party’s successful effort to woo Hispanic voters in 2004, this community—the fastest-growing group in the United States, according to census data—has drifted away.” Bush outlined in the piece a handful of solutions for solving the Republican immigration problem—focus on the economics of immigration, treat the Hispanic community not as a bloc but as a series of diverse electorates, push education reform to help their children in failing schools, all of which are good ideas.
The problem is that Jeb Bush isn’t running for president in 2012, no matter how hard some Republicans tried to get him to consider doing so. And that makes it very easy for Bush to offer solutions without suffering the electoral wrath of a political base that doesn’t want to start a serious conversation about immigration policy in the country before all eleven million people who are here illegally are sent home. It’s easy to stand on the sidelines and suggest how the players on the field should act. It’s much more difficult to be in the middle of a fight for your political life and take the sort of principled stand that you know won’t be popular within your own party and might, in fact, cost you the brass ring that you have spent your entire life chasing. (I equate what Bush is doing to those guys who are waiting on the sidelines to play in a pickup basketball game and inject themselves into the game by making a call about whether someone stepped out of bounds. That’s all well and good. But you aren’t playing in the game.)
In politics, baby steps are often necessary. No prominent Republican politician running for president or any other high-profile office is going to come out in favor of some sort of comprehensive immigration reform plan at this point. But there are a few things that could happen that might well help Republicans take the first steps of a reconciliation/courtship with the Hispanic community. Here are two that could happen between now and November.
There’s lots and lots of heat, rhetorically speaking, around the issue of immigration—legal and illegal—within the GOP. And there’s a simple reason for it: it works. Arizona governor Jan Brewer is a perfect example. Prior to her decision to sign the nation’s most restrictive immigration law in the country in 2010, Brewer was in deep trouble in both a primary and a general election. In the aftermath of the bill being signed, she became a national conservative hero, and her primary opponents dropped out in a nod to the political reality that she was unbeatable. Ditto the general election, where she cruised to victory despite a formidable Democratic nominee. The presidential nominee needs to send a signal that the party is done with throwing around inflammatory rhetoric as a cheap ploy to win votes from the base. That’s not to say that the nominee has to disavow the need for the border to be secure and other tenets of the conservative position on immigration. Instead, the nominee has to make clear that the party needs to find a new and better way to talk about it.
This sort of rhetorical shift isn’t entirely unprecedented when it comes to presidential politics. Remember that Bill Clinton repositioned the Democratic Party in the 1990s on the issue of abortion, which he recognized was a political loser for his side, by emphasizing the fact that he, like most Americans, believed it should be “safe, legal, and rare.” That construction didn’t change the basic pro-choice position of the Democratic Party but it did reframe the issue in a way that made it more acceptable to independents and even some moderate Republicans to vote for Clinton. It was a position that reflected where the public was on the issue: no one liked abortions but most people didn’t want to see them outlawed either.
That’s the very same trick that Republicans need to pull on immigration. They need to acknowledge that no one likes the fact that so many people are in the country illegally and that the border needs to be secured, while de-emphasizing their belief that the eleven million people who are here illegally need to be sent home. Politics is about finding ways to mold your core beliefs to those of the constituencies you are trying to woo. Republicans desperately need to do that when it comes to immigration.
No, putting a Hispanic on the national ticket doesn’t solve Republicans’ problems with Latinos any more than having a black roommate means that you aren’t a racist. But it’s a start. It’s a foothold. And Republicans desperately need both in the Hispanic community.
Putting a Hispanic in a position of such prominence wouldn’t change where the Republican Party stands—and has stood—on the issue of immigration. But it would almost certainly earn the party a second look from many (though not all) within the Hispanic community. Hearing one of their own articulate why he or she decided to be a Republican is far more likely to be persuasive to Hispanics than hearing an old white guy make the case for the Grand Old—emphasis on old—Party.
It would also be a historic pick, which allows the party to counter the historic nature of President Obama. And a look back at recent vice presidential picks suggests that a sense of history is perhaps the most powerful driving force behind how the choice gets made. In 2008, John McCain and his senior political team badly wanted to dilute the historic vote edge that Obama had as the first African American to win a major party’s presidential nomination. Picking Sarah Palin made sense within that context, matching history with history. (Obviously, the practical reality of putting Palin on the ticket worked out considerably less well for McCain.) And, in 2000, Al Gore’s decision to make Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman the first Jewish person on a national ticket drew him scads of positive publicity nationwide and almost certainly helped Gore in Florida—though not enough.
It’s difficult to overestimate the pride of a community when one of their own breaks a long-held glass ceiling in American public life. (Need evidence? Look at the massive turnout and consolidation of the black vote behind Barack Obama in both the primary and general election in 2008.)
The good thing for the Republican Party is it has a number of Hispanics now in prominent statewide positions from which to pick. While there are 1,380 Hispanic Democrats in elected office nationwide and just 158 Hispanic Republicans, the GOP has gained twenty-nine seats since the 2006 election while Democrats have lost twenty-five over that same time period.
The conversation about a Hispanic vice presidential pick starts (and maybe ends) with Marco Rubio, the Senate sensation from Florida. That Rubio is Hispanic—Cuban, actually—is obviously a major helper for his chances. But he also brings two other major attributes that put him at the top of any Republican’s vice presidential list.
First, he comes from Florida, a state that has been at the center of the fight for the presidency for the last decade. While putting Rubio on the ticket wouldn’t ensure a Florida win for Republicans, he is a popular figure in the state and would undoubtedly narrow—if not entirely erase—the Democrats’ edge among Hispanic voters in the Sunshine State. In his 2010 Senate race, Rubio won 45 percent of the Hispanic vote and 48 percent of the white vote in a three-way general election contest. (Representative Kendrick Meek was the Democratic nominee, and then governor Charlie Crist ran as an independent.)
Second, and of equal importance, is the fact that Rubio is an absolute darling of the Tea Party movement. His rapid rise against popular (and moderate) Crist in the 2010 Senate primary was the first tangible evidence that the Tea Party had real political power. Since his victory, Rubio has been touted as a leader of the movement by the national media and feted at conservative confabs like CPAC. (Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, introduced Rubio at CPAC 2012, noting that he is “someone I know I’m going to say hello to at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue someday.”)
Combine those three factors—Hispanic, Florida, and Tea Party—and it’s clear why Rubio is the heavy front-runner to be the vice presidential pick. But if for whatever reason he winds up not being the choice—stranger things have happened—Republicans have several other credible Hispanic alternatives.
One is Susana Martinez, who was elected governor of New Mexico—swing state alert!—in 2010. Martinez beat the sitting Democratic lieutenant governor by nearly eight points to become the first Hispanic woman elected governor—by either party—in the country. Her tough-on-crime credentials—she served as the district attorney in Dona Ana County prior to winning the governorship—coupled with the fact that she hails from a swing southwestern state makes her a potentially appealing choice for a Republican Party looking to reach out to Hispanics.
Another name that will likely be mentioned in the veepstakes is Nevada governor Brian Sandoval, who swept to his current office in 2010 by winning 33 percent of Hispanic voters and a remarkable 62 percent of whites. (It didn’t hurt Sandoval’s appeal to white voters that Rory Reid, the son of the unpopular Senate majority leader, was the Democratic nominee.) Sandoval’s résumé is mighty impressive. He was elected attorney general in Nevada in 2002, and President George W. Bush appointed him three years later as a United States district judge. He left that lifetime appointment behind to run for governor of Nevada. And, like Florida and New Mexico, Nevada is a major swing state in 2012, making Sandoval an even more attractive pick.