Evangelical Hispanics turning away from GOP

By Thomas B. Edsall

updated 3:17 p.m. ET Sept. 7, 2006

WASHINGTON - House Republicans knew that leaders of liberal Hispanic organizations would castigate them for passing hard-edged legislation last December calling for 700 miles of new fencing on the U.S.-Mexican border and for elevating illegal immigration to a felony and making it a permanent disqualifier for American citizenship. What they didn't foresee was that the Rev. Luis Cortes Jr., one of the most prominent Hispanic evangelicals to support President Bush's re-election, would turn against their party.

The 48-year-old Baptist minister heads Esperanza USA, which bills itself as the nation's largest Hispanic faith-based community- development organization. It controls Nueva Esperanza (Spanish for "new hope"), a Philadelphia-based network of social services, including a charter high school, a community college, and a $28 million economic development program.

After the 2000 election, Bush's political team was determined to boost the president's support among Latino voters and correctly saw evangelical Hispanics -- nearly one-fifth of the Hispanic population -- as especially promising. Cortes became a focus of that strategy.

When Esperanza USA hosted the first National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast in 2002, Bush was the star attraction; he would return to the annual event year after year. The administration began channeling millions of dollars into Cortes's organizations. The Health and Human Services Department's Compassion Capital Fund for faith-based programs gave Nueva Esperanza three grants totaling more than $7.4 million. Cortes was able to distribute much of the money to Hispanic churches and service organizations nationwide, thereby strengthening his standing within the Latino community. In July 2004, the Labor Department awarded $2.76 million to Esperanza USA for training at-risk Latino youths in Chicago, Miami, New York, Orlando, and Philadelphia.

For Bush, the evangelical Latino community proved to be an ideal target constituency, because in pursuing it the GOP could push the hot-button issues of abortion and gay rights in ways that had been powerfully effective among white evangelicals.

Courtship paid off in 2004
In 2004, the Bush administration's courtship paid off. Cortes, who had backed Ralph Nader in 2000, endorsed Bush. And on Election Day, Bush's share of the Hispanic vote rose from 31 percent to at least 40 -- with virtually all of the increase coming not from Catholics but from Protestant evangelicals like Cortes. After the election, Cortes told The New York Times, "I'm not red, and I'm not blue. I'm brown. You want an endorsement? Give us a check, and you can take a picture of us accepting it. Because then you've done something for brown."

But now, House Republicans' hard-line stands on immigration are clearly jeopardizing their party's gains among Hispanic evangelicals. Over the past year, in a shift frightening to GOP operatives, Cortes has become an outspoken critic of the House Republican leadership, warning of a massive exodus of Latinos from the GOP. "The Far Right is using rhetoric to frame [immigration] in a manner that convinces the majority of Americans that the only alternative is to hunt down and punish these 'drug-dealing people,' " Cortes told National Journal. Republican House leaders "have gone too far, a sign that they are desperate and have no true agenda for our country. They should be ashamed, and as a person of faith I have to believe that this will backfire, as it is clearly an act of cowardice."

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Philadelphia on July 5, Cortes testified that "immigration is the No. 1 issue of concern in our communities. For us, immigration is about family values, about work and living productive lives as contributing members of our communities. Millions of our people are known only to many as 'the undocumented.' Forty million Hispanic-American citizens have undocumented grandparents, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, and children. They are not criminals, felons, or gang members, but taxpaying, law-abiding, hardworking members of our families and our communities."

The Bush administration and the Republican National Committee have sought to assuage the fears of their Latino supporters, but key Hispanic conservatives aren't sounding mollified. As he left a recent meeting of the RNC, the Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, an outspoken advocate of the Right's social agenda, and a Bush loyalist, declared, "I pray for the soul of the Republican Party."

The glide path
Throughout 2004, the Bush administration's strategy of expanding its Hispanic support, especially among Protestant evangelicals, was on a glide path. The GOP's conservative stands on social issues, including gay marriage, abortion, and school prayer, resonated powerfully among the growing numbers of Latino parishioners at Pentecostal and Baptist churches. The administration's faith-based initiatives, in turn, funneled hundreds of grants to Hispanic churches and religious groups, many of them Protestant and evangelical.

In 2004, there were 40.5 million Hispanics in the United States, up from 26.6 million a decade earlier and substantially more than the 34.8 million African-Americans. However, in 2004, only half as many Hispanics as blacks voted, according to the American National Election Studies, because of lower registration and turnout rates, and higher percentages of noncitizens and children. But the Hispanic vote is expected to overtake the black vote in little more than a generation.

The Hispanic vote is especially important in the Southwest, which is rapidly becoming a swing region with the power to decide presidential elections. In Arizona in 2004, 12 percent of voters were Hispanic, exit polls found, as were 8 percent in Colorado, 10 percent in Nevada, and 32 percent in New Mexico. And in two other Sun Belt states -- Texas and Florida -- the continuation of Republican political dominance will likely depend on whether the party can boost its popularity among Hispanics. By 2004, Hispanics already made up 20 percent of the Texas electorate and 15 percent of Florida's. In every one of these states, Latino voters substantially outnumber black voters.

Hispanics are also the major source of new parishioners in many evangelical denominations. For example, of the 2.8 million members of the Assemblies of God USA, about 500,000 are Hispanic, with Latinos accounting for 52 percent of the growth of that church from 1992 to 2002. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said that his denomination has succeeded in expanding into the Hispanic and black communities: "Our denomination is now 80 percent Anglo. In 1970, it was 100 percent Anglo. It's changed with direct intentionality."

Bush's courting of Latino religious leaders was well received during his re-election campaign. Just two weeks before the election, leaders of prominent groups on the Religious Right joined with many Hispanic evangelical ministers to hold an "America for Jesus" rally on the National Mall that featured many signs supporting the Bush campaign. Sherry Cropper, 39, of Wilmington, Del., who brought two such signs to the rally, told The Washington Times, "President Bush stands for the godly morals and values that founded this country. John Kerry speaks of the interest of the opposing voice to God."

And the rally's organizer, Bishop John Gimenez, senior pastor of the 5,000-member Rock Church in Virginia Beach, warned, "Our nation is in a severe moral decline. From pornography and homosexuality to abortion to racism, this country is out of control."

In addition to Gimenez, Cortes, and Miguel Rivera, the event brought together such Latino religious leaders as the Rev. Dennis Rivera of the Spanish Central District of the Assemblies of God; the Rev. Rudy Hernandez of the Southern Baptist Convention in Texas; and the Rev. Daniel de Leon of Templo Calvario in Santa Ana, Calif. Non-Hispanic sponsors from the Religious Right included televangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell; pastor Rick Scarborough, national co-chairman of Vision America; and pastor Rod Parsley of World Harvest Church.

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