Evangelical Hispanics turning away from GOP

Perfect storm on election day
Among GOP strategists, the cultivation of the Hispanic evangelical community was viewed as essential to Bush's re-election and to their party's long-range prospects. As far back as Frank Fahrenkopf in the 1980s, Republican National Committee chairmen have stressed the need to win more black and Hispanic votes. Karl Rove, Matthew Dowd, Ken Mehlman, and most other top Republican operatives are now convinced that the parties are at a tipping point and that the GOP can no longer rely on its overwhelmingly white base to win national elections. In 2001, Dowd argued that boosting the GOP's percentages among minorities would be crucial to winning in 2004: "As a realistic goal, we have to get somewhere between 13 and 15 percent of the black vote and 38 to 40 percent of the Hispanic vote."

On Election Day 2004, the Republicans' Hispanic strategy paid off. "It was a perfect storm for us," a Bush strategist recalls. In less than a decade, the percentage of Hispanic-Americans voting for the Republican presidential nominee had doubled. According to national exit-poll data, Latino support rose from 21 percent in 1996, to 31 percent in 2000, to 44 percent in 2004. More-detailed analyses suggest the actual 2004 figure was probably closer to 40 percent.

Virtually all of the growth in the GOP's Hispanic support came from Protestant evangelicals, the Pew Hispanic Center found. Among Catholic Hispanics, support for Bush remained unchanged -- 33 percent in both 2000 and 2004. Among Protestant Hispanics, however, support for Bush surged from 44 percent in 2000 to a solid 56 percent majority in 2004.

Meanwhile, the number of Protestant Hispanic voters was growing much faster, by nearly 900,000 from 2000 to 2004, than the number of Catholic Latino voters, roughly 460,000, based on extrapolation from Pew figures. And while Bush increased his Hispanic support by 1.1 million votes, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry received just 280,000 more votes than Al Gore had four years earlier.

The immigration schism
Almost immediately after the 2004 election, immigration superseded the culture-war issues that attracted evangelical Hispanics to the Republican Party. This was especially so because of the fierce national debate over how to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in this country.

House Republicans' demands for a crackdown on illegal immigrants and Bush's seeming inability to get Congress to approve a new path to legalization have fractured the GOP's promising alliance with evangelical Hispanics. And the break is significant enough to threaten the party's future competitiveness.

This certainly isn't where Republicans appeared to be headed on December 20, 2004, when Bush promised at a press conference to use his political capital to win approval of landmark legislation that would allow illegal immigrants already here to become legal temporary workers and that might open the door to citizenship for some. "We ought to have a system that recognizes people are coming here to do jobs that Americans will not do," Bush declared. "And there ought to be a legal way for them to do so.... And I'm passionate on it because the nature of this country is one that is good-hearted and compassionate. Our people are compassionate. The system we have today is not a compassionate system."

Bush's remarks raised the expectations of not only millions of undocumented workers but also their children (some 3.5 million of whom are U.S. citizens by birth), relatives, friends, co-workers, employers, fellow church members, and pastors. Bush's announcement appeared likely to solidify Latino evangelical support for Republicans.

Instead, the president's commitment to a more "compassionate" immigration policy provoked a backlash among House Republicans that threatens to wipe out all of the gains that he and his strategists have achieved among Latino voters. The administration's foundering proposal to provide a path to legal status has become Exhibit A in the collapse of Bush's authority within his own party. In the House, Bush lost control of the debate to the hard-line Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, chaired by one of Bush's harshest critics, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.

The tone and substance of the immigration bill that the House passed on December 16, 2005, demonstrated that Tancredo's 104-member caucus had more muscle than the president on this particular issue. The bill, approved 239-182, provides for border fencing and state-of-the-art technology to halt the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, requires employers to verify the legal status of employees, and calls for hiring and training 1,000 port-of-entry inspectors and 1,500 K-9 border-control teams. Instead of providing a mechanism for illegal immigrants to achieve legal status, the measure would elevate illegal entry to a felony -- a provision that heightened the anxiety of undocumented residents and their allies. Republicans voted 203-17 for the measure, while Democrats and the House's lone independent opposed it, 36-165.

In denouncing the House measure, liberal Hispanic organizations, which tend to align themselves with the Democratic Party, were united with the very same Hispanic evangelicals that the Bush administration had long courted. "The issue of immigration is the most important issue in the Hispanic community," trumping abortion, gay marriage, and school prayer, Cortes said. "If the House Republicans get their way and pass their 'border-protection-only/kick-out-the-undocumented' policy, it only serves to better organize us."

In the Senate, most Republicans (32 of 55) voted in May against legislation that would provide an avenue to legal status, but it passed anyway, thanks to overwhelming Democratic support. Republican lawmakers' intense antagonism toward any proposal that could be construed as "amnesty" kept them in sync with conservative white voters outspokenly hostile to the Bush plan. Over the past two generations, these voters -- many of them former Democrats drawn to the GOP by its stands on race, crime, welfare, affirmative action, and gay rights -- have been crucial to Republican success.

Advantages in some states
Faced with the possibility of losing control of one or both chambers in November, House and Senate Republicans now consider it far more important to get their white voters to the polls than to try to bolster the party's support among Hispanics. Bush's immigration proposal has increased the chances that large numbers of white conservatives will opt to sit out the election. "You don't know what it's like to go on talk radio around the country and try to defend the president's plan," said a top administration ally who has tried to build support for the proposal. "I can't tell you how many people told me, 'If the Bush plan gets passed, the Republican Party can kiss my white ass goodbye.'"

Taking a strong stand against legalization is clearly politically advantageous in some states, at least one poll indicates. In Colorado, Tancredo's home state, immigration has been a heated topic in the Legislature and in the gubernatorial race. A Mason-Dixon survey of 625 Colorado voters conducted July 12-13 for The Denver Post showed a decisive 39 percent plurality identifying immigration as "the single most important issue facing the state." When asked whether barring illegal immigrants from receiving state services and from obtaining employment was "good" or "bad," 44 percent said good and 35 percent said bad. While pluralities of Democrats and Hispanics opposed such bans (by 49 percent to 31 percent and 46 percent to 31 percent, respectively), Republicans supported them 2-to-1 (52 percent to 26 percent). Independents supported the bans by 49 percent to 28 percent. (Two of Colorado's three House Democrats, John Salazar and Mark Udall, were among the small number of Democrats voting in favor of the tough House immigration bill.)

The Republican backlash against Bush's immigration proposal continues to roil the Hispanic community. The debate gets much stronger and more detailed play by Spanish-language networks and newspapers than by English-language media. Tancredo and members of his caucus are closely tracked by the Latino media. And their crackdown legislation is so well known within the Hispanic community that many Latino leaders routinely refer to it by the bill number, 4437.

MORE FROM NATIONAL JOURNAL

National Journal Section Front

Mercurio: Put extra emphasis on V.P. pick Blumenthal: Consider questions pollsters ask Walter: GOP not without hope Cook: Obama still outside comfort zone Brownstein: Reset this presidential campaign Mercurio: Sense of humor could hurt Obama Q&A: Rep. James Clyburn Q&A: Evan Bayh Q&A: Cindy McCain Q&A: Obama campaign manager David Plouffe National Journal Section Front