Hispanic vote a 2012 wild card
Hispanic voters saved the Democratic Party Tuesday — buoying Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, keeping California blue, playing an outsize role in preserving the party’s Senate majority and demonstrating a partisan loyalty Democrats didn’t exactly earn in two years of inaction on immigration policy.
But that support is anything but certain for 2012, and both parties face difficult and immediate choices when it comes to the Latino vote as they position themselves for the presidential election. Democrats face open demands from Hispanic leaders for a reward for their votes. President Barack Obama could erect a Western bulwark for his reelection campaign by — as Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) suggested to POLITICO — pressing for broad immigration reform in the lame-duck session. But immigration could also prove, like health care, a polarizing, impolitic detour from the economic issues preoccupying voters.
Republicans, meanwhile, were carried to power by a conservative base that is, if anything, even less open to compromise on immigration — or anything else — than was the last Congress. And they head into the 2012 election cycle risking the same pattern that sunk Meg Whitman in California: a primary campaign that drags candidates to the right on immigration, only to find that they can’t plausibly return to ask for the support of Hispanics in November.
“If I was a Republican nationwide right now, I’d be thinking about that same kind of trap being set for 2012, where you can’t say one thing to the more conservative wing of your party and then say another thing to Latino voters,” said David Binder, a California-based Democratic pollster who works for the Democratic National Committee and advised the Service Employees International Union’s intensely successful campaign against Whitman among Hispanic voters.
“But it would be a mistake for Democrats to assume that the Latino vote is necessarily going to be strong on them for 2012,” Binder said. “If the Democrats expect Latino voters to come out in big numbers in 2012, they need to start moving on this issue.”
An election eve poll conducted by Latino Decisions, a Hispanic polling firm, found Hispanics weren’t nearly as motivated to vote Democratic as they were to show solidarity with the Latino community. Forty-seven percent of Latinos in eight key states told the pollsters they voted to “represent and support” Hispanics, 31 percent to support Democrats and 12 percent to back Republicans.
“I don’t think we can interpret this as Democratic enthusiasm among Latinos,” said Matt Barreto, a pollster with Latino Decisions.
But overall, the Democratic loyalty shown by Hispanics in the West, a region that will be critical to both Obama and his Republican challenger in 2012, was the only bright spot for the party — and daunting for the GOP.
Obama pleased his Hispanic supporters with one major symbolic gesture: He appointed the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor. But he also failed to deliver on a promise to move immigration reform in his first year, and it fell by the wayside again in his second as an exhausted Congress showed no interest in yet another polarizing fight.
The new Congress — with cowed Democrats and Republicans empowered by a grass roots hostile to any hint of “amnesty” — seems even less likely to act. Numbers USA, which favors lower immigration levels, estimates that the election wiped out about three dozen immigration reform supporters in the House and about a half-dozen in the Senate.
But some Democratic and Hispanic leaders say Obama must put more of his political capital behind immigration than he was willing to do in the past two years. Obama needs to start now in aggressively courting Hispanics for his reelection and not rely, as he did this year, on last-minute, high-profile media appearances, these leaders say.
“Whatever goodwill he got as a result of the anti-immigrant politics, he is going to be on a short leash,” Barreto said. “He is going to have to push these things. Even if [a bill] doesn’t pass, Obama needs to look like he is promoting, defending and pushing Latino issues. He didn’t look like that in the last two years.”
Added Jill Hanauer, executive director of Project New West, a Democratic group active in the Western states: “We can’t wait until September of an election year.”
Menendez said Obama needs to renew his commitment by pushing immigration during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress. Reid, however, has committed to bringing up only a narrow immigration bill, known as the DREAM Act, which would allow certain students and members of the military to become citizens.
“I would hope that the president would reach out to Republicans in the lame-duck session, many of whom are retiring and some of who have expressed some interest in comprehensive immigration reform,” said Menendez, referring to a package of security measures, enhanced employer verification requirements and the legalization of illegal immigrants. “That might be our very best moment because, to be very honest with you, in the next session I am not overly optimistic.”
But if Democrats fail on immigration in the next month, they need to keep at it in the next Congress, Menendez said, by forcing a vote on a comprehensive package.
“The cautionary tale is that for Democrats, you have to show some backbone,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-reform America’s Voice.
He cited the contrast between Reid, who aggressively courted Hispanics through his campaign and on the Senate floor by pushing immigration legislation, and Florida gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, who did little to communicate with Latinos. She lost the Hispanic vote to Republican Gov.-elect Rick Scott, despite his embrace of hard-line policies such as the Arizona enforcement law, which a majority of Hispanics opposed, according to Latino Decisions polling.
“Obama either fights for Latino immigrants or he continues to lose support among them,” Sharry said.
But Democrats may also be tempted to do nothing and hope Republicans shoot themselves in the foot again. Television ads in the West featuring, among other things, sinister-looking Hispanic gangsters didn’t help Sharron Angle win, but they did push Hispanic voters to Reid by margins pollsters put at between 60 percent and 90 percent.
“That was a huge mistake for them,” said Menendez. “They tried to appeal to the worst angels in people’s nature, and it backfired.”
THE REPUBLICAN CHALLENGE
Some Republican leaders see an opportunity to change the partisan dynamic among Hispanic voters — if they move fast.
With new, high-profile Hispanic leaders like incoming Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, the party is ripe, they say, for a rebranding based on Democratic failures.
“Democrats have been dismal. Their policies have been dismal. They have failed to even attempt to look like they’re trying to deliver on their promise,” said Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart about immigration reform.
And he said the new House leadership could change the rhetoric, if not the policy, despite the presence of Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) at the head of the House Judiciary Committee and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) as chairman of the House immigration subcommittee. They are viewed as more conservative on immigration than Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who is still reviled within the Hispanic community for his 2005 border and immigration control bill that inspired rallies around the country.
“They’ve beat us in the semantics game,” Diaz-Balart said, adding that “a few things that were said, by [former Colorado Rep. Tom] Tancredo in particular, did a lot of damage.”
Many Republican leaders see another way out of the trap: putting Rubio on the 2012 ballot.
His campaign could be their template. The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio advertised heavily on Spanish-language television, broadcasting his personal story as the centerpiece of an inspirational message to Hispanics.
Similar to former President George W. Bush, Rubio spoke about his opposition to legalization “in a respectful and empathetic tone, focusing on law-and-order aspects and not using people who cross the border illegally as political punching bags,” said Ana Navarro, a Miami-based Republican strategist and adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Rubio won between 55 percent and 62 percent of the Latino vote.
But Fernand Amandi, a Florida-based Democratic pollster, threw up a cautionary flag for Republicans. Rubio’s positions on immigration were never challenged by his opponents, Amandi said, and if he had been forced to defend his record, his support among Hispanics would very likely have been lower.
“The one lesson that I hope the GOP has learned from this election is that the tone of the debate matters,” Navarro said. “Republicans should not and cannot allow heated rhetoric to sound angry and anti-Hispanic. That is when Hispanics stop listening and turn their backs."