CAMPAIGN 2000

The Republican party has developed a new strategy for attracting votes from one of the fastest growing segments of the population – Hispanics.  Republican strategists are comparing the role of Hispanics in the upcoming national elections to that of “soccer moms” during the 1996 election.  Almost 80% of the Hispanic vote is concentrated in a few states, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Texas and Utah.  These states also represent 179 of the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency.  In this regard, Republican strategists are hoping Gov. George W. Bush is the party’s nominee.  He is popular with Hispanics in Texas, where he is governor. 

The Democratic party is taking the Republican effort to gain Hispanic votes seriously, and is campaigning intensively in Hispanic communities.  The co-chair of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) recently had a public meeting with Jim Nicholson, the chair of the Republican National Committee.  In direct reference to Gov. Bush, Rep. Sanchez said the Democrats “will not allow Latinos to be used as props at events or as photo opportunities by your presidential candidates during this election cycle.” 

While thought of as traditional Democratic voters, Hispanics have never adhered to a party line and their vote is often difficult to predict.  In California, where Hispanic voting trends have been most closely analyzed, this is evident.  A majority of Hispanics in the state supported Ronald Reagan, and in the most recent mayoral election in Los Angeles, 50% of the Hispanic vote went to the Republican candidate, now Mayor Richard Riordan.  Hispanics even supported former California Gov. Pete Wilson during his first election in 1990, but he lost the Hispanic vote after his support of Proposition 187. Hispanic voters are also credited with helping California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer beat her Republican opponent in the 1988 election.

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The work of anti-immigration groups in making immigration an issue in the caucus to be held on Monday January 24, 2000, has continued in Iowa, despite the largely negative response it has generated.  The ads have been attacked by everyone from the state’s Governor, Tom Vilsack, who said they were sponsored by “hate-mongers” who “attack Hispanics and Asians,” to the publisher of the Des Moines Register, Barbara Henry, who felt one ad “insinuated that immigrants were garbage.”  Despite this negative public reaction, Dan Stein, the director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, one of the groups responsible for the ads, says they have received much positive feedback, and blamed social pressures for making the positive responses low-key. 

One ad that has generated much response focuses on the Iowa town of Storm Lake.  The ad says “quality of life is but a memory” in the town, and shows scenes of a business closing, a neighborhood in shambles, and people being arrested.  However, none of the film was actually made in Storm Lake.  The Storm Lake Mayor, Jon Kruse, has called for a public apology from the groups, which he called “inconsiderate, uninformed, out-of-state, political, special interest groups.”

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On Tuesday, January 18, 2000, Pat Buchanan, the leading candidate for the nomination of the Reform Party, gave a speech in California at which he blamed many of the nation’s problems on immigration, both legal and illegal.  He said current levels of immigration are “Balkanizing” the US, and promised to seal the US border with Mexico and reduce legal immigration from its current rate of about 700,000 to 800,000 people a year to no more than 300,000.  Buchanan’s tone differs substantially from most of the other candidates, who have been going out of their way to court the Hispanic vote.  Buchanan continued in the same vein at a stop near Douglas, Arizona.  He called the undocumented migration in the region “an outright invasion of the United States of America,” saying that if elected president he would consider using the military to help enforce the border.  He also promised that he would replace the barbed wire that stretches along much of the border with iron gates.