By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — The national Republican establishment openly says it wants “comprehensive immigration reform” to be approved because it thinks the massive legislation would win many Latino votes for the GOP.
However, a conservative Arizona Latino activist told The Wanderer that he doesn’t see the Republican Party making a significant effort on the national or Arizona state levels to bring current Catholic Latino citizens into its voting ranks. The majority of Latinos are Catholic.
“If you were in the numbers game, you would think you’d be playing for where the numbers are,” Reymundo Torres said during a September 28 telephone interview.
Torres, a Catholic, is president of the Arizona Latino Republican Association (ALRA), which doesn’t limit its membership to any certain religious belief.
Without wanting to disclose details, Torres said, he was on a conference call with a national Republican organization this year where it was made “abundantly clear” that Roman Catholics certainly aren’t atop the national or state priority list as prospective constituents to be brought into the GOP fold.
It’s often said that Latinos’ values are in line with the Republicans’ traditional-values platform, Torres observed. But “[w]here do they [Republicans] think those values come from?”
From Latinos’ religious faith, Torres answered himself. “To ignore that is either delusional or demonstrates a clear lack of serious intent to bring Latinos into the Republican Party.”
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arizona “exercise probably a political power that is second to none in this state,” he said, although they make up a much smaller portion of the Grand Canyon State’s population than Catholics.
The Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project says Mormons represent four percent of Arizona’s population, while Catholics are 25 percent.
If Catholics were to perceive their political power here to the extent that Mormons do, Torres said, Arizona’s potential as a red state would be assured.
On the other hand, a different conservative Republican political strategist told The Wanderer in a September 28 email that various groups can complain of receiving insufficient attention simply because they want more.
“Sometimes the wheel squeaks in hopes of getting more grease,” said political consultant Constantin Querard. “Most groups will complain that they’re not getting enough attention or support in hopes of leveraging that into more attention and support.”
Querard works as a consultant for conservative candidates, but he isn’t on the Republican Party payroll at any level. He’s regarded as one of the better-known campaign strategists in the Grand Canyon State, with a winning record.
He said he can’t address “what the national GOP is up to because, in these off-year elections, the action really switches to select congressional districts. If you’re in them, you see stuff. If you’re not, you don’t. I’m not. . . .
“I suspect the Arizona GOP continues to pursue votes from lots of groups, but most every group wishes it was getting more attention,” Querard said. “Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day and dollars in the account, so you can’t do everything you want to be able to do.”
Torres, the ALRA president, said Latinos were regarded for the first time as a specific constituency to be approached during the John F. Kennedy Democratic presidential campaign in 1960. The Democrats reached out but the Republicans didn’t, Torres said.
“The Democratic Party has had the Latino constituency firmly…in their pockets,” Torres said. “. . . Republicans have never contested [for them] because they never thought they needed Latino votes” to win.
However, now that GOP assumption “is under threat” because of demographic changes, he said, but Republicans “still seem to have some apprehension” about approaching them.
Counting on winning with evangelical and Protestant participation isn’t sufficient, Torres said, when one remembers Catholic numbers.
During the national GOP conference call Torres mentioned earlier in this interview, he said an official specifically was asked what plans Republicans had to reach out to Latino Catholics. The response was that it was difficult to do this because permission first was needed from some priest or archbishop.
“I think the GOP probably could do something on their own that wouldn’t involve” going through a Church official, Torres told The Wanderer in an understatement.
It sounded as if the party official was resigned to leaving Latino Catholics with the Democratic Party, and that making a Republican effort “was just a no-man’s land,” Torres said.
“In an Arizona context, such a strategy would be absolutely foolish,” Torres said. “. . . Do the math. We’re going to lose, eventually,” without the outreach.
Querard, the campaign strategist, said the objections given above to pursuing Latino voters “don’t make much sense…
“You battle for every group regardless, and the Latino vote is hardly locked down for the Dems,” Querard said, adding that he’s unfamiliar with any necessity for Republicans to reach Latinos by going through Catholic Church clergy. “Never heard that before and don’t imagine it is true.”
In Arizona, he said, “there are a number of Latino Republicans running for office this year. Tony Rivero is a shoo-in” for state representative in District 21, “so he’ll join Steve Montenegro in the State House. Montenegro himself looks to be moving up to majority leader….Daniel Estrella is running hard [for State Senate] in District 2. There are additional candidates elsewhere, so I think you see more and more Latino Republican candidates, and that’s a good sign.”
Montenegro, who came to the U.S. with his family from El Salvador at age four, first was elected to the Arizona House as a Republican in 2008 and has proven himself as a strong political conservative and pro-lifer.
The Arizona legislature is apportioned into 30 districts. Each district sends one state senator and two representatives to the Capitol, in Phoenix.
The End?
Rob Haney, the immediate past chairman of Phoenix’s Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer in a September 29 e-mail that there’s “so much double-talk and euphemisms” about illegal aliens that it’s hard to know what’s being said about the Latino vote.
“Appealing to the Latino vote means stating that you are for immigration reform, which means that you are for comprehensive immigration reform, which means you are for amnesty, which means that you are for disregarding American immigration law, which means that you are for turning the U.S. government over permanently to the Democrat Party, which means the end of our republic,” Haney said.
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