Norm Coleman's AAN Court Latinos--After the Election
Politico reports in Little immigration talk at GOP event:
The goal of a conference of Hispanic Republicans here was to show that the party wants to broaden its reach into the fastest-growing population of voters.
It did just as much to underscore the GOP’s challenge.
The Republicans who gathered at the posh Biltmore Hotel for the newly formed Hispanic Leadership Network generally support a broad reform of the immigration system, one that includes some means for legalizing the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants. The organizers included former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez – two leading Republican voices for a comprehensive immigration overhaul.
But they are not part of the dominant wing in the Republican Party, which has embraced an enforcement-first, no-legalization-under-any-circumstances position in recent years – a shift that the conference organizers say has hampered the party’s outreach to Hispanics.
Yet there was little direct challenge to the party’s rightward drift on immigration.
None of the organizers – Bush, Gutierrez and former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) – made a direct mention of immigration in their opening remarks. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty relegated the issue to the end of a more than 20-minute speech
Carrie Budoff Brown, the Politico reporter on the scene, doesn't inquire much beyond that angle. Readers can be forgiven for thinking that the dilemma for the Republican Party is merely one of substance or tone when approaching Latino voters.
Coleman seems almost cocky that the Hispanic Leadership Conference will win the hearts and minds of Latino voters without addressing immigration:
Asked whether Republicans can make meaningful gains unless they resolve the immigration issue, Coleman said it was entirely possible.
“You are focused on D.C. chatter,” Coleman said in an interview. “My proposition is that jobs are the most important issue.”
Coleman cited the historic gains that Hispanic Republicans made last year, rising to governor in New Mexico and Nevada, winning a Senate seat in Florida and taking seven House seats.
“In spite of the Washington-centric focus on immigration as some barrier, that is simply not the reality in heartland America,” Coleman said.
American Action Network inactive in electing 2010's new Republican Latino Reps
The Hispanic Leadership Conference is a project sponsored by Coleman's American Action Network (AAN). How much did the AAN have to do with these victories?
It's no secret that the AAN funded "issue ads" across the country. On October 18, the committee released a list of Congressional districts where it was running an"issue ads" attacking Democrats in sixteen districts: MI-7, NV-3, OH-6, PA-12, WI-8, CO-7, IN-2, NM-1, OR-5, CT-4, CT-5, MN-1, SD-ALL VA - 11, VA-05 and VA-9.
Another ad ran in NH-2, WV-1, PA-7,IL-10, AR-1 and MA-10. On October 23, AAN announced it was running new ads in OH-06, PA-12, WI-08, CO-07, IN-02, NM-01, OR-05, CT-05, SD-ALL and VA-05.
The Houston Chronicle reports:
Five Latinos were elected to the House, including two from Texas: Rep. Francisco Canseco, R-San Antonio, and Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan.
All told, there will be 17 Democrats and seven Republicans of Hispanic heritage serving in the House, along with Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J.
Latinovations' La Plaza blog reports that the five new Republican Latino House members are David Rivera (FL-5); Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA-5); Francisco Canseco (TX-23); Bill Flores (TX-17); and, Raul Labrador (ID-1).
Missing in action in those districts? American Action Network. It spent elsewhere.
So who did the AAN support and elect? Can those candidates be said to appeal to Latino voters? I'm going to hazard a guess that immigration hardliner Dr. Joe Heck (NV-3) isn't terribly popular.
NumbersUSA loves Tim Walberg (MI-7), who was the darling of the Minutemen in 2006. And so it goes.
Pawlenty at Coral Cables
It's no wonder that former Minnesota Tim Pawlenty fit in so well with the AAN's attempted seduction of Latino voters. While Pawlenty droned on the "State of the States" to the Hispanic Leadership Conference in Coral Gables, Latino activists back in Minnesota debated the right time to allow a Pawlenty executive order to expire:
Pawlenty made headlines three years ago when he got Minnesota more involved in enforcing federal immigration laws through two executive orders, one of them expanding state law enforcement involvement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the other requiring state agencies and contractors to use an electronic system to verify the immigration status of new hires.
"If you look at my record in Minnesota, I've done a number of things to help the effort to take a more aggressive enforcement posture as it relates to illegal immigration," Pawlenty told a national audience in Washington on Thursday.
State Sen. Patricia Torres Ray dismissed Pawlenty's immigration directives as "unfair" and "politically driven."
But the Minneapolis Democrat isn't asking Dayton to touch those executive orders - she would rather see them die quietly. Torres Ray said immigrant communities have more to gain by helping Dayton build support for a high-end income tax increase to protect schools and health care from budget cuts as the state wrestles with a $6.2 billion deficit.
"I would like to see Gov. Dayton be doing something much more practical than using executive orders to do something symbolic," she said.
Pawlenty chatted with the St. Peterburg Times "The Buzz" by phone before traveling to Florida. Asked what his message to Latinos would be, the former governor said:
Number two, as we talk about immigration and the Latino vote, we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking the only thing they care about is immigration and jump to that first and only. As I talk to the Hispanic community and Latino community, they've got a lot of other concerns as well, which is are they going to have a job, are they going to get a good education, are they going to be able to afford college, are they going to be able to buy health care, what's the economy going to be like.
Here's hoping Latino voters--regardless of their ideological bent--take a look at Tim Pawlenty's Minnesota, at the decline in the quality of our K-12 schools, at the soaring costs of public college tuition under his watch, at all those things in his laundry list in addition to immigration. Here's guessing the national Latino population will favor Pawlenty about as much as those here in Minnesota did. In short: not much.
Is it just me, or are the prominently-visible Minnesota Republicans scarily crazy, unbelieveably incompetent, or both?
We all know who was (as least until recently) propping up Tony Sutton. I keep wondering who the hell is propping up Norm Coleman. It's telling that somebody like him, who is washed up in terms of electoral politics, is trying to be a kingmaker when nobody wants what he's selling -- not Latinos, certainly not Republicans.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Jan 18, 2011 at 07:45 PM
Don't you just hate it when you get something stuck between a couple of molars, and you try to fish it out with your tongue, and somebody takes your picture?
Posted by: blogspotdog | Jan 18, 2011 at 10:01 PM
It's going to be rather hard to get any but the most supine Hispanics on board with the GOP when they have to face things like this: http://coloradoindependent.com/71455/latino-republican-anti-bigotry-campaign-draws-angry-colorado-gop-response
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Jan 19, 2011 at 12:44 PM