Hispanic Anger at Calif. Governor Threatens Would-Be Successor

Monday, September 21, 1998

DOUG WILLIS
Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Hispanic voters haven't forgiven Republican Gov. Pete Wilson for supporting Proposition 187, the bitterly contested ballot measure that cut off most state services to illegal aliens.

Now Dan Lungren, the Republican nominee to succeed Wilson, may pay the price. Unless Lungren can win them back, Hispanic voters may provide his margin of defeat this year.

``We drove Latinos into the Democratic ranks. The Democrats did not bring them into the fold,'' Mike Madrid, political director of the California Republican Party, said last week.

A recent poll found Democratic nominee Gray Davis leading Lungren among Hispanic voters by 62 percent to 26 percent. Among all other voters, Davis' lead was just 45 percent to 40 percent.

That's a sharp contrast to another state with a large Hispanic population, Texas, where Republican Gov. George W. Bush, who speaks Spanish, has stressed that immigrants are welcome. In the most recent Texas Poll, Bush led his Democratic opponent for governor by 51 percent to 31 percent among Hispanic voters.

Nationally, House Speaker Newt Gingrich is pushing Republicans to reach out to all minorities, with special emphasis on Hispanics.

Lungren and other Republicans contend that Hispanics -- the fastest growing segment of the state's voting population -- should feel at home in an anti-abortion political party that stands for hard work and self-reliance. Also, Lungren, like most Hispanics, is Catholic.

Lungren, meanwhile, has distanced himself from Wilson, whose enthusiastic backing of Proposition 187 in his 1994 race against Kathleen Brown alienated Hispanic voters while propelling him to a convincing victory. The measure passed with 59 percent.

Wilson insists there was nothing racist about it -- that it focused exclusively on illegal immigrants and that he strongly supports the rights of legal immigrants. But in California's Hispanic communities, Proposition 187 was seen as an attack on all immigrants.

Lungren, who was running for his second term as attorney general in 1994, kept a low profile during the Proposition 187 campaign, issuing only a tepid endorsement a day before the election.

Nonetheless, Lungren and other Republicans continue to suffer from the Hispanic backlash against 187, and to a lesser extent, against Proposition 209, a 1996 Wilson-backed repeal of many affirmative action programs.

``He's associated with the governor, and the governor has been so harsh in his anti-immigrant policies, so I think he (Lungren) is going to have a very hard time,'' said Henry Nava, a retired Los Angeles school teacher. ``I was born and raised in (heavily Hispanic) East L.A. ... I think most of the voters I know do a lot of thinking, a lot of careful thinking, about an issue like this.''

Lungren, a former congressman, emphasizes his support for the 1986 immigration reform law, which gave amnesty, in the form of citizenship, to nearly 3 million people who were here illegally.

He has sought invitations to appear before Hispanic groups, including those with Democratic leanings.

``One thing I have said all along is I need to show up. My party hasn't been showing up,'' Lungren said after an appearance last month before one courteous but decidedly cool Hispanic forum.

Registration of Hispanics is 62 percent Democratic and 14 percent Republican, and the GOP share is dropping.

The GOP high-water mark in Hispanic support in California was in 1986, when polls found 46 of the Hispanic voters supporting Republican Gov. George Deukmejian for re-election.

Wilson won just 22 percent of the Hispanic vote in 1994. In 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole received just 21 percent of California's Hispanic vote.

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Carl Gutiérrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu