Blame Pedro

THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES treat immigration as if it were 2008's answer to gay marriage: a wedge issue to knock independents and conservative Democrats into the Republican column. But while sixty-three percent of Americans opposed gay marriage in 2004, sixty percent favor comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship. And while immigrant-bashing drives Hispanics away from the GOP, it doesn't boost turnout among white voters. "Find me in America somebody who wasn't planning on voting for the Republicans who will now vote for the Republicans because they're more aggressive on immigration," says Norquist. "There isn't such a person. It's not that there aren't a lot of them. There isn't one!"

The 2006 election proved his point. In congressional races from Arizona to Indiana, GOP candidates like J.D. Hayworth and John Hostettler ran on a deport-'em-all platform — and were roundly defeated. The party's numbers among Hispanics, meanwhile, slipped to thirty percent.

To staunch the bleeding, Bush loyalists installed Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida — himself a Cuban immigrant — as the head of the Republican National Committee. But he resigned less than a year later, apparently unable to stomach the nativist ads being crafted by the party's campaign committees. "It was sort of like having a black man running the Ku Klux Klan," says García. "He had to leave."

Today, GOP support among Latino voters is in full free fall. Only twenty-three percent of Hispanic voters now lean Republican, and more than half say the anti-immigrant campaign has had a negative impact on their lives.

"The die is cast," says Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, one of the nation's top immigrant-advocacy groups. "The Republican Party is doing to the nation what it did to California — turning it from purple to blue — because they've offended the fastest-growing group of new voters. It's only a matter of how far-reaching and how long it lasts. They are so fucked."

Yet despite such evidence, the Republican candidates continue to undercut one another in a race to the xenophobic bottom. At every event, says Norquist, the candidates "get further and further right — it's not even right, it's just further and further hostile — trying to outdo each other. They somehow think that by putting the word 'illegal' in front of immigrant, they've cleared themselves of any ethnocentric bigotry: 'Oh, I'm only against the illegal ones.' Ha."

That equation, experts say, misses the reality of most immigrants, whose families are a mix of citizens, permanent residents who want to become citizens and undocumented immigrants desperate to get legal status. "When the candidates say they're for legal but not illegal immigration," says Sharry, "what they're saying is 'We want to deport your brother. We want to deport your cousin. The child who came with you — but not the children who were born here — would have to go home.'"

GOP STRATEGISTS hope that the current xenophobic rhetoric will cool off after the primaries. "I think it will change after the nomination," says Norquist. "The candidates are reacting incorrectly to radio-talk-show hosts and a handful of columnists who mau-mau people."

But other political analysts aren't so sure. "The Republicans have shot themselves in the head on this thing," says Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank. "One in four Americans is going to be of Hispanic descent by 2050. One in four. Long-term, this has a quarter of Americans trending toward the Democratic coalition."

A coalition of leading Hispanic groups, which mobilized more than 1 million immigrants to apply for citizenship last year, has launched the largest Hispanic voter turnout drive in history. Democrats are also paying far greater attention to the Southwest, moving the Nevada caucus to January and holding the national convention in Denver.

"If you flip the Southwest, you're already over the edge," says Leyden. "You can win the presidency just with that" — even while losing traditional swing states like Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire or Florida. And given the wave of Hispanic discontent, Florida looks like an increasingly good bet for the Democrats. For the first time ever in a presidential race, non-Cuban Hispanics in the state are expected to outnumber Cubans at the polls. "Even Cuban Americans, who are very pro-immigrant, are deserting some Republicans over this issue," says Bill Richardson, the nation's first major Hispanic presidential candidate.

But despite the historic opening presented by the GOP's immigrant-bashing, Richardson doesn't think his own party really gets it. "Democrats are not capitalizing on an incredible opportunity to permanently put Hispanic votes in the Democratic column," he says. "Obama and Clinton voted for the wall, inexplicably. I don't see how you can talk about a sensible immigration policy having voted for the monstrosity of a wall. What's wrong with being for a fair legalization? It's not amnesty. It's not full citizenship. It's earned legalization."

Yet even without full-fledged support for immigrant rights, the Democrats would be hard-pressed to misplay the hand they've been dealt. "It's not out of the question to see Hispanic voters making up ten percent of the electorate and swinging seventy to thirty — or even seventy-five to twenty-five — Democratic," says Rosenberg. "And if that happens, the election is over."

[From Issue 1045 — February 7, 2008]

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