Targeting the Middle Class : The Republican Campaign for the Latino Vote

WHEN Vice President George Bush brought his family to the podium after his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, the band played “La Bamba.” The choice was subtle but calculated. The Latino community is the fastest-growing segment of the American population, and Republicans want to tap it. It is already large enough to be pivotal in close races, and in California, by the turn of the century, it’s expected to increase by 3 million, while the Anglo population stays about the same.

California Republicans realized that they had made inroads in the historically Democratic Latino community when President Reagan was reelected in 1984. Pollsters estimated that Reagan received 47% of the Latino vote in California, where only about 20% of the registered Latino voters are Republicans. Two years later, independent California pollster Mervin Field found that 46% of registered Latinos voted to reelect Gov. George Deukmejian. A September NBC poll of California Latinos estimated that 37% will support Bush for president. And if the Republicans work at it, says Texas GOP pollster Lance Tarrance, 50% of the Latino community could be voting Republican by the year 2000.

California pollster Steve Teichner, who did pre-election surveys for KABC radio, says “the first look at the future will be this year,” when political experts analyze Tuesday’s voting by Latinos, who were targets of major registration efforts by both parties. Traditionally, he notes, turnout among Latino voters has been lower than that of other groups. “It’s a population that has a tendency to swing back and forth, so it has to be viewed by both (parties’) candidates as extremely important. But for the Hispanic vote to become a major factor, it has to live up to its potential.”

Political scientists say Latino voting trends parallel those of immigrant groups such as the Irish and Italians, who initially tended to vote as a Democratic bloc but over time began to switch loyalties. As immigrant communities evolve, experts explain, a sense of a shared heritage continues, but economically, religiously and socially, community members grow apart. And as that happens, their political affinities often change. Bruce Cain, a political scientist at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, found in a recent study that when Latinos left the East Los Angeles barrios and moved to middle-class neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley, more than half switched to the Republican Party.

Part of the reason for the switch is a cultural sympathy in the Latino community for some conservative political issues, says Bea Molina, national president of the Mexican American Political Assn. Some Latinos are deeply anti-communist, having fled communist regimes. And the Latino community is more family-oriented and religious than American society as a whole, she says, with a tendency to support conservative positions on abortion and capital punishment.

Still, Cain says he expects the Democratic Party to retain its dominance in the Latino community for some time. Although the Latino population is booming, it is expanding primarily at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum--the Democrats’ stronghold. Growth of the Latino middle class, and the number of Republican voters it is likely to produce, will be slower. “It’s going to be a long-term thing,” he says. “If you take a 20- or 30-year run, you may see erosion in the Hispanic support for the Democratic Party.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, one of the state’s leading Democratic Latino politicians, concurs. But ultimately, he believes, the Latino community will be up for grabs.

“I think it is going to depend on which political party best articulates (Latinos’) needs,” he says. And he sees Republican Gaddi Vasquez as an effective spokesman. “He has resolved the question of whether a Hispanic candidate can represent a (conservative) district,” says Alatorre. “I think he has unlimited potential. He is somebody who I believe in. If he ran for something statewide, I would support him, and I would be criticized.”