GOP Leader Out to Woo Minorities Into Party

It is, to say the least, an audacious thought. Imagine, the Republican Party as the party of blacks and Latinos.

Too much to swallow?

Well, how about Republicans as the party of a growing fraction of up-and-coming, entrepreneurial, baby-boomer minorities--blacks, Latinos and Asians--perhaps just enough to shut the door on Democratic hopes of occupying the White House again this century?

“This for the long run and winning those elections we’ve got right now are my top priorities,” said GOP National Chairman Lee Atwater, President Bush’s top political operative.

Big Dreams

Currently traveling through California, Atwater is full of big dreams and big talk about this latest GOP drive for national voter realignment.

After all, Democrats these days count on 90% majorities among black voters and in the vicinity of 65% majorities of Mexican-American voters just to remain competitive in national elections. Even then, they can lose.

If Republicans could double the GOP vote from 10% or so to 20% among blacks and from 35% to 50% of Mexican-Americans, Atwater said, they would dramatically lengthen the odds of keeping the presidency for the remaining three elections of the 20th Century. Atwater noted that if Republicans had received such support from minorities in the last couple of congressional elections, the GOP probably would control the U.S. Senate today.

“I think of it in terms of the millennium. We have a millennium coming up in 11 years, and what I would like to be able to do is look back then and say we’re a majority party in this country. And one of the reasons we are is that when I was chairman of the party and George Bush was in his first term, we were able to make substantial gains in the black community and the Hispanic community,” Atwater said at a stop in Los Angeles Wednesday.

His five-day trip to California is his first since the November election, and more than half his time is devoted to trying to loosen the Democratic grip on minority voters.

Matter of Image

As Atwater pitches it, the barrier between Republicans and a larger share of the minority vote is a matter of image, not substance.

“People say you will have to remake our party to do this. Not true,” he said. “We have the issues . . . crime and drugs, education, jobs and opportunity, family issues and traditional values. Those things work fine for us.”

But Atwater continued, “We do have a bad image problem . . . a lingering image problem of being an anti-civil rights, anti-civil liberties party.

“The good news is that is all an image problem. Reality doesn’t conform to that, particularly with George Bush in the White House. There isn’t a single thing in his political career that is anti-civil rights or anti-civil liberties,” he said.

So far, though, Republican outreach has been a tough sell.

Atwater was forced to resign last month from the Howard University Board of Trustees when 1,000 black students stormed the main administration building in an impassioned protest. Students complained that Bush’s presidential campaign, which Atwater managed, was laced with racism.

A month earlier, one-time Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke won election to the Louisiana Legislature as a Republican, despite opposition from Bush and Atwater.

The young national party chairman acknowledged, however, that a still bigger challenge awaits the GOP.

“We have got to cross what I call the sincerity threshold. I am not cavalier about this. We cannot just walk across the political stage and say we now want all these votes,” he said.

“We’ve got to show we’re sincere and that we want to broaden our party. . . . It’s going to take a year or two. We’re trying to change a historical pattern.”

To show some incremental progress, Atwater traveled Wednesday to Olvera Street and witnessed the conversion of half a dozen Latino voters as they switched parties and became Republicans.

Jerry Jaramillo, an East Los Angeles contractor, said he had been a faithful Democrat since 1965 and never missed an election. Then he found himself drawn to Bush.

“What I have seen from Mr. Bush is that he has the heart for the economic growth and social growth our community needs,” Jaramillo said.

Elaine Ledesma, a young Montebello mother, had a different political upbringing but was driven to the GOP for the same reasons. She was a Democrat because her parents were. Then a friend tried to interest Ledesma in Bush and the GOP.

“It seems like they strive for success, and I like that,” she said. “I want that for myself.”