Ron Brown Assures Latinos of Support

Seeking to capitalize on strains between the GOP and the nation’s oldest Latino organization, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown blasted his Republican counterpart Friday for declaring that the country has entered the “post-civil rights era.”

Speaking before the 60th annual convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Brown told an enthusiastic crowd: “The Democratic Party, the party which I lead, does not believe that the civil rights era is over . . . there is much work to do.”

And he criticized the GOP for what he called inaction on civil rights, saying that its “kinder and gentler campaign rhetoric hasn’t translated into action.”

Latino voters traditionally have been a bastion of Democratic strength, but LULAC is officially nonpartisan and many convention delegates expressed unhappiness over what they saw as possible snubbing of the organization by the Bush Administration.

Atwater Declines Invitation

Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater had declined an invitation to debate Brown at the convention--irking many of those attending, who complained of being treated “poorly” by the RNC.

Committee officials said that Atwater had a longstanding out-of-state appointment and that the organizers were not interested in a “designated surrogate.” Atwater, although asserting that civil rights is not the “driving force” as an issue that it once was, has pledged to bring minorities into the party. He recently declared that a vacant congressional seat in Florida should go to a Cuban-American, the only Latino group in the country that votes in greater numbers for Republicans than Democrats.

Nevertheless, at the convention speculation was rife that the GOP and some within the Administration were avoiding the group because of its increasingly activist tenor.

President Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush had been scheduled to speak separately but both canceled. None of the Administration’s high-level Latinos, such as Education Secretary Lauro F. Cavazos or Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr., were present.

Dole Spoke; Others Scheduled

Administration and RNC officials denied that anything more than scheduling conflicts was involved. They noted that Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole spoke to the group Friday and that FBI Director William S. Sessions and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp were also scheduled to appear.

RNC spokesman Leslie Goodman called Brown’s attack on the GOP’s civil rights record “off base.”

Brown called civil rights just one of the “stark differences” between the two parties and launched a wide-ranging attack on Republican positions, including Bush’s failure to fund his war on drugs at the levels suggested by House Democrats, his reliance on “hired-gun media consultants” and racial fear-mongering during the campaign last year.

”. . . They’ve beaten us on the sound bites; they’ve beaten us at the Madison Avenue approach, but they can’t beat us when it comes to commitment, when it comes to looking at the future and not looking at the past, when it comes to grappling with the everyday problems that everyday people have.”

Although saying that an accurate census count in 1990 is “crucial” for redistricting and increasing the Latino voice in the country, Brown said candidates still need to reach out to Latinos and to give them a reason to vote.