The GOP Loses Its Great Latino Hope : Politics: The fall of Orange County’s Gaddi Vasquez dashes hopes for minority gains in ’96.

The Democratic candidate may speak Spanish. But he doesn’t speak our language.

--Gaddi Vasquez, August, 1988

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It took a while. Too long, really, for the good of any political future he might have had. But last week, Gaddi Vasquez finally took his long-expected fall for the part he played in the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

The chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors is stepping down Sept. 22, with 15 months remaining on his second term. Vasquez had already said he would not seek reelection, but his early exit was a surprise. Vasquez said he wants to spend more time with his family, but he was also facing a potentially costly and surely bitter recall attempt.

Political scientists and finance experts can--and will--argue about how much Vasquez is as fault for Orange County’s debacle. He says he was one of many victims of a county treasurer whose high-risk investment schemes came crashing down when interest rates moved in the wrong direction. But it happened on Vasquez’s watch, so he must pay the ultimate political price.

Given how he has been vilified lately, it is easy to forget that there was a time when Republican leaders and Latino activists saw Vasquez as a rising star. In 1987, he was on the staff of then-Gov. George Deukmejian, who appointed him to fill out an unexpired term on the Orange County board. Immediately he became a force to be reckoned with in Latino politics: good looks, fluent in English and Spanish, a conservative former cop with a political base in California’s most solidly Republican county.

Little wonder that in 1988, just after winning election to his first full term, Vasquez was invited to speak before the national Republican convention. It was there that he uttered the memorable phrase quoted above. That speech got Vasquez a rave review from no less a GOP star than former President Richard M. Nixon. It seemed only a matter of time until Vasquez got a shot at governor, U.S. senator or even the national GOP ticket.

No more. In fact, the question now is: Where does the Republican Party go to find its next Great Latino Hope? All the options are problematic.

* Florida has two Cuban Americans in Congress with solid political bases in Miami, but over the next few years they are sure to be preoccupied with what happens in Cuba after Fidel Castro’s long regime ends. An important issue, but not of much interest to Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans.

* The Wall Street Journal editorial page, a conservative bastion, has tried to promote Sarah Flores, a longtime aide to several Republican Los Angeles County supervisors, as an alternative to the liberal Democrats who dominate L.A. Latino politics. But L.A. county’s budget problems are only relatively better than Orange County’s. If Flores is as smart as the Journal thinks, she won’t be volunteering to be the next Gaddi Vasquez anytime soon.

* Texas congressman Henry Bonilla, whose district runs from San Antonio to Laredo, looks attractive at first glance--a former television reporter with ties to House Speaker Newt Gingrich. But he has drawbacks close to home, too. San Antonio’s Latino middle class will take a big hit if Kelley Air Force Base is closed, as the Pentagon wants. And the collapse of the Mexican economy delayed a hoped-for economic boom on the south Texas border.

So there’s no new Gaddi Vasquez for the GOP to promote in next year’s national campaigns. But given the current tilt of the Republican Party, 1996 would be the year to give its long, but largely ineffective effort to woo Latinos a rest.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s immigrant-bashing is not the worst of it. In fact, Wilson is old news to Latino political activists. They are more worried now about the way national GOP candidates like Majority Leader Bob Dole and Texas Sen. Phil Gramm are bashing affirmative action. The irony is that affirmative action programs dating back to Nixon’s years in the White House did more to create Latino Republicans than all the rhetoric Vasquez and others have spouted over the years about Latinos being family-oriented conservatives.

Look carefully at the Latino organizations rallying to defend affirmative action programs and minority set-asides. They include not just the usual liberal advocacy organizations, but groups like the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Latin American Management Assn. Normally, those groups would be lining up with someone in the GOP camp. But to paraphrase Gaddi Vasquez, right now they don’t hear anybody talking their language.