A Wake-Up Call for GOP About a Wide-Awake Giant

Gov. Pete Wilson was there. So was former Gov. George Deukmejian. And Ruben Barrales--there with political junkies imbibing libations, wolfing down finger food and trading gossip last week at Stu Spencer’s annual holiday party.

Ruben Barrales?

Barrales is a San Mateo County supervisor, unknown to voters beyond the San Francisco Peninsula. But Spencer recently introduced him with loud fanfare to insiders all over California. The veteran campaign consultant, whose famous clients have included Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, did this by endorsing Barrales’ bid to become the 1998 Republican nominee for state treasurer.

To fully grasp the significance of this seemingly innocuous act, one must remember that political hired guns never meddle in a party fight unless they’ve got a personal stake--a friendship or a fee.

Spencer had neither. He barely knew Barrales, a virtual kid (35) half the guru’s age. They met only last month after Barrales’ campaign manager read an old column I’d written following Spencer’s 1996 holiday bash.

I’d quoted the host and several of his irked Latino buddies complaining that the GOP had snubbed Latinos and was driving them into the arms of Democrats. The aide saw that and phoned the revered strategist to ask whether he’d be willing to help Barrales, the son of Mexican immigrant laborers.

Spencer not only endorsed Barrales, he fired off a volley at his lifelong party. It’s committing “political suicide” and dooming itself to “permanent minority status in California,” the sage said. “We are dramatically losing market share of the fastest growing segment of the electorate. . . . Our party has a sad--and politically self-defeating--history of alienating immigrant groups. . . .

“If we cannot even support just one qualified Latino Republican for a statewide office, then we deserve the political disaster that awaits us. . . . The stakes are too high for us to act like political ostriches.”

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The state Republican chairman, Irvine attorney Michael Schroeder, tartly responded that “Stu Spencer is a bit out of touch with California politics.” The old warrior probably didn’t know about the party’s “Hispanic Summit” in September, Schroeder asserted.

Spencer told me: “I’ve been to about 100 ‘summit’ meetings for Mexicans in the last 20 years and nothing has ever happened. I’m going to try to get something else going.”

To understand what’s motivating Spencer, you need to know two things about him:

* He grew up with Latinos in the San Gabriel Valley. They were college classmates in East L.A. “They weren’t a new toy to me, they were people and my friends,” he says. His first political job was organizing East L.A. for Gov. Earl Warren’s 1950 reelection. Later, he opened an East L.A. community center for the county GOP and gave out free polio shots. But the party closed it down after he left.

* Spencer is a fierce competitor. And he earnestly believes the California GOP cannot keep winning without Latinos. This has been his sermon for years, he notes, “but I never could get anybody’s attention. I got lip service. They didn’t realize we had an avalanche coming.”

While Latinos’ voting numbers have been growing, they also have been voting increasingly Democratic. Times’ exit polls found that Wilson won 35% of the Latino vote in l990, but only 23% in 1994--the year he pushed Proposition 187 to cut off services for illegal immigrants. Many Latinos equated 187 with bigotry and were spurred into political activism.

Among the 300-plus at Spencer’s soiree in the Biltmore Hotel was a former Wilson advisor, who told me candidly: “We walked over the sleeping giant on our way to reelection in 1994, but in the process we woke it up.”

*

Spencer’s endorsement of Barrales inspired former President Ford to add his backing. As he moved around introducing himself to Spencer’s guests, Barrales observed that “Stu has helped me get into doors I wouldn’t have gotten into otherwise.”

That’s what the GOP must do, Spencer insists. Recruit Latino candidates and strongly back them. “It’s the best message we can send.” Also, “bring Latinos into the action. Give them jobs.

“I’ve always been on [Wilson] to get some Hispanic judges. [Aides] say, ‘Well, we can’t find any qualified [Republicans].’ And I laugh. I see the gringos they appoint. . . .

“I’m going to get some reinforcement because we’re going to start losing. It’s going to come next year. And it’s going to get worse every year after.”

Spencer became an institution by usually being right. Republicans should pay him more than lip service--and do a lot more than hold token “Hispanic Summits.”

Meanwhile, Spencer on his own has improved the odds that at next year’s holiday party there’ll be a Latino Republican state treasurer-elect.