Bush Sees the Future in N.Y. Visit

President Bush’s whirlwind tour of New York on Tuesday was built around made-for-television backdrops: a flag-draped ceremony for new citizens at Ellis Island and an emotional gathering at St. Patrick’s Cathedral honoring the late Cardinal John O’Connor.

But these stops provided more than the usual presidential photo opportunities; Bush’s itinerary offered an unusually revealing window into his strategy for expanding his political base and winning a second term in 2004.

At Ellis Island, Bush effusively praised the contributions of legal immigrants and announced steps to streamline the process of acquiring U.S. citizenship; a few hours later, he awarded posthumously the Congressional Gold Medal to O’Connor, a towering figure within the Roman Catholic Church who died last year.

The twin events spotlighted two groups at the top of the White House’s list for expanding Bush’s electoral coalition: new immigrants, especially Latinos, and white Catholics, especially the religiously devout.

In the 2000 election, Bush improved on the recent Republican performance with both groups. But his political strategists see an opportunity--and a need--to make further gains in 2004. More support from white Catholics is key to Bush’s hopes of capturing Midwestern states such as Michigan and Wisconsin that remained out of his reach last year. His advisors think he also needs gains with the rapidly growing Latino population to protect states such as Florida and Nevada that he narrowly carried.

“With both groups, the focus has been very systematic,” said Matthew Dowd, a top political advisor to Bush who directs polling at the Republican National Committee.

That attention was evident throughout Bush’s schedule in New York, his first visit to the state as president. (Bush had traveled to 32 other states before appearing in New York, which he lost by more than 1.5 million votes to Democrat Al Gore.)

Bush’s speech at Ellis Island, the historic gateway for millions of immigrants a century ago, underscored his efforts to direct the GOP away from the anti-immigration sentiments that spread in the party during the 1990s. “America, at its best, is a welcoming society,” Bush said. “We welcome not only immigrants themselves, but the many gifts they bring and the values they live by.”

New immigrants, Bush continued, “make our nation more, not less, American.” Bush used the occasion to announce a series of immigration reforms, including measures to make it easier for children to apply for visas. He reiterated his support for pending legislation that would provide illegal immigrants sponsored by employers or close family members more time to apply for legal residency without first returning to their home countries; such a measure could help as many as 600,000 immigrants achieve legal status, supporters say.

Establishing a new goal, Bush called on the Immigration and Naturalization Service to complete all citizenship applications within six months. “This won’t be achievable in every case, but it’s the standard of this administration and I expect the INS to meet it,” he said.

Bush has proposed a five-year, $500-million initiative to pay for new personnel and provide performance incentives to accomplish that goal. He also has proposed splitting the immigration service into two agencies: One would focus on law enforcement, the other on the task of welcoming immigrants.

Twenty-nine immigrants, from such countries as Algeria and India and with the largest contingent from Latin America, stood on a riser behind the president. Together, the immigrants-turned-citizens made up an American tableau: faces of pale northern climes, African hues and the tones in between. After his speech, Bush led the group through the Pledge of Allegiance.

From Ellis Island, Bush went to Manhattan to lead the ceremony for O’Connor, one of the most politically prominent U.S. Catholic leaders until his death from cancer in May 2000. O’Connor seemed to personally embody the conflicting political impulses that have made Catholics so difficult for either party to reliably secure: A staunch social conservative on issues such as abortion rights and homosexuality, O’Connor was also an advocate of organized labor and social programs for the poor.

It was to O’Connor that Bush wrote an apology during the 2000 GOP primary after he was criticized for failing to disavow the anti-Catholic sentiments of Bob Jones University in South Carolina when he made a campaign appearance at the school.

Each of Tuesday’s events continued a sustained courtship by Bush since he won the White House.

He has reached out to Catholics with speeches at the University of Notre Dame’s graduation ceremony and the dedication of the Pope John Paul II cultural center at Catholic University in Washington. He also has met with two dozen Catholic cardinals, archbishops and bishops in cities around the country.

Bush’s efforts to court new immigrants, particularly Latinos, have ranged from the symbolic to the more substantive. The White House hosted a celebration of Cinco de Mayo earlier this year. Bush also allowed temporary residents from several Central American countries hit by natural disasters more time to remain in the U.S. and he has launched a major effort to improve relations with Mexico.

According to exit polling by Voter News Service, Bush won about a third of the Latino vote in 2000. That was up from the one-fifth that GOP nominee Bob Dole carried in 1996, but no better than the showings by Ronald Reagan and the president’s father, George Bush, in the 1980s.

After Bill Clinton carried white Catholics during his two campaigns, Bush broke through to win a 52% majority among those voters in 2000. But even that was below the showings by Reagan and Bush’s father.

Dowd and other top administration advisors, including chief political strategist Karl Rove, believe the president must do better with both groups in 2004. Among Catholics, they are focused on the most religiously observant, who tend to respond best to Bush’s conservative message on cultural values. In 2000, white Catholics who attended church at least once a week gave Bush nearly three-fifths of their vote. Dowd says the White House hopes to push that vote up closer to the four-fifths that Bush attracted among white evangelical Protestants who attend church that often.

Among Latinos, the White House is hoping for a showing closer to 40%, which the GOP may need to hold Nevada and Florida in 2004.

Bush’s efforts have yet to produce major gains. In the latest poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, his approval rating among white Catholics stood at 54%, just slightly above his national showing.

Since taking office, his job approval ratings have improved among Latinos, though he still runs slightly below his national average with that group. And in a recent survey by Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg, Bush attracted only about one-third of Latinos in a hypothetical 2004 match-up against a generic Democrat.

Brownstein reported from Washington and Gerstenzang from New York.