This was last year; it's even worse for Republicans nowRosario Marín was appointed the 41st Treasurer of the United States by George W. Bush. Born in Mexico City, the daughter of a factory worker, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1984, joined the Republican Party and exactly a decade later was elected to the Huntington Park city council, the first Hispanic ever elected to that office and was later elected mayor by the council. She was the highest ranking Latina in the Bush Administration. She left the Bush administration to run for the U.S. Senate against Barbara Boxer in 2004. She came in second in a 10-way GOP primary, losing out to far right extremist Bill Jones.Yesterday she wrote an OpEd for Univision on why she endorsed Hillary Clinton. She makes the point about being a Reagan-Republican and having voted for every Republican presidential candidate since becoming a citizen. "I have been," she wrote, "a delegate to the previous five Republican conventions. But since July 2015, when a certain candidate, upon entering the political arena, showed his contempt for Mexican immigrants by stating they were drug dealers, rapists and murderers, I have voiced my disgust and have warned one and all of the perilous threat he was to our party, our nation and the world." Not a Trumpanzee fan, apparently.
I had hoped against hope that my party would listen. After all I had the personal commitment of our party chair, after the catastrophic loss of Mitt Romney, that Hispanics were going to be an important voting bloc for the party and that significant efforts would be made to augment their numbers in our party.Maybe I was naive, maybe it was just a strong desire to believe. But the party left me and my community all alone again. It has had plenty of time to stand up for my community, but it has chosen not to do so. I have come to the devastatingly painful realization that my party right now doesn't want my vote nor that of my community. Evidently it is not important, or not as important as some other voting bloc.So, for me to consider the unthinkable-- to vote for a Democrat-- has been a profound soul searching process. Leaders are tested time and time again and so, I will stand up for my community against the menace of a tyrannical presidency that does not value the countless contributions of immigrants across its beautiful and bountiful history.I have disagreed with and criticized Hillary Clinton’s positions, but I have come to the conclusion that she would be a far better president than the Republican candidate could ever be. She understands that words spoken from the White House have consequences, that sarcasm is not a strategy when dealing with delicate world situations, that our friends and foes listen to every word spoken by our president and react accordingly.There is too much at stake both domestically and abroad to have a thoughtless individual at the helm of the most important economy in the world.My party and its standard bearer leave me no choice; On November 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton.
The 54 million Hispanics living in the U.S. are the fastest growing ethnic minority in the country-- and 64% of them are Mexican-Americans. Almost 9% of the eligible voters in the country are Latinos and around 20% of them identify as Republicans-- or did before the day Señor Trumpanzee came floating down the escalator with his mail order bride and declared that Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists. In 2008, 67% of Hispanics voted for Obama and 31% voted for McCain. Two years later in the primaries that went so well for Republicans, 38% of Hispanics voted for Republican candidates.This week, Fox News Latino released a poll showing the Republican share of the Hispanic vote is collapsing this year. Romney only won 27% of Hispanics. Trump won't come close.
Trump’s opening hard-line rhetoric on immigration and Mexico-- build The Wall and round up and deport all undocumented immigrants-- had a seismic effect on the Republican presidential race, and appears to have widened the schism between the GOP and Latino voters.Indeed, a new Fox News Latino poll shows that Latino party identification since 2012 is leaning even further toward the Democrats, with 60 percent choosing it as the party they identify with, compared with 21 percent identifying as Republican-- a 6-point increase for Democrats since 2012."With his emphasis on 'building a wall' on our southern border to keep out 'rapists and criminals,' Trump has apparently magnified the natural issue advantage the Democrats enjoy among Hispanic voters," said a summary that accompanied the poll, written by report co-author and Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducted the Fox News Latino poll along with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson.As for their view of the parties, 60 percent of Latinos reported having a favorable view of the Democratic Party, compared to only 25 percent for Republicans.
Republicans generically are lucky they have a 25% favorable opinion. Trump's is only 15%-- and a staggering 82% unfavorable. And 67% of Hispanics say they are more likely to vote this year than previously. 66% say they have already made up their minds to vote for Hillary and 20% say they are voting for Señor Trumpanzee. How badly this is going to hurt down-ballot Republicans in heavily Latino district is something we've been looking at all year. Republican incumbents in heavily Latino districts in California, Florida, Texas, and Nevada could be in for a very rough ride and in many cases, if not for the staggering incompetence of Pelosi's DCCC, the political demise of Republicans like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL 76% Hispanic), Mario Diaz-Balart, (FL-71%) Carlos Curbelo (FL-69%), Jeff Denham (CA-42%), David Valadao (CA- 74%), Cresent Hardy (NV- 29%), Will Hurd (TX), Stevan Pearce (NM-53%), Blake Farenthold (TX-52%), Devin Nunes (CA-47%) would be a foregone conclusion and Republicans like Kevin McCarthy (CA-38%), Paul Cook (CA-39%), Dan Newhouse (WA-38%), Ken Calvert (CA-37%), Ed Royce (CA-34%), John Culbertson (TX-31%), Lamar Smith (TX-30%), Mike Conaway (TX-37%) and Ted Poe (TX-31%) would be fighting for their political survival, instead of skating to reelection without the DCCC even opposing them.It is so passed time for Pelosi, Hoyer and Wasserman Schultz to retire and stop holding the party back in the last century. Within one cycle of those two going on their way-- unless they manage to turn the congressional party over to the New Dems-- the Democrats will take back the House. That simple.
