Latinos: Jerry Brown’s Major Challenge

08 July 2010 |permalink | email article

President Obama’s decision to move forward with a legal challenge to Arizona’s stringent illegal immigration law will, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza notes, be of prime importance to Latinos, the fastest growing demographic group in the country and a coveted electoral prize for both parties. A new Post/ABC poll found 58 percent expressing support for the Arizona law, but the same survey found 57 percent allowing illegal immigrants to stay in the country if they paid a fine and met other citizenship requirements. In California the issue is related but different.

A a new Field Poll of voters has sobering data for Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown, twice elected governor who’s trying for a political hat trick in November. While Brown has enjoyed overwhelming minority support in the past now, except for African Americans, his advantage is dramatically eroding among Latinos, a critical voting block.

Brown leads Republican nominee Meg Whitman by a single percentage point, 44 percent to 43 percent, having lost most of his early ethnic advantage. Unlike Brown, billionaire Whitman is spending a fortune in reaching out, notably to Latinos, with interviews on Spanish-language television and radio.

Her slogan is disingenuous in suggesting that she is “the Republican who opposed the Arizona law and opposed Proposition 187.” But in the June primary she briefly took a hard line in favor of the Arizona law at the “tough as nails” urging of former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, her campaign chairman, who pushed through the notorious anti-immigrant 187 ballot measure in 1994 when Meg didn’t even live in the state. 

Mark DiCamillo, The Field Poll’s director, noted that Brown hasn’t really campaigned yet, so many Latino’s don’t know that Wilson is a key Whitman adviser, and “they don’t remember that Brown marched with Caesar Chavez.”

It’s a huge wakeup call for Brown who must cut the low-fi stuff and mount a nonstop guerrilla campaign tying Whitman to Wilson in an increasingly blue state, thanks in part to the rise of ethnic voters who have overwhelmingly voted Democratic over the past 30 years. This means connecting with a new generation of younger Latino voters, in part, to regain his groove.. 

Read ‘em and weep

Obama’s decision to replace General Stanley McChrystal has done little to replace voter perceptions of how the Afghan war is progressing. A new Rasmussen national telephone survey reports that just 20 percent of likely voters believe the situation will get better there in the next six months. Thirty-nine percent expect it to get worse.

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