Winning the Latino Vote: What Republicans can learn from Chris Christie and Susana Martinez

By LESLIE SANCHEZ 

In a state where 18 percent of the population is Hispanic, the residents of Union City are 85 percent Hispanic or Latino -- more than any place in New Jersey. It was no coincidence that Governor Chris Christie chose Union City as the site for the last rally of his successful re-election campaign, an event that also featured the only out-of-state Republican Governor he brought into the Garden State to campaign for him -- New Mexico’s Susana Martinez.

Christie’s choice of Union City and his selection of Governor Susana Martinez as his surrogate go a long way to explaining how he won an outright majority (51 percent) of the Hispanic vote, the first Republican Governor in three decades to do so -- but it’s only part of the story.

In 2011, nearly two-thirds of Union City voters were registered as Democrats, compared to 6.5 percent Republicans. Just last year, 81 percent of the city’s voters supported President Barack Obama.

Yet on the night before New Jersey voted, Governor Christie and Governor Martinez were talking up a raucus crowd of 200 mostly Hispanic voters who had waited in the cold to cheer them. Martinez delivered half her remarks in Spanish.

 Christie’s choice of Union City and his selection of Governor Susana Martinez as his surrogate go a long way to explaining how he won an outright majority (51 percent) of the Hispanic vote.

They were joined onstage by the City’s Democratic Mayor Kevin Stack, and by Celin J. Valdivia, the Democratic candidate for Commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation. The entire Union City Democratic Committee had crossed lines to endorse the Republican Governor, as had many of the city’s other municipal officials.

Christie borrowed from Woody Allen in his victory speech, attributing his success to “showing up.”

“While we may not always agree, we show up everywhere,” he said. “We just don’t show up in the places that vote for us a lot, we show up in the places that vote for us a little. We don’t just show up in the places where we’re comfortable, we show up in the places where we’re uncomfortable.”

It took a lot more than “showing up” -- and therein lie the lessons for Republicans who seek to regain the trust of America’s fastest-growing community.

True, “showing up” can represent a powerful message to a community so long isolated from the political process. At the Union City rally, Democrat Blanca Diaz told a reporter, “the other governors, they never come here.”

“The governor has built inroads into the Latino community for the past 11 years, going back to his days as a U.S. Attorney,” observes Christie campaign advisor Michael Duhaime.

But it is what happens after Republicans show up that matters. Christie has governed as a fiscal conservative and he has been a sworn enemy of the Garden State’s powerful teachers’ unions. In Union City, however, he’s remembered for working diligently and in good faith with community leaders and Democrats in City Hall on issues ranging from education reform and charter schools to property taxes and public safety.

His success is also a matter of tone. Calling Christie “plain spoken” is putting it politely, and yes, he can come off as brusque -- but it is impossible to doubt his sincerity or the quality of his intentions. That’s how to build bridges with 51 percent of Hispanics, not by insulting their intelligence or pandering.

 Christie has governed as a fiscal conservative and he has been a sworn enemy of the Garden State’s powerful teachers’ unions. In Union City, however, he’s remembered for working diligently and in good faith with community leaders.

Hispanics want what everybody else wants: a good job, a nice place to live in a safe neighborhood, and for our kids to have a better life than ours. Christie delivered that, and New Jersey’s Hispanic voters returned the favor by trusting him to continue to do so.

It certainly didn’t hurt that Christie has wisely rejected the shrill anti-immigration rhetoric of some Republicans. It offends and alienates Hispanics -- immigrants and native-born alike. Late in the campaign, citing an improved fiscal climate in the state, he even reversed his position on a state version of the DREAM Act that will allow undocumented students to take advantage of in-state tuition rates.

The Christie campaign’s reported $1 million in Spanish-language TV (from a warchest that allowed him to overspend his opponent by a margin of 10:1) was likewise clearly a factor.

It’s important to note, too, that New Jersey’s Latino population is much more diverse than in many parts of the country. Assimilated Cubans and Puerto Ricans make up fully 50 percent of the Garden State’s Hispanic electorate, and neither group directly faces the broken immigration system that motivates so many other Hispanic communities toward the Democrats (Puerto Ricans enjoy U.S. citizenship due to the island’s being a U.S. Territory, while Cubans have refugee status). New Jersey also boasts significant populations of assimilated Brazilian, Spanish, and Portugese-Americans, who tend to be more fiscally conservative than other Latino groups.

Nevertheless, the lessons of Christie’s tenure and his campaign should not be lost on Republicans elsewhere.

Governor Martinez, too, has maintained astronomically high approval ratings in a blue state. According to a poll last month by Survey USA and Albuquerque station KOB, Martinez enjoys the support of 66 percent of New Mexico’s voters, including 70 percent of women, 64 percent of independents, and 44 percent of registered Democrats. (While cross-tabs were not provided, given that nearly half of New Mexico’s population is Hispanic, it is reasonable to believe that her approval numbers are consistently high within those communities as well).

 Martinez, too, has built support by reaching across party lines to seek compromise wherever possible and by consistently putting the needs of her state’s hard-pressed population ahead of party politics and ideological conformity.

Martinez, too, has built support by reaching across party lines to seek compromise wherever possible and by consistently putting the needs of her state’s hard-pressed population (New Mexico’s poverty rate is second only to Mississippi’s and fully 20 percent of the state’s population is without health care ) ahead of party politics and ideological conformity.

Like Christie, she has worked with a Democratic-controlled legislature to fashion a workable agenda that governs from the center-right. Like him, she rejected the GOP’s prevailing ideology to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.

As Republicans and Democrats alike study the lessons of Chris Christie’s stunning victory among Hispanics, each side should consider the words of Martin Perez, President of the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey: “In the past,” he said, “what has happened is that the Democratic Party that we have endorsed a lot of times has taken us for granted, and the Republican Party didn’t pay much attention. We have to look beyond labels and look at what is in the best interest of community. He [Christie] tries to find common ground.”   RF

Leslie Sanchez, author of “Los Republicanos: Why Hispanics and Republicans Need Each Other,” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), was Director of the White House Initiative on Hispanic Education and is a Republican political strategist.

 

(New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie talks to the media as he visits Jose Marti Freshman Academy in Union City, N.J. Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013, the day after defeating Democratic challenger Barbara Buono to win his second term as governor. (AP Photo/Rich Schultz))

Analysis: Christie win with Latinos will be tougher nationally

by Suzanne Gamboa, @SuzGamboa 

Gov. Chris Christie pulled off in New Jersey what Mitt Romney failed to do nationally – attract lots of Latino voters. Now, can he or any other GOP presidential hopeful do the same nationally in 2016?

Christie’s capture of 51 percent of the Latino vote helped return him for a second term as governor. Just as important, it’s given Republicans a shining example showing other GOPers they can rebound from Romney’s 27 percent showing with Latinos in 2012.

“The results show we can win the Latino vote,” said Izzy Santa, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, which assisted Christie’s campaign. “Our work isn’t done there. We are going to evaluate where we need to be to keep growing the electorate.”

Getting that large share of the Latino vote was done by treating Latinos like everybody else and getting in the trenches long before election time, Christie said in a post-election news conference.

RELATED: In Chris Christie’s re-election, Republicans see blueprint for Latino support 

“The problem politicians make is they look at a specific community and say what can I say to appeal to them? That’s not my approach. Latino folks want the same thing that everyone else wants,”  Christie said.
Mike Duhaime, Christie’s top political strategist, voiced what is likely to become mantra for Republicans who have been steadily losing Latinos amid anti-immigrant and anti-Latino rhetoric.

“There’s no chance to win a blue state if you don’t go out and win over Hispanics, win over a larger portion of  African Americans, win a large chunk of Democrats,” Duhaime told Chuck Todd on Wednesday’s morning’s “The Daily Rundown.”

But New Jersey’s Latino population is not a mirror of the Hispanic population at large. What plays in Jersey, may not play in New Mexico, even if that state’s governor was at Christie’s side on the final day of his campaign.

The state’s largest Latino group is Puerto Rican, about 30 percent of the Latino population, according to Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project. Among eligible Latino voters, four-in-ten are Puerto Rican, 13 percent are of Dominican origin, about 9 percent are of Cuban descent and five percent are of Mexican origin. Another 31 percent are of other Hispanic origin.

Nationally, 59 percent of eligible Latino voters are of Mexican origin, 14 percent are Puerto Rican, 5 percent are Cuban, 3 percent are Dominican and 16 percent are of other Hispanic origin, according to Pew.
There are many issues that resonate throughout the Latino community, but not all have the same ranking of importance when it comes time to vote.

“There’s plenty of research that shows Puerto Rican Hispanics are much less supportive of liberalized immigration reform. It’s not an issue that affects them in the same personal way as Mexican-origin Hispanics,” said Ali Adam Valenzuela, a political scientist at Princeton University.

In addition, Election Day exit polling was done only in English, meaning Hispanics who were reached were likely to be more “assimilated,” educated and higher income, Valenzuela said.

Those differences are likely to make courting a national Latino population more complex for Christie in a 2016 presidential run as well as for any other candidates. There is little expectation that a candidate could get 51 percent, but winning nationally generally means getting at least 35 percent of the Latino vote.

What Christie did right was to stay away from the extreme policy positions and rhetoric of other Republicans. He didn’t repeat the mistakes Romney made of calling for “self-deportation” of people illegally in the country.

Immigration had the potential to become a thorn in Christie’s humming-along campaign, when young immigrants began pressing him about in-state tuition for DREAMers – the young immigrants brought by their parents to the U.S. illegally.

Christie had opposed in-state tuition for DREAMers but changed his view, diffusing the issue that could have ripped into the Latino support he had been building.

“He literally embraced diversity, when he talked about all the different people he had hugged in the campaign. That was meant to speak to the potential non-white Republican voter,” Latino Decisions political scientist Sylvia Manzano said.

The issue was front and center for Republican Ken Cuccinelli, who lost his gubernatorial bid to Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia Tuesday night. Though Cucinelli dialed-down some of his rhetoric on immigration, he was unable to walk away from previous positions and actions on the issue.

“It is telling that (Christie) won and Cucinelli lost and you know, the party needs to understand whether those are two isolated events or if there is a connection because there were two very different Republican messages, I believe,” said Carlos Gutierrez, former Secretary of Commerce under President George W. Bush who has worked with the GOP to attract the Latino vote.

Overall, Christie was a well-liked and formidable candidate who related to Latinos, Gutierrez said. “As many people say,” Gutierrez said, “the candidate makes the difference.”