What Trump gets wrong about Hispanics in the U.S.

Toyota's Lexus luxury line is among the brands marketing toward Latinos, who injected $1.4 trillion into the U.S. economy in 2016, according to a new report (VidaLexus Presents: RPM – Reengineering Popular Music with Raquel Sofía)

By Tracy Jan
Washington Post

President Trump, as he ran for office, portrayed Latino immigrants as a drain on the U.S. economy, saying "The Mexican government ... they send the bad ones over because they don't want to pay for them."

But Trump’s campaign rhetoric ignored this fact: The growing Latino population injected $1.4 trillion into the U.S. economy in 2016, according to a new report by the Selig Center for Economic Growth. That’s larger than the GDP of Mexico.

The rapid growth of Hispanic buying power in the U.S. is not a result of population growth alone. Per capita, the buying power of Hispanics in the country has jumped from $13,880 each in 2000 to more than $24,050 each in 2016 -- accounting for every man, woman and child.

Upper-income Hispanics are fueling much of that spending power as the proportion of wealthy Hispanic households in the U.S. expands. Those making more than $100,000 a year accounted for nearly 16 percent of all Hispanic households in 2015, double the percentage in 2004, according to the Pew Research Center. More than half of those households reside in California, Florida, New York and Texas.

Corporations have taken note. Industries from real estate and banking to luxury automakers and prestige cosmetics are expanding their marketing towards this rapidly growing demographic.

“There’s definitely money, and growing money, in this segment so you absolutely cannot ignore it,” said Brian Bolain, general manager for Lexus marketing.

[Trump to order building of border wall, crackdown on sanctuary cities]

Toyota, the No. 1 auto brand among Hispanic consumers for the past decade, has created a corporate department specifically targeting Hispanics for its various vehicle divisions, including its Lexus luxury line.

As a result, Lexus is now the top selling luxury automobile brand to Hispanics, said Sara Hasson, senior vice president in Univision’s strategy and insights group who works with auto manufacturers and dealers. Other elite brands such as Audi, Mercedes and BMW are also investing millions each year in Spanish-language advertising, with luxury auto ads on Spanish television and radio tripling since 2013, Hasson said.

One ad introducing the 2017 Lexus IS line, the brand’s entry-level sedan, features a car speeding through city streets spliced with scenes from a soccer match. A male voice-over says in Spanish, “No cheerleaders. No mascots. No halftime show. All thrills. Exhilarating performance in its purest form.”

Hispanics accounted for a quarter of Lexus IS sales in 2016. But Lexus markets a half a dozen cars at higher price points each year to Hispanics, through not only traditional ads but also music videos starring Latin musicians, short programs featuring Latin chefs and athletes, live concerts, and events inviting consumers to test drive various models around a track.

“One of the things we feel that’s key to their success is they are not making an assumption that you could only afford the entry-level vehicle,” Hasson said.

Companies especially strive to build brand loyalty early among wealthy Latinos because they tend to be younger and have larger families than the non-Hispanic upscale consumer. And while the majority of the target audience is bicultural and fluent in both English and Spanish, marketers say it’s still important to create Spanish-language ads that appeal to multi-generational Hispanic families.

“Parents and grandparents, you have to address the whole family,” Bolain said. “People who have a voice and a vote in that ecosystem.”

[The group that seriously out-earns white men]

While affluent Hispanic households tended to be Cuban American or South American two decades ago, there is growing affluence among Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, said Gabriela Alcantara-Diaz, who owns her own advertising firm in Miami and who sits on the board of the national trade group AHAA: The Voice of Hispanic Marketing. The trade group, in partnership with Nielsen, a global information and measurement company, has identified Latinos earning $50,000 to $100,000 annually as one of the most influential consumer segments since the baby boomers.  

Hispanic wealth is also expanding beyond the traditional urban centers in Miami, New York and Los Angeles to secondary markets such as San Bernardino, Calif., and Jacksonville, Fla., Alcantara-Diaz said.

“There have been a lot of regional players more aggressive in pursuing the emerging upscale Hispanics” than national opportunities, said Alcantara-Diaz, whose firm began focusing on this demographic while working with Johnnie Walker whiskey and Publix supermarkets two decades ago. “We knew it was just a matter of time before this market would influence national trends.”

Hispanics have become key drivers of homeownership growth in the U.S., accounting for 69 percent of total net growth, according to a 2016 report by the Hispanic Wealth Project. They tend to accumulate wealth through real estate and small businesses but underperform in other assets like the stock market and retirements accounts.

“Hispanics are earning more money but not making up ground on the wealth side,” said Gary Acosta, chief executive of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, who created the Hispanic Wealth Project with the goal of tripling Hispanic household wealth by 2024.

[Hispanics are doing really well. And so is Donald Trump.]

Wells Fargo expanded its Hispanic sales force by 15 percent last year in hopes that more diverse loan officers and home mortgage consultants would better cater to its growing Latino clientele, said Brad Blackwell, an executive vice president with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

The bank is also opening new mortgage offices in branches that serve large Latino populations in Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston and Phoenix. And it has made a commitment, in collaboration with the Hispanic Wealth Project, to lend $125 billion to Hispanic homebuyers by 2025 and invest $10 million from the bank’s foundation to educate and counsel Hispanic homebuyers.  

(Wells Fargo’s commitment follows a $175 million settlement in a lawsuit alleging that the bank discriminated against Hispanic and African American borrowers.)

In contrast to the many other companies pursuing wealthy Latino consumers, Sotheby’s International Realty, which focuses on high-end properties, does not specifically tailor its marketing toward Hispanics, let alone advertise in Spanish.

In Miami, where Sotheby’s average property sale price tops well over $1 million, Latino agents make up about a third of the real estate agents. But the nuances of language and cultural differentiation tend to disappear, said Michael Valdes, a global vice president at Sotheby's and the company’s highest ranking Latino.

What the baby Bolivar boom tells us about how we used to view South America

An image from the book "Bolivar" by Marie Arana. (Simon & Schuster)

By Caitlin Fitz

    Almost 200 years ago, as the United States approached its 50th birthday, a new baby name swept the nation. It wasn’t biblical or even Anglophone. It was Bolivar. Hundreds of mothers and fathers, living in Kentucky log cabins or Illinois farmhouses, named their crying, crinkly newborns after Spanish America’s most celebrated revolutionary: Simón Bolívar of Venezuela. The baby Bolivar boom wasn’t an isolated oddity, either. Other Americans named their new towns, their boats and even their livestock Bolivar, adopting the Spanish­speaking revolutionary as one of their own. Given how much of our current election cycle has been marked by talk of border walls and racial slurs, it may seem surprising that ordinary Americans held such early affection for Latin America. A generation before the United States swallowed half of Mexico (including what turned out to be a gold­en-crusted California), visions of a harmonious republican hemisphere prevailed.

    In the 1810s and early 1820s — just a generation or two after our Revolution of 1776 — most of Latin America fought (and won) independence wars against Spain and Portugal, from Mexico and Colombia to Chile and Brazil. Those developments owed more to the chaos of the Napoleonic Wars than to the shot heard round the world, but nonetheless, U.S. patriots happily gave themselves credit for having inspired a hemisphere full of revolutionary disciples. They concluded that their founding republican ideals really were universal — that U.S. light was spreading to places thought mired in Iberian colonial darkness. Victories across Latin America thus inflamed U.S. patriotism; as a Boston newspaper trumpeted, these newfound sister republics were “flattering to our national pride.”

   The excitement was pervasive. From Chillicothe, Ohio, to Savannah, Ga., mothers dressed their daughters in feathery, broad­brimmed “Bolivar hats.” Poets wrote odes to Brazil and Peru. West Point cadets looked exuberantly south and fired ceremonial cannons. Newspapers printed long lists of toasts sent in after each Independence Day, including hundreds feting Latin American freedom. As editors nationwide approvingly observed, toasts to “the Patriots of South America” were “the favourites of the day,” along with toasts to the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the United States itself.

    The U.S. government remained officially neutral in these revolutions, declining to do for Latin Americans what France had done for it. But people found smaller ways to chip in. In 1812, Congress voted to send $50,000 worth of provisions to help erstwhile revolutionaries in Caracas dig out after a devastating earthquake; it was a pioneering instance of U.S. foreign aid. In another groundbreaking congressional vote 10 years later, the United States became the first country to formally recognize Spanish America’s new nations as independent powers.

    Hoping to do well by doing good, merchants loaded their ships “with weapons as ballast” (as Portugal’s ambassador griped) and sold the goods to South American rebels. With similarly mixed motives, some 3,000 privateers attacked Spanish ships on the high seas until Congress outlawed the practice beginning in 1817.

    The inter­American idealism was so strong that it often transcended racial and religious differences. Everyone knew that Latin Americans were Catholics, and newspapers widely reported that Spanish Americans in particular were passing gradual antislavery laws. Black U.S. audiences were thrilled, while white observers were so excited about the anticolonial battles that they accepted the antislavery ones. As the flummoxed Portuguese ambassador wrote at the time, it was “as if every person ... was denounced as an anti­patriot, if he be not an advocate for supporting every rebellion or insurrection ... whether these self­styled patriots are white, black, or yellow.”

   Americans’ universalist optimism about human potential was endlessly contested, and their abstract talk of brotherhood wilted as slavery spread into the South and West. Inter­American ardor eventually yielded to manifest destiny, racialized chauvinism and war with Mexico. But the sanguine inclusiveness of the 1810s and early 1820s mattered nonetheless. In celebrating the decline of colonial rule to their south, Americans were defining the United States as an advocate for worldwide republican liberty — even when that liberty included Spanish­-speaking antislavery Catholics.

   This short­lived and self­congratulatory excitement for Latin American independence offers few easy answers for our own times. Hemispheric enthusiasts themselves disagreed about the particulars of inter­American trade and diplomacy. Immigration wasn’t a central issue, and when it did begin to surge later in the 1820s and 1830s, people usually were moving to Mexico, not away from it. Still, the hemispheric enthusiasm stands in striking contrast to our current political discourse about Latin America. Our early 19th century predecessors saw themselves as political kin of people with clear cultural, linguistic and sometimes racial differences. Turning south of the border, early U.S. patriots adopted internationalism as a credo.

   Two centuries later, Donald Trump offers a new credo: “Make America great again.” The power and the peril of this slogan stem from its imprecision. To which past? What elements of our history does he propose to resuscitate? To paraphrase Walt Whitman, our history is large; it contains multitudes. It teems with triumph and treachery, freedom and slavery, equality and oppression.

   But here’s one thing we might resuscitate. We could improve upon our early 19th century predecessors’ global awareness and interest, their conviction that our welfare was intertwined with that of foreigners. We could reject Trump’s belligerent isolationism in favor of international goodwill. And we might consider that such hemispheric hopefulness and inclusive cosmopolitanism are an American tradition too.


Caitlin Fitz is an assistant professor of history at Northwestern University and author of “Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions.”

REPOST: Exclusive Interview with Ann Coulter On The Upcoming Latino Vote!

Ann Coulter with Jaime Rojas

By Jaime Rojas, Jr.
Jimmy's Politico

(This piece is dedicated to NBClatino.com...thank you for the opportunity you gave me. May the decision made by NBC.com be for the better and the positive future of our Latino community!)

Describing her as polarizing is an understatement. Many perceive Ann Coulter to be divisive and at times even anti-Latino. One of the columns she included in her new book, "Never Trust A Liberal Over 3 - Especially a Republican,"  is entitled "America Nears El Tipping Pointo." 

In it, she states: 

"No amount of 'reaching out' to the Hispanic community, effective 'messaging,' or Reagan's 'optimism' is going to turn Mexico's underclass into Republicans."Now, these are precisely the kinds of comments that makes so many Latino voters think there is no way they would ever turn to the Republican party.

But interestingly enough, even Ann Coulter realizes the GOP needs the Latino vote.  "Any election analysis that doesn't deal with the implacable fact of America's changing demographics is bound to be wrong." 



In her new book, she outlines to those Republicans and conservatives who want to listen a basic strategy for GOP success.

This may be surprising, but as  a Republican Latino - and there are many of us out there, but mostly in hiding nowadays - I agree with some of Ann's opinions. 

Don't get crazy with me now - I said "some" of her opinions. When she is not hurling insults, Coulter brings up some good points on how Republicans need to shift gears if they want to win elections.

"Conservatives, we need to adopt the smart things Democrats do, not the stupid ones. We like their persistence, but not their plans to wreck the country. We like the part about winning elections, not the part about jamming execrable policies down the nation's throat."

CLICK HERE to watch VIDEO INTERVIEW!

So how does she propose winning? 

For one, I strongly believe in Ann's comments that the GOP needs to focus on "how to win" elections by picking the strongest Republican candidates that showcase the diversity of the party and not the extreme views of the party. 

She stated that Republicans should stay focused on the party's message  - in order to gain support from Latinos and other minorities in America.

Coulter adds that "part of the problem Republicans always have in reaching out to Latinos and women ... is that they do not stick to the core principles of the Party ... believing in freedom, opportunity and hope in America." 

The GOP can begin preaching these core believes via action by finally putting together a comprehensive immigration policy. What better way to support freedom, opportunity and hope in America!

I asked Ann whether the recent re-election by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, where he received 51 percent of the Latino vote, is a GOP roadmap on how to outreach to Latinos. Coulter says "this is a great indicator for the GOP on how to appeal to the Latino voter. 

 Conservatives should reach out to the Latino community, but they are currently doing it the wrong way."

On immigration, Coulter does not believe "amnesty" - providing a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants - is the way to appeal to Latinos. 

She mentioned that some polls show immigration is not the top priority for some Latino voters, saying that "scratchy toilet paper ranks higher than amnesty for Latinos in America."  

She also adds that "...for the poorest and working class of this country – these are the people that will get hurt most with amnesty being passed in this country."

Coulter has a myopia view of immigration by only looking at amnesty. I am shocked that as a staunch Republican she does not follow in the beliefs of her idol President Reagan who granted "amnesty" to so many in the 80's. 

But again total reform is needed to give America's immigration policy a complete and much needed overhaul:

http://nbclatino.com/2013/11/25/as-president-makes-another-push-for-immigration-reform-poll-finds-majority-support-path-to-citizenship/

But like many Republicans and Americans for that matter forget that amnesty does not equal comprehensive immigration policy. 

Amnesty is only one element of many parts that make up the whole on immigration reform in this country. Let's just follow the strategy the Republican President Ronald Reagan, the great communicator and Californian, who made comprehensive immigration policy happen....almost 30 years ago.

Can the GOP finally be listening or is this just Coulter "marketing" to sell more books? Or maybe I can just tutor Ann in the art of compassion, which is the truly the American way!

The Latino 'Brand' Is Alive and Well at the DNC, As It Should Be

By Stephen A. Nuno

PHILADELPHIA — Democratic National Committee operatives came under fire this week on social media and in posts for leaked emails in which Latinos were labeled as a "brand." 

Yet at the Latino Leaders Luncheon on Tuesday, part of the Democratic convention's activities, the event was a clear display of Latino branding and business generation based on the image of Hispanics as an emerging political and cultural force in Washington and throughout our nation. 

With almost half of Latinos born in the millennial generation, Latino pop culture will become as valuable as their votes. And their votes matter: More than 40 percent of the eligible Hispanic electorate in 2016 is millennial.

 There are about 55 million Hispanics in the U.S., and their purchasing power has been estimated at over one and a half trillion dollars. Corporate America know this; the function was sponsored by companies such as Geico, Anheuser­Busch and Southwest Airlines.

All of this "branding" power allows us to flex our political muscle through our numbers and our growing political presence. And politicians take notice. 

At the luncheon, the senior senator from New York, Chuck Schumer said to those assembled, "If I become [Senate] Majority Leader, we will pass comprehensive immigration reform." 

This statement was immediately followed by a remark from Mickey Ibarra, a longtime Washington lobbyist and Beltway insider, who was the honoree of the luncheon. "And we will hold you accountable," said Ibarra in a friendly but pointed tone. Democratic legislators know they cannot discount the Hispanic vote.

At the event, Latino elected officials rubbed shoulders with consultants vying to expand their network to capitalize on the growing Hispanic image within the Democratic Party and around the country. The long list of elected officials included Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, the Chairwoman of the Hispanic Caucus, former Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, former Governor of New Mexico, Bill. Richardson, and Julian Castro, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

While some may scoff at the notion of Latinos as a brand, any political or social movement must be keenly aware of how they are viewed by society in general and broad acceptance brings power, money, and the ability to change policy. Latinos at the overflowing room of leaders and government officials have spent years honing the Latino brand, and its effectiveness was evident in the room. 

With Markedly Fewer Latinos at Republican Convention, Meet 3 Delegates

With Markedly Fewer Latinos at Republican Convention,Meet 3 Delegates

 by Suzanne Gamboa and Victoria DeFrancesco Soto - NBC.com

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Donald Trump will come to the 2016 Republican National Convention to find a shrunken Latino presence, but it will not be absent.

Even though Trump started his campaign bashing Mexicans, promising to build a wall on the border, saying those here illegally "have to go" and calling a U.S.-born federal judge Mexican while questioning the judge's competence, there are Latinos who say Trump is this election's better candidate and that they will cast their vote for him to be the party nominee.

Not all have been Trump supporters throughout. Some are part of a thus far unsuccessful movement to allow delegates to vote for the candidate they choose, an attempt to keep Trump from being the nominee. Others have switched to Trump after their first choice bowed out. Some just want to beat Hillary Clinton.

The convention begins Monday, after a week in which Trump named Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate and scored a victory in preventing a rules change in the Republican platform committee that threatened his nomination.

In marked contrast to 2012, when rising Hispanic Republican stars like New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio rallied the convention delegates and put a more diverse face on the party, what is remarkable about 2016 is the few Latinos who will be there. The initial roster of speakers for this convention only included Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

A group of Latino conservatives who have been harsh and vocal critics of Trump said Monday that they are backing the presumptive GOP nominee to get a Republican administration in the White House after recent terror events and shootings. But many Hispanic elected officials and other prominent Latinos who served in previous administrations are not attending.


The convention also comes after the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal Marist poll shows the presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton ahead of Trump in four of the most diverse presidential battleground states, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.
Nonetheless, there are several Latinos excited to be at the convention and among them those who are enthusiastically supporting Trump. They recognize the diminished Latino presence but are optimistic about their party's chances for the White House and Congress.

Here are summaries of conversations from three of the delegates who talked to NBC News before arriving in Cleveland:

JESSICA FERNANDEZ, Florida delegate

Jessica Fernandez, a Donald Trump delegate from Florida to the 2016 Republican National Conveniton Florida Federation of Young Republicans

Believed to be the youngest delegate from the state of Florida, 31-year-old Jessica Fernandez comes to the convention with a sense of duty.

A Miami-Dade County resident, she is from the one county of Florida's 67 counties that Trump did not win. She had been a Marco Rubio supporter in the primary, but because she represents the state, she feels obligated to the other 66 Florida counties' preference.

"I feel as a Republican delegate I have a duty to fulfill and I want to do the correct thing and that means supporting Trump," Fernandez said. "I want to do the correct thing. I don't want to add to chaos."

The Miami-born daughter of Cuban exiles, Fernandez's parents arrived to the U.S. at a young age in the late '60s and early '70s. Fernandez said her mother told her stories of life under the Castro regime and the attempt to brainwash her as a little girl into loyalty to the communist government.

"They would tell her to put her head down and pray for candy and they would open their eyes and there would be candy. Then they would say pray to the father Fidel (Castro) and pray for candy and there would be candy or a penny," she said. He mother and her mother's family arrived on one of the last Freedom Flights from Cuba.

One of her grandfathers was forced to leave the country after being told that because of his political work, if he did not, he would face a firing squad, she said.

The political activism has remained with Fernandez, who leads the Miami Young Republicans as its president and is the executive director of the Florida Federation of Young Republicans.
She worked on the Mitt Romney campaign and has worked to helped recruit Hispanics to the GOP and build Hispanic leaders in the party.

She said she expects she'll be one of the few Hispanics at the convention, but was looking forward to it nonetheless, despite the opposition among the ranks of delegates to keep Trump from getting the nomination.
"I respect that there are people who say don't want to vote for Trump," she said. "He got the nomination by the process. There will be delegates like myself who are bound to play their part to deliver the vote of their district," she said.

"The alternative is not pleasant. We have someone running on the other side who has been testifying in front of Congress, the FBI, who's been a liar," said Fernandez. "Those problems supersede a comment that would have insulted people."

"When we have someone on the other side who has behaved very questionably," she said, "I'm all Trump."

GUSTAVO PORTELA, Michigan delegate

Gustavo "Gus" Portela, a Donald Trump delegate from Michigan to the 2016 Republican National Convention. Gustavo Portela

While in high school, Gustavo "Gus" Portela would go to his local county party's meetings in Grand Rapids, Mich. He liked George W. Bush and helped in his 2004 re-election campaign by going door-to-door to drum up votes.

He went on to join the College Republicans in Grand Valley State University and today is in Washington, D.C. serving as the executive director of the College Republican National Committee.
Despite the years of history in party politics, Portela, 27, says what he likes about Trump is that he is an outsider.

Trump's success in the primaries is a continuation of elections of outsiders to Congress in previous elections, Portela said.

"I just think that he [Trump] brings a fresh perspective to the process I don't think we've ever had. I don't think we've had a Republican nominee who is an outsider," he said.

Originally from Puerto Rico, Portela and his family moved to the mainland when he was 11 because his parents "essentially were looking for a better life" and to get better educations for their children. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and those born on the island are American citizens.

In Michigan, his father worked in the Sara Lee factory and his mother, who had been a receptionist in a hair salon in Puerto Rico, was a stay-at-home mom while he was growing up.
Portela said Trump has said "controversial things" but said his statements have been taken out of context by the media, such as Trump's pledges to build a wall, which he said became declarations that Trump wants to deport everyone.

At an Iowa rally in November 2015, Trump said: "I'm tougher on illegal immigration than anybody. That's what I'm saying we have to take people that are here illegally and we have to move them out and you know what, it's going to be done, it's going to be done."

Trump has also said families would have to go but some could return through the legal process. Although he was thought to have backed off from some of that, Trump has not been clear about whether mass deportation was still a policy.

Portela said he sees Trump as wanting to establish law and order in the U.S. "He has said he wants people to come here legally," Portela said.
As far as Trump's comments on the wall, Portela said the policy is not unlike the policies of other politicians who have called for border security.

ADRYANA BOYNE, Texas delegate 

 

Adryana Boyne, a Ted Cruz delegate from Texas to the 2016 Republican National Convention Adryana Boyne

Texas delegate Adryana Boyne agrees with Trump that immigration is a serious problem that has to be addressed head on. And she does not believe that he is a racist or a nativist. However his lack of consideration for the tone of his immigration comments is what gets under her skin.

Boyne, a prominent political voice in the Texas GOP and the Hispanic Republicans of Texas, has had to struggle with Trump's comments. She likes his business sense but has been troubled by his Latino related rhetoric.

Shortly after Trump announced his candidacy, Boyne penned an opinion piece for the TexasGOPVote site where she enumerated in detail her grievances with the soon-to-be Republican candidate.
What most bothered (and still bothers) Boyne is the generalization Trump made out of the gate that Mexico was sending people that "have lots of problems…They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."

For Boyne "the focus on the minority of criminal elements overshadows the tremendous contributions that Mexicans have made."

The Texas delegate's struggle with fully embracing Trump is personal. She was born and raised in the Mexican state of Puebla and became a naturalized American citizen in 1994.

"I am a first-generation immigrant and I take Mr. Trump's comments to heart - he does not differentiate," she said.

Boyne said that if she were further removed from the immigration experience she would likely not be as affected by Trump's comments. But for her, the anti-Mexican rhetoric rings too close to home.
Donald Trump is not Boyne's first choice. She is a Ted Cruz delegate because of his performance in the Texas primaries.

An attempt to stop Trump from securing the nomination by changing rules and allowing delegates to "vote their conscience" failed, so efforts to build more support for Cruz or any other candidate aren't likely.

But Boyne's distaste for Hillary Clinton is so strong that it has moved her toward supporting Trump.
In Cleveland, Boyne will be looking to see a change in tone from Trump, but ultimately, she is committed to helping her party stop Clinton from reaching the White House.

Opinion: Will GOP Latino Outreach Go Beyond Bush Family?

By: Stephen Nuno
NBC Latino



Over the last 40 years, a good deal of hope the GOP has had in winning over Latino voters was associated with someone named Bush. And if you watch Jose Diaz-Balart's interview with Jeb Bush on Telemundo, you'll see that isn't likely to change in 2016. Jeb Bush's seamless ability to articulate his positions in Spanish offer Latinos commonalities that have previously gone untested in such a broad space as a presidential election for the Republican Party. The shallow marketing that typifies GOP outreach efforts now has unprecedented potential with Jeb. Beyond his wife, Columba, who was born in Mexico, he has a long history of family involvement that could transcend the limitations of Republican outreach.

Jeb's father, George Herbert Walker Bush was a war hero and successful oil businessman who started his political career in Harris County, Texas in the 1960's. He went on to be the Chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973, where he announced the first institutional attempt to integrate Latinos into the GOP with the Spanish Speaking Advisory Committee to the RNC. That committee would later turn into the Republican National Hispanic Assembly.

Seven years later in 1980, during a primary debate between George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan, both candidates were asked what should be done about illegal immigration. What followed was a discussion between the two GOP candidates that would not even be recognizable in a Democratic debate, much less a Republican debate. Rather than the familiar race to the bottom common in today's GOP discussions over immigration, the two Republicans grappled over which could demonstrate more empathy for immigrants.

It is well known today that the last big piece of immigration legislation was signed by Ronald Reagan, the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which put millions of immigrants onto the path to becoming full-fledged members of society. George HW Bush was the Vice President at the time and would later extend IRCA as President with the Immigration Act of 1990.

During the 1992 Republican National Convention, Jeb's teenage son and current Texas General Land Office Commissioner George P. Bush made a short speech and ended with a fist in the air declaring, "Viva Bush!"

However, what followed was almost a decade of Republican hostility towards immigrants, beginning with California's nefarious Proposition 187, which attempted to create a statewide citizenship confirmation system.

When George W. Bush, Jeb's brother, became President he was the last Republican to seriously compete for Latino voters, having won 40% of the Latino vote in 2004. George W. Bush was the first to record his weekly radio address in Spanish and his first State dinner was with Mexico's Vicente Fox, where he said, "This is not only a state dinner, it's like a family gathering. The most important ties between your country and mine, Mr. President, go beyond economics and politics and geography. They are the ties of heritage, culture and family. This is true for millions of Mexican and American families, including my own."

At the conclusion of President Fox' visit President Bush said, "I know there are some in this world and our country who want to build walls between Mexico and the United States. I want to remind people, fearful people build walls. Confident people tear them down."

Several days later, on September 11, terrorists made this promise a political impossibility, but it is nevertheless the Bush family that has provided the GOP with the most consistent message of openness to Mexico and to immigrants, and his current acknowledgement of anti-brown bias in society could help start a genuine discussion about the problems that afflict Latino families, such as the rigors of multi-status households, the rising costs of education, and police reform.

The weight of history and the Republican tendencies to lean on Southern Strategy tactics for electoral gain will hang heavily around the neck of any GOP candidate as the party confronts the demographic realities of the country. But if there is a candidate who can come to Latinos within the GOP from a position of history, for good or bad, his name will continue to be Bush unless someone else rises to the occasion. Unfortunately, if history is any indicator, this doesn't look very likely.

Follow NBC News Latino on Facebook and Twitter.

President Obama Speaks on Criminal Justice Reform at NAACP

"In too many places, black boys and black men, Latino boys and Latino men, experience being treated differently under the law." 

—President Obama making the case for criminal justice reform

Click here to see President Obama's speech addressing the issue of the need to reform America's criminal justice system!

A quick look at the numbers:

• 2.2 million: The number of prisoners in the U.S. -- which has quadrupled from only 500,000 in 1980.
• 25 percent: The share of the world's prisoners that are in the U.S., even though we're only home to 5 percent of the world's population.
• 60 percent: The share of U.S. prisoners that are either African American or Latino. "About one in every 35 African American men, one in every 88 Latino men is serving time right now," the President said. "Among white men, that number is one in 214."
• $80 billion: The amount we spend each year to keep people incarcerated in America. For $80 billion, we could:
  • Provide universal preschool for every 3-year-old and 4-year-old in America
  • Double the salary of every high school teacher in America
  • Finance new roads, bridges, and airports; job training programs; research and development
  • Eliminate tuition at every one of our public colleges and universities

---

As the President noted, today's criminal justice system "remains particularly skewed by race and by wealth," and has adverse ripple effects on our country's families and communities:

"A growing body of research shows that people of color are more likely to be stopped, frisked, questioned, charged, detained. African Americans are more likely to be arrested. They are more likely to be sentenced to more time for the same crime. And one of the consequences of this is, around one million fathers are behind bars. Around one in nine African American kids has a parent in prison.

What is that doing to our communities? What’s that doing to those children? Our nation is being robbed of men and women who could be workers and taxpayers, could be more actively involved in their children’s lives, could be role models, could be community leaders, and right now they’re locked up for a non-violent offense."

The Wasted Gift of Donald Trump

The New York Times | OP­ED COLUMNIST


JULY 8, 2015
By Frank Bruni

I keep reading that Donald Trump is wrecking the Republican Party. I keep hearing that he’s a threat to the fortunes of every other Republican presidential candidate, because he sullies the brand and puts them in an impossible position. What bunk. The truth is that he’s an opportunity for them as golden as the namesake nameplates on his phallic towers, if only they would seize it. The brand was plenty sullied before he lent his huff and his hair to the task.

And by giving his Republican rivals a perfect foil, he also gives them a perfect chance to rehabilitate and redeem the party. As it stands now, he’s using them. If they had any guts, they could use him. They could piggyback on the outsize attention that he receives, answering his unhinged tweets and idiotic utterances with something sane and smart, knowing that it, too, would get prominent notice.

They could define themselves in the starkest possible contrast to him,calling him out as the bully and bigot that he is. Then he wouldn’t own the story, because the narrative would be about cooler heads and kinder hearts in the party staring down one of its most needlessly divisive ambassadors and saying: Enough. No more. We’re serious people at the limit of our patience for provocateurs.

There was a hint of this last weekend, when Jeb Bush, whose wife is Mexican­American, lashed out at Trump’s broad­brush comments about Mexican immigrants crossing into America with an agenda of drugs and rape. Bush labeled those remarks “extraordinarily ugly” and “way out of the mainstream” and said that there’s “no tolerance” for them.

But he didn’t exactly volunteer that assessment. It came in response to a reporter’s question, and it came more than two weeks after Trump’s offense. Neither he nor Marco Rubio exhibited any hurry in distancing themselves from Trump, though both of them trumpet their personal biographies as proof that they’re sensitive to Latino immigrants.

On Fox Business on Tuesday, Rubio gave a pathetic master class in cowardly evasion, stammering his way though an interview in which he was asked repeatedly for an opinion about Trump. You would have thought that he was being pressed for malicious gossip about the Easter bunny. He never did manage to upbraid Trump, though he was careful to mention the “legitimate issue” of border security that Trump had raised.

As in 2012, Republicans can’t summon the courage to take on the dark heroes of the party’s lunatic fringe. As in 2012, this could cost them dearly. The Charleston, S.C., church massacre and subsequent debate over the Confederate flag afforded them an ideal moment to talk with passion and poetry about racial healing.

But the leading contenders reacted in fashions either sluggish, terse, muffled or all three. They showed more interest in fleeing the subject than in grabbing profitable hold of it. Trump’s rant about immigrants, which he has since amplified, was another squandered moment. Chris Christie could have made good on his boasts about always telling it like it is and being unconstrained by politesse.

Instead he made clear that he liked Trump and considered him a friend. That soft crunching sound you heard was the supposedly hard­charging New Jersey governor walking on eggshells.

Rand Paul claims the desire and ability to expand the party’s reach to more minorities. So where’s his takedown of Trump? Bush has said that a politician must be willing to lose the party’s nomination in order to win the general election, but that philosophy can’t end with his allegiance to the Common Core. It has to include an unblinking acknowledgment of his party’s craziness whenever and wherever it flares. Trump’s hold on voters stems largely from his lack of any filter and from his directness, traits that they don’t see in establishment candidates.

So his fellow Republicans’ filtered, indirect approach to him just gives him more power. And while he should be irrelevant, he’s becoming ever more relevant, because he’s exposing their timidity and caution. They’re wrong to try to ignore him, because the media won’t do that and because he’s probably going to qualify for the debates. Looking ahead to the first of them, the conservative pundit George Will bought into the notion of Trump as an ineradicable pest who “says something hideously inflammatory, which is all he knows how to say, and then what do the other nine people onstage do?”

Oh, please. That’s hardly an existential crisis. It’s a prompt for an overdue smidgen of valor. Without any hesitation, they tell him that he’s a disgrace. Without any hedging, they tell him that he’s absurd. It’s the truth. And for the Republican Party, it might just be transformative. Thomas L. Friedman is off today.

I invite you to visit my blog, follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/frankbruni and join me on Facebook. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. A version of this op­ed appears in print on July 8, 2015, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: The Wasted Gift of The Donald.

Frank Bruni

Continue reading the main storyShare This Page

• Email

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story