Arizona GOP faces Hispanic wrath

Friday, May 28, 2010 | 3 a.m.

The Arizona Republican Party, following hard-fought primaries, plans a victory dinner in Phoenix on Aug. 27. There is a perfect speaker: former California Gov. Pete Wilson.

Arizona Republicans believe they’re riding a big anti-illegal immigration wave to success in November. Wilson can regale them with how he pursued a similar strategy in 1994, winning re-election with 55 percent of the vote after embracing Proposition 187 to cut off state-funded education and health programs for children of illegal immigrants.

Wilson might also remind his political neighbors that since then the only other member of his party to win a major statewide election is the pro-immigration Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger; the Democrats have swept every presidential contest in the Golden State since then; Republicans had captured California in six of the previous seven presidential contests and five of the seven most recent gubernatorial races.

Thanks to Wilson, the Republican brand is anathema to much of the fast-growing Hispanic vote in California.

“There are a lot of similarities between what’s happening in Arizona and what happened in California in 1994,” says Sergio Bendixen, a political pollster and consultant specializing in the Hispanic vote. “That made California a deep blue state (as in Democratic) and Republicans are making the same mistake now trying to benefit on anti-immigration.”

Arizona’s new law allows police to detain anyone who can’t produce proof of citizenship when stopped for infractions as minor as running a red light, or deemed suspicious.

The catalysts for the Arizona law were the huge number of undocumented workers flowing into that state in recent years, and some highly publicized crimes, including the murder of a rancher near the border. Arizona Republicans claim they are taking action because the federal government has abdicated its responsibilities.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey earlier this month showed that while non-Latinos back the Arizona law by almost 2 to 1, 70 percent of Hispanic voters oppose it, and 8 in 10 say they believe it’s likely to lead to discrimination against legal immigrants.

There is widespread resentment among Hispanics that they will be singled out as a result of this law, despite the insistence of Arizona officials that racial profiling is impermissible.

Bendixen says Hispanics resent the suggestion that immigrants are more prone to criminality, an allegation that is contradicted by the vast majority of academic studies and statistics. In Arizona, although immigration has soared in recent years, the crime rate has actually dropped.

Hispanics know these anti-immigration measures have a partisan coloration. The Arizona law passed on a virtual party-line vote, with no Democrats in support, and only one Republican state senator in opposition. It was signed by a Republican governor.

Resentment is likely to endure among Hispanics, while the attention of supporters moves to other issues. Hispanics are the fastest-growing U.S. voting bloc, comprising 7.4 percent of the electorate in the last presidential election, double their proportion 20 years earlier.

If this growing bloc continues to go 2 to 1 or more Democratic, as it did in the last presidential race, Republicans face a huge long-term problem.

Even in the short-term, support may erode. Few experts think the Arizona law will actually reduce illegal immigration or curb crime. Cities and organizations already are vowing to boycott conventions or tourism in Arizona. Major League Baseball, where more than one-quarter of the players are Hispanic, is under pressure to move the All-Star Game from Phoenix next year.

And, more than a few legal experts question whether the law passes constitutional muster.

To be sure, the federal government needs to devote a lot more resources to the Arizona border. The number of personnel patrolling the Mexican border has more than doubled over the last decade to 20,000, although the most porous spots are in Arizona. It would be better to step up enforcement in conjunction with a liberalized immigration law, although it can’t wait for that.

Albert hunt is Bloomberg News’ executive editor for Washington