California Republicans try to get out from under Prop. 187http://www.ocregister.com/articles/california-684688-percent-latino.htmlSept. 27, 2015 Updated 12:00 a.m.
BY BRIAN CALLE / Opinion editor
In politics, what is said is often less important than how it is said. That is one of the takeaways from the California Republican Party, which last weekend diverted from its long history of denouncing illegal immigration, now stating that the state party is “pro-immigrant.” The party also used its semiannual convention, held in Anaheim, to distance itself from disparaging rhetoric about Mexicans that has reared its head in the GOP presidential primary process.
This about face on divisive rhetoric may ease years of punishment at the ballot box, triggered by a strident campaign two decades ago to deny public education and social services to “illegal aliens,” perpetuated by the growing political clout of Latinos, destined to become the largest demographic groups in California.
‘Majority minorty’ state
Regardless of political bent, no one can deny that California’s changing racial and ethnic landscape will be one of the key determinants for state elections. Demographic shifts over the past 50 years have permanently changed the game for political players here.
California is one of only four “majority minority” states (along with Texas, Hawaii and New Mexico) – as well as the District of Columbia – in which more than half the population belongs to a minority racial or ethnic group. In March 2014, California became the second state, after New Mexico, whose Latino population outnumbered its non-Latino white population. Further diversity is found in California’s Asian American population, the highest concentration of any state.
This growing diversity is unsurprising. California, after all, boasts an ideal geographic location for immigration both from south of the U.S. and from across the Pacific, not to mention a picturesque landscape and famously desirable climate. What is surprising, however, is just how quickly these demographics have shifted. In 1980, whites made up 67 percent of California’s population, while Latinos accounted for 19.0 percent. Asians, who had been officially permitted to immigrate in large numbers to the United States only following the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, contributed another 5.3 percent of the population.
Within 10 years, however, the Latino population had bloomed to 26 percent of Californians, and the Asian population had reached 9 percent (accounting for a full 40 percent of all Asian Americans).
Two main factors contributed to California’s diversity boom. The first, of course, was high levels of immigration. According to the Immigration Policy Center, the foreign-born share of California’s population, already at a significant 15.1 percent in 1980, shot up to 21.7 percent in 1990 and had climbed to 26.9 percent by 2010.
Immigration has slowed somewhat in recent years, particularly for Latinos, and especially since the housing bubble burst in 2007. Although Latino immigrants still outnumber their Asian counterparts in California, new arrivals are more likely to come from across the Pacific. Projections from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy estimate the foreign-born share of California’s population will stabilize at 27.2 percent.
While California has always been a prime destination for immigrants, however, it also has a rate much higher than average of people leaving the state. Outmigration swelled with the housing bubble; in 2005, the Census Bureau reported, 160 people moved from California to another state for every 100 from another state that moved in.
This high rate of domestic outmigration has further narrowed the gap between California’s white and Latino populations, given that the bulk of domestic migration in America tends to be white. Some alarmist commentators have linked this to the cultural-avoidance phenomenon of “white flight,” but there is no evidence to suggest that whites as a group are more eager to leave California than they are to enter it.
The second main factor contributing to California’s climbing minority populations is high birth rates among Latinos that far outstrip both white and Asian American rates (though this, too, has slowed in recent years). Starting in the mid-1990s, the lion’s share of California births have been Latino, accounting for 46.0 percent of all births in 1995 and topping 50.0 percent each year from 2004-10, before slightly receding to 48.6 percent in 2012.
The result is that, as of 2014, Latinos represented 40 percent of California’s population, while whites made up 39.0 percent, and Asian Americans contributed 14.0 percent. These trends may be slowing, but they have had a permanent effect on California’s demographic climate. In 2014, 51.7 percent of California’s children were Latino, 27.0 percent were white, and 10.7 percent were Asian.
The California Department of Finance projects that Latinos will make up the majority of California residents sometime after 2060; in the meantime, Latinos remain California’s largest ethnic plurality.
Democratic dominance
These trends account for much of the perception that California votes are set to become even more Democratic in coming years. After all, California’s Asian and Latino voters have long leaned Democratic. In California’s 2014 gubernatorial election, for example, Gov. Jerry Brown won 73 percent of the Latino vote to Republican Neel Kashkari’s 27 percent.
It is worth pointing out, however, that the 2014 gubernatorial election saw the state GOP gain ground as Asian American Republican women triumphed against Democratic opponents. Vietnamese American Janet Nguyen bested Jose Solorio for an Orange County seat in the state Senate, and Korean American Young Kim defeated incumbent O.C. Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva.
And, while, Latinos are considered a solid blue voting bloc. Research from the Public Policy Institute of California reveals that the Latino vote may be less of a lock for the Democratic Party than it appears at first glance.
In a series of seven polls of likely Latino voters in 2013-14, PPIC found that, while Latinos identified as Democratic by a commanding margin (59 percent, versus 18 percent who identified as Republicans), they also identified as conservatives (33 percent) nearly as often as they identified as liberals (34 percent). This suggests that for Latinos, party allegiance is not entirely based on loyalty to its platform but more on concern over perceived Republican stances on certain issues.
Pivotal election
The most important of those issues is immigration. More specifically, it was Proposition 187, the Republican-backed 1994 ballot measure that barred undocumented immigrants access to public services ranging from education to health care.
Termed the “Save Our State” initiative, Prop. 187 turned the issue of illegal immigration, previously a largely bipartisan concern, into a political slug fest during that year’s gubernatorial campaign. The Republican incumbent, Pete Wilson, supported the proposition, promising to enforce it fully. Democratic challenger Kathleen Brown took Wilson fiercely to task as a bully who would throw a politically unpopular group under the bus to score points with his constituency.
Prop. 187 and Wilson triumphed on Election Day, but it was a pyrrhic victory for Republicans. During Wilson’s first run for governor in 1990, Latinos favored his Democratic challenger by a mere 6 percentage points. After he declared his support for Prop. 187, however, Latino voters favored his opponent by 46 points.
Prop. 187 was a watershed moment for California politics, one whose long-term impact on GOP support has been overlooked. In the two decades since, Republicans have consistently failed to regain the ground lost to the “Prop. 187 effect.”
What made Prop. 187 so enduringly devastating for Republicans was the unprecedented way in which it energized Latino youth to political action. In the days leading up to the vote, high school and even middle-school students boycotted classes or walked out of classrooms across the state to protest the initiative. I was among them.
Although Prop. 187 was immediately struck down in court and never fully implemented, these students – now voters – have proven to have long memories. A Tomás Rivera Policy Institute survey of California Latino voters during the 2000 election found that 53 percent still associated the Republican Party with Wilson, by then out of office. In 2010, when Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman appointed Wilson her campaign co-chair, a full 80 percent of Latino voters reported that they were somewhat or very concerned with the appointment.
While Republicans have dug a deep hole for themselves in the Golden State, all is not lost for the GOP, which has begun to adjust to the realities of California’s new demographics in its policies, its branding and the demographics of its own elected officials.
Helping their cause is the fact that immigration today is far from the most significant of Latinos’ political concerns. In one 2014 survey, 21 percent of California Latinos termed education their biggest policy issue, while 16 percent picked jobs. Immigration came in seventh place, with 8 percent.
Yet while most Latinos have other matters on their mind, immigration remains a “threshold issue,” according to Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. If Republicans are to have any credibility with Latino voters, immigration is still an area they must thoughtfully address.
This piece was adapted from a chapter of “Taxifornia 2016: 14 Essays on the Future of California,” which is available on Amazon.com.
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Right now the GOP is into a full court press, to demonstrate its profound dislike of Hispanics, by word and deed. Ironic since two of their own candidates have Hispanic blood.
My county has a population equal to the state of Iowa, and is noted in the article with the two Republican elected Asian American women; Nguyen and Kim. US Hose reps for OC include Issa, Rohrabacher, Royce.
Living here in REALITYVILLE is really not bad at all.
