For Schwarzenegger, Who
Seeks Inroads With Latinos
Wall Street Journal – June 12, 2006; Page A4
REDDING, Calif. — Pacing before a circle of supporters in this northern California city, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger trotted out a slightly romanticized story of a young Austrian who arrived in America in 1968 with little more than $20 and a gym bag. "Everything I have received in life is in California," Mr. Schwarzenegger said, adding that he would never have been successful had he immigrated to, say, Holland.
Mr. Schwarzenegger’s frequent invocation of his achievements as a foreign national — millionaire status, megacelebrity and a swift rise to a pinnacle of American politics — is a major element of his strategy for navigating the issue of immigration in a tight re-election campaign in a state roiled more than any other by the different poles in the debate.
On specifics like border enforcement and benefits for the estimated three million illegal immigrants in his state, he tries to walk a middle ground. But often he tries to avoid the specifics altogether, despite polls showing immigration is on voters’ minds. In the Redding speech and on other stops during the day last week, he chose not to touch the topic, beyond touting his own immigrant past. Asked at a recent news conference about the matter, he responded that "immigration is a big issue" — and then segued immediately into repairing the state’s crumbling infrastructure.
"His position doesn’t fit neatly into either camp," says Duf Sundheim, chairman of the California Republican Party. He believes that the governor, in coupling a mix of personal anecdotes with a moderate policy stance, may be able to win support from moderates and the expanding Latino electorate on the issue without offending his deeply conservative base, which would like to see a tough crackdown on illegal immigrants.
Mr. Schwarzenegger may have a particularly tough time making inroads with Latino voters, thanks in part to the legacy left behind a decade ago by the state’s last Republican governor, Pete Wilson. In 1994, Mr. Wilson championed a proposition to crack down on illegal immigrants as the cornerstone of his own re-election campaign. Though the measure passed handily, critics cast the proposal as mean-spirited, if not openly racist. Ultimately, the issue was gutted in a court challenge; both succeeding governors, Democrat Gray Davis and Mr. Schwarzenegger declined to implement the surviving bits of the proposition Mr. Wilson had championed.
"It’s unfortunate, but yes, there’s some lingering hard feelings left behind by that initiative," said Mr. Sundheim, acknowledging that Mr. Wilson’s proposal diminished his party’s appeal with Latinos for more than a decade. Indeed, in the 1990 election, Mr. Wilson pulled nearly half the Latino vote. But after championing Proposition 187 four years later, his support rate among that voting bloc tumbled to 25%. Early polls have shown that Mr. Schwarzenegger is currently doing about as poorly among Latinos — though he did capture 32% of the Latino vote in his first quest for office three years ago, when he squared off against a Latino candidate in a crowded field.
Mr. Schwarzenegger’s campaign says shoring up Latino votes is a priority in a re-election campaign they expect to be down to the wire, especially as Latino voters gain more clout. When Mr. Wilson first launched his illegal-immigrant proposal, Latinos made up just 9% of the state’s voters. Since then, their share of the electorate has more than doubled.
Yet conservatives are growing increasingly clamorous about cracking down on illegal immigrants. In a special congressional election near San Diego last week, Republican Brian Bilbray won a close contest by urging a hard line on border enforcement, attacking President Bush and other Republican officials for doing too little on the issue.
Mr. Sundheim says California Republicans considered advancing a border-security initiative for the fall’s ballot as a get-out-the-vote strategy for the state’s conservatives. But they rejected the idea when polling revealed that most voters view the issue as a federal problem, and not one that states ought to bankroll.
Mr. Schwarzenegger has at times seemed to take a tough line on immigration — though it is unclear if those were intentional signals or missteps. Last year, in a speech to newspaper editors, he called for "closing" the border with Mexico. Aides quickly corrected the governor, saying he had misspoken and simply meant the border should be secured. He once voiced support for the Minutemen organization, a citizen corps of border-watchers that some critics say is nothing more than an anti-immigration vigilante group. And he also vetoed a proposal to provide driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, even as he said he supported the concept.
In recent months, Mr. Schwarzenegger has emphasized heightened border security, even while criticizing recent Washington efforts to install federal troops on the border as "half-baked." In stump speeches, Mr. Schwarzenegger says he favors some form of amnesty for illegal immigrants but makes clear that he isn’t necessarily willing to extend all the privileges of citizenship to those who don’t have a legal right to reside in the country. He has said he supports a guest-worker program in line with what the Bush administration has proposed, even though many conservatives blanch at the idea. Mr. Schwarzenegger’s campaign aides note that while Mr. Bush is deeply unpopular in California, his immigration package enjoys wider support.
Though polls show that voters consider immigration a priority, neither Mr. Schwarzenegger nor his Democratic challenger Phil Angelides has made it much of a centerpiece in their respective campaigns. From a policy standpoint, very little daylight appears between the two men. California pollster Mark DiCamillo said that is unlikely to change. "I don’t think immigration will play to anyone’s advantage," he said.
Mr. Schwarzenegger’s campaign aides say that as Latinos have integrated into California’s culture, it has become easier to woo them with standard Republican planks, such as the governor’s bid to rebuild the state’s crumbling infrastructure and his first-term move to abolish the state’s automobile tax. The levy was considered especially onerous for the state’s less well-heeled residents, a group that includes many fresh immigrants.
Campaign strategist Matthew Dowd questions the widely held assumption that California’s Latinos and whites disagree on immigration. "The myth is that Latinos don’t like border enforcement," Mr. Dowd said, noting that may not be true for immigrants who entered the country legally and played by the rules. "There’s not this set of issues that Latinos care about and then there’s everybody else."