Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- April 14, 1998
'Race card' is wild card as campaign gets under way
By Ralph Z. Hallow
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
This is the second in a series on the major national issues in the campaigns of 1998, with control of Congress in the balance. Tomorrow: taxes and spending.
As the 1998 campaigns begin in earnest, Republican Party leaders are bent on blurring differences between the two parties on such issues as racial quotas, immigration and bilingual education, while Democrats appear just as ready to talk them up.
For the fall elections, GOP leaders are taking their cue from pollsters and advisers who argue that the party must lure more black and Hispanic voters to survive as a majority party.
"Is race going to be an issue this fall? No," said GOP pollster Ed Goeas. "It is a dangerous card to play, and I see nothing to indicate it is a burning concern of people."
But many Democrats, who need a net gain of just 11 seats to recapture control of the House of Representatives, which they lost in 1994, think their best shot is the 10 open seats and 12 GOP districts that have large black or Hispanic populations.
Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman, has said openly that Democrats will target GOP districts with significant Hispanic populations, including those held by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, Rep. J.D. Hayworth of Arizona and Rep. Frank Riggs, who is leaving Congress at year's end.
President Clinton also has played to his party's electoral base with his yearlong "national conversation on race." Mr. Clinton will be in Houston today for a meeting of his race panel to talk about the role of race in sports.
Mr. Goeas said Democratic efforts to benefit from the race issue won't work nationally. "The only place where race comes into play is with Hispanics in California," he said.
Indeed, the hottest ballot item anywhere is the June 2 primary "English for the Children" initiative, known as Proposition 227, which would all but end bilingual education in California's public schools.
The latest Field poll shows it has the support of 70 percent of California voters, including 61 percent of Hispanics, 63 percent of blacks, 71 percent of whites and 75 percent of Asians, and 57 percent of Democrats and 84 percent of Republicans.
Yet none of the candidates for governor in either party backs it.
California GOP Chairman Michael Schroeder opposes it for fear of alienating Hispanics. "If we get into a debate about the superiority of one culture over another, then we end up being perceived as harsh, racist and out of touch," Mr. Schroeder said.
Still, Mr. Schroeder said racial quotas and immigration will figure heavily this fall in his state, often a leading indicator of national political trends. Former Northwest Airlines executive Al Checchi and third-term Rep. Jane Harman of Southern California, both rivals for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, want to reinstate the racial and sexual preferences that voters ended in 1996 with the passage of Proposition 209.
Mrs. Harman and Mr. Checchi also want to repeal Proposition 187, which barred nonemergency state aid to illegal immigrants.
"We will make sure every voter knows Checchi and Harman's positions, which are badly out of step with California voters," Mr. Schroeder said.
The expected GOP nominee for governor, Attorney General Dan Lungren, opposes both racial and sexual preferences and government benefits to illegal aliens.
Pollsters agree that in a non-presidential election year, the task for each party is to energize its voter base while avoiding issues that get the other side excited.
"Swing voters do not vote in those elections, and [Republicans] don't want to raise issues that have minimum effect on our base but a big effect on theirs," said Mr. Goeas. "Unfortunately, a lot of racial issues tend to raise the intensity of their base but not of ours."
GOP strategist Frank Luntz also doesn't think the "race card," which he disdains, should or will be played anywhere. There are "no hot national issues or debates on quotas that would divide people by race," he said.
"Playing the race card leaves the electorate in ruins. Republicans don't have to play it. On social, cultural and economic issues, there are plenty of reasons why Hispanics and many blacks should come over to the [GOP]," Mr. Luntz said.
Some analysts say affirmative action, bilingual education and immigration have played themselves out. "Republicans have already won what they are going to win on these issues," said Democratic campaign strategist Brian Lunde. "They kind of pushed the Democrat to be an urban minority party."
But Democrats think they will get a boost in scores of Republican-held districts where the courts have required the redrawing of the lines. In many of those districts, blacks or Hispanics now hold the balance of power, and recent elections suggest that, with some exceptions, black and Hispanic voters are not overwhelmingly friendly to the GOP.
In 1996, after passage of GOP-backed legislation to tighten immigration controls and end welfare benefits for illegal immigrants, Hispanic support for Democrats jumped to 72 percent from 59 percent two years earlier.
And, compounding the GOP's problems, Hispanic voters tend to show up at the polls. In 1996, 75 percent of registered Hispanics voted, a much higher rate than the 49 percent among all registered voters.
In the 1996 presidential elections, President Clinton captured 86 percent of the black vote, compared with just 10 percent for GOP challenger Bob Dole, despite decades of GOP outreach to blacks. Republicans fared a bit better in House races, picking up 18 percent of the black vote, or 8 percentage points better than they did in 1992.
Mr. Frost and other Democratic leaders have already begun playing up the race issue by accusing Republicans of alienating Hispanic voters during the long and often bitter challenge to the 1996 election of Rep. Loretta Sanchez, California Democrat, by Robert K. Dornan, the GOP incumbent. Republicans, spooked by the accusations, eventually withdrew the challenge.
House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, are supporting legislation to speed up the citizenship process for new immigrants, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Mr. Gephardt and fellow Democrats have accused Republicans of trying to intimidate Hispanic voters.
Mr. Gephardt said Republicans disserved the Hispanic community's interests on a range of issues, from their support of "English-only" legislation to new immigration restrictions to staunch GOP opposition to the U.S. Census Bureau's proposal to use "sampling," a statistical estimating method that many demographers believe would result in higher counts for both Hispanics and blacks.
Republicans find themselves in a bind. Many of their constituents worry that what is a uniquely American culture, bound together by the concept of opportunity based on merit and on a single language, is in danger of fragmenting into ethnic and racial interest groups.
For example, in Michigan, where immigrants tend to come south from Canada, an intraparty spat over a moratorium on legal immigration is under way.
Sen. Spencer Abraham, the Michigan Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration and who is considered by some conservatives as a centrist with a liberal's instincts, is facing a primary challenge from Dr. John Tanton, the founder of the nation's largest anti-immigration lobby, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
But GOP leaders and their advisers have concluded that efforts to arrest that fragmentation alienate minority voters. GOP candidates need at least a larger share of middle-class black and Hispanic votes to stay on top politically.
Arnie Steinberg, a conservative California pollster and chief political consultant for Proposition 209, which ended state preference programs, has a different take.
"The right thing for Republicans is to adopt a principled position and stick with it through thick and thin," he said. "All sorts of people, including Democrats, could be attracted to that. The Republicans' problem is they do things halfheartedly and give the impression that what they are doing is suspect."
But House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been listening to Mr. Luntz, who counsels against playing up divisive racial issues. The Georgia Republican has canned an earlier promise to try to end federally mandated racial and sexual preferences, quotas and set-asides. Over grumbling from conservative House Republicans, Mr. Gingrich masterminded the one-vote passage last month of a bill that could lead to statehood for the mostly Spanish-speaking territory of Puerto Rico.
Texas Republicans are also girding for an attack by Democrats, who would like to solidify their base by using the GOP platform's tough language opposing bilingual education and illegal immigration.
Republicans are hoping the popularity of Gov. George W. Bush with Hispanics will offset Democratic attempts to turn language and immigration into wedge issues.
Texas GOP Chairman Susan Weddington said, "It is very much a transition time in Texas. You see Hispanics emerging as as a very independent bloc of voters."
Because Democrats have "demonized" the bilingual education language in the state GOP platform, she said, the upcoming state GOP convention "will modify the language so it resonates with people but doesn't change the fact that we believe every child should be able to read, write and speak English well."
Race issues can cut against Democrats as well.
Racial preferences and jobs may come up in House Minority Whip David Bonior's re-election campaign, according to GOP campaign sources who consider him more liberal than his Michigan district and therefore potentially vulnerable.
In Arkansas, Rep. Vic Snyder, a first-term Democrat from Little Rock, may see racial preferences emerge as an issue in his district, which is 18 percent black.
Mr. Dornan is poised for a rematch with Mrs. Sanchez, who he still insists stole the 1996 election, in a California district that is 50 percent Hispanic.
In Southern California, Rep. Brad Sherman, a first-term Democrat and a target of the Republicans this year, may find the issues coming up in his re-election race.
In New Jersey, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a first-term Democrat, and Frank Pallone Jr., a sixth-term Democrat, can also expect to see their GOP challengers raise affirmative action and its effect on jobs as an issue.
Look for wedge issues to show up in the contest between Democrat Victor Morales, who once attacked fellow Texas Hispanic Rep. Henry Bonilla as a "coconut" -- brown on the outside and white on the inside -- and "wannabe white" because he is a Republican. Mr. Morales is challenging freshman Republican Rep. Pete Sessions, a white conservative from Dallas.
A number of states face initiatives to make English the official language, with Alaska voters to decide on one such proposal this fall. Iowa's GOP-controlled legislature and Missouri's Democratic-controlled legislature are expected to pass official-English measures in a few weeks.
In Maryland, an official-English measure passed the Democratic-controlled state House, but even if it makes it through the Senate, backers expect Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat, to veto it.
In Utah, the GOP-controlled state legislature blocked an English-only initiative this session and it is not expected to come up as a ballot initiative until 1999, while in Oklahoma, a single Democratic opponent of an official-English law blocked the measure after it passed the Democratic-controlled state House 97-1.
- Staff researchers John Haydon and Clark Eberly contributed to this story.
- Ralph Z. Hallow will track the race issue through the 1998 elections. He can be reached by e-mail at (hallow@ twtmail.com).
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
To subscribe to the Washington Times National Weekly Edition, click this icon or call 800-363-9118.
