‘Sanctuary cities’ bill could have a blue lining
Democrats see it as stimulus needed to get young Latinos motivated and voting
AUSTIN — Texas Democrats lost the legislative battle over the so-called sanctuary cities bill that will allow police to ask people about their immigration status, but they’re counting on a public backlash to erupt that could give them a political boost in the long haul.
Experts, however, aren’t so sure that the controversy over the legislation will help the Democrats loosen Republicans’ longtime grip on state politics.
Senate Bill 4 cleared its final legislative hurdle Wednesday after the Senate voted to agree with changes House lawmakers made to the bill, sending the legislation to Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature and effectively handing Abbott his most notable political victory yet. Supporters of the Republican-backed bill — which has gained national attention as critics decry it as the nation’s toughest anti-sanctuary city proposal — overcame months of strident opposition from Democrats, who expressed moral outrage at the bill they say will turn local police into deportation officials. Democrats now vow to take their fight to court.
“Texas’ Latino and immigrant communities will never forget what the Republican Party has done this legislative session to their families,” said Manny Garcia, the Texas Democratic Party’s deputy executive director.
Republicans framed the debate as a community safety issue and are confident most voters will be with them as the bill becomes law.
After the House approved SB 4, Democratic Rep. Cesar Blanco of
El Paso said the legislation could imperil Republican majorities in the Texas Legislature in the future.
“We might have lost this battle but we will not lose the war. The arc of history bends towards justice, and there will be a day of reckoning,” Blanco said. “Elections matter, and I believe this will be a lightning rod that mobilizes the Latino vote. It has to be. And if it is, that day of reckoning will come sooner rather than later.”
GOP officials are confident they will weather the storm and said Democrats are the ones out of step with most Texans.
“It is unfortunate that Texas Democrats do not believe in following federal law and keeping dangerous criminals off the street, but this bill will prevent undocumented criminals who have been legally detained from going back on the streets and becoming a repeat offender,” Republican Party of Texas Chairman Tom Mechler said in a statement.
The bill would prohibit local jurisdictions from passing or enforcing ordinances that prohibit police officers from inquiring about a detained person’s immigration status. It also would require police to honor all federal requests to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally until immigration authorities can investigate the person’s status. Sheriffs and police chiefs could face jail time if they refuse to cooperate with federal authorities.
Drawing parallels
Long before it won approval, Democrats drew parallels between SB4 and a handful of notable immigration-related proposals passed by Republican legislatures in other states over the years that essentially use local police to target immigrants in the country illegally and help drive them out of the country.
One example frequently cited by Democrats is the 1994 vote in California to overwhelmingly approve Proposition 187, which sharply limited the social services available to immigrants in the country illegally. Courts halted the law from going into effect, but many political analysts credit the fight over the proposition as the beginning of California’s transformation into a Democratic stronghold.
Sylvia Manzano, a principal pollster at the political research firm Latino Decisions, said Texas Democrats should remember that while Proposition 187 indeed helped increase Latino voter turnout in California, it was a long process and it took time before voters started routinely electing Democrats to statewide offices.
She also noted that California Democrats’ efforts were aided by the party’s already robust political infrastructure, including labor groups and grass-roots activists — something that the party in Texas currently cannot match. Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in Texas since 1994.
“The messaging and the opportunity is absolutely presented, but the challenge is that Texas doesn’t have a viable, competitive Democratic Party,” she said. “That’s what made the difference in California when they were in this position. They pushed back with lots of institutional wherewithal. It was a different political culture, and Texas does not have those components in place to move as quickly.”
More so than California’s experience, legal experts have compared the Texas bill to a 2010 Arizona measure, commonly referred to by opponents as the “show me your papers” law, which required police officers to make a reasonable attempt to determine someone’s immigration status if they suspected the person is in the country illegally.
Pointing to Arizona, Manzano said Democrats are just now beginning to oust staunchly conservative Republicans from office — almost a decade after SB1070 passed.
Most notable was last year’s defeat of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose 24-year tenure of being tough on immigrants made him among the nation’s most outspoken figures in the immigration debate.
“Arizona is still ‘Texas junior,’” Manzano said. “Republicans hold every statewide office. (Former Gov.) Jan Brewer got reelected after SB1070. The only big victory is Joe Arpaio.”
Registration essential
If Democrats want SB4 to have a lasting impact, it will depend largely on the turnout operations the state party and their progressive allies can build, said University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus.
“There was a clear sea change in how Democrats organized and how they courted Latino voters,” said Rottinghaus, who worked on a campaign in Republican-dominated Orange County in California during the first election cycle after the proposition. “Prop 187 served as a catalyst for organizing but not necessarily for turnout. Really, it’s the age-old story: you (have) got to have registration before you have turnout.”
That is an expensive investment in a state as large as Texas, where Hispanics make up almost 40 percent of the population. They account for an estimated 4.8 million voters, or 28 percent of all eligible voters, the second-largest Hispanic statewide eligible voter population in the country, according to the Pew Research Center.
The Office of the State Demographer predicts Latinos will outnumber whites in Texas by 2020 and become a majority population by 2042, which puts a particular emphasis on the political persuasion of young Latinos between 18 and 35, who are among the least likely to vote.
Despite their growth in recent years, young Latinos remain a largely untapped group for traditional political institutions. According to a poll of Latino millennials he conducted shortly before the 2016 election, Rottinghaus found that almost 80 percent said no candidate or political organization had contacted them to urge them to register to vote.
Lionel Sosa, a GOP ad man who has worked in seven presidential campaigns since 1980, does not see SB4 having an immediate impact on Texas Republicans.
“It doesn’t matter now, but it will matter someday,” he said. “Until it really hurts, there’s no reason to do anything differently, and the strength of the Republican Party will continue to be huge maybe for the next four or eight years.”
Look to Texas’ Congressional District 23, where Republican U.S. Rep. Will Hurd prevailed in two hard-fought races against a Democrat in the Latino-majority district that stretches from San Antonio to near El Paso.
“He has a strong Hispanic outreach and already has put forth a pretty moderate tone in terms of the border wall and so forth that is Latino-friendly,” Sosa said. “I think he’s working with Democrats, so more districts will become like Hurd’s, where you have a larger percentage of Latinos than you do white voters, so you got to balance it.”