To win in Nev., migrants are key
For GOP, Dems, issue takes on a different tone
Editor’s note: The 2016 presidential election will be decisive when it comes to the nation’s broken immigration system. The Arizona Republic sent reporters and photographers to five influential presidential-nominating states to find out what this campaign season will mean for the future of American immigration. Read more at immigration .azcentral.com.
LAS VEGAS — Since he became a U.S. citizen 20 years ago, Carlos Filoteo has voted almost exclusively for Democrats, beginning with President Bill Clinton’s re-election in 1996.
In December, Filoteo
accepted an invitation from his two Republican sons-in-law to attend a campaign rally for U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, RFla., at the Renaissance Hotel.
During a 20-minute speech, Rubio, who lived in Las Vegas as a child, spoke about his Cuban immigrant parents, and how “through hard work and perseverance” they had managed to achieve the American dream — happiness, success and “a safe home in a stable neighborhood” — while working in the casinos.
“My father was a bartender. He worked banquets at Sam’s Town,” Rubio told a room full of several hundred supporters. “And my mother was a maid at the Imperial Palace.”
Rubio’s speech resonated with Filoteo’s immigrant experience, working his way up from a janitor to owning his own janitorial business before retiring and becoming an artist. Filoteo, dressed in a dark suit jacket over a T-shirt, was so moved he muscled his way through the crowd to shake Rubio’s hand.
“Rubio,” Filoteo recalled telling the candidate in Spanish. “Ahora, tu luciste mas fuerte y firme!” Translation: Rubio. You nailed it!
Now the Mexican immigrant and registered Democrat says he wouldn’t rule out voting for a Republican should Rubio win the nomination because, as he put it, “Marco Rubio is a Latino, and I think that one day a Latino will be president of the United States, because the Latinos come to this country to support, to help, to work hard and to be part of this country.”
That is encouraging news for Republicans trying to mend political fences with Latinos, who tend to vote Democratic, in hopes of winning back Nevada.
Unlike other crucial presidential caucus and primary states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Latinos already are a political force in Nevada, which held its Democratic caucuses on Saturday and is set to hold its Republican caucuses on Tuesday.
In this battleground state, Latino voters increasingly hold the key to whether a Democrat or a Republican will win the state’s general election in November and ultimately the White House.
Also at stake is the future of immigration reform, a long-standing issue for Filoteo and many other Latinos that the next president can either help advance or shelve for the next four years.
Because of Latinos’ growing electoral power in Nevada, both parties have a history of reaching out to them. Some see in the state a glimpse of Latinos’ potential as a national political force.
Latinos make up 27 percent of the state’s 2.8 million residents, and at least 15 percent of its voters, up from 5 percent in 1994, according to the polling organization Latino Decisions.
So it was no coincidence that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton chose North Las Vegas to unveil an immigration plan that promises to go further than President Barack Obama in shielding from deportation the families of undocumented immigrants brought into the United States as children.
Clinton, the party’s once presumptive front-runner, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described socialist and independent U.S. senator from Vermont, competed hard for the Latino vote ahead of Saturday’s caucuses. Both campaigns courted Nevada’s “dreamers,” as the young immigrants have become known. Clinton ultimately won.
Though Obama carried Nevada in 2008 and 2012, Republicans have had recent successes, too. Republican Brian Sandoval, who was elected governor in 2010, easily won re-election in 2014, and the Nevada Legislature is now under GOP control.
The race for the seat held by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., offers perhaps the best opportunity this year for Republicans to expand their U.S. Senate majority. It is shaping up as a battle between former Democratic Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and U.S. Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev.
It makes sense that national Republicans, who have made Latino outreach a priority since the party’s loss in the 2012 presidential election, would consider Nevada a state that they could flip back into the red column, even as Democrats and their big-labor allies work to mobilize Hispanic voters to turn out against them.
Despite the inroads that Nevada Republicans have made with Latino voters, immigration hard-liner Donald Trump has topped GOP polls in Nevada as he has nationally and in other key early states.
In this month’s CNN/ORC poll, Trump dominated the GOP field in Nevada with 45 percent support. Rubio was a distant second at 19 percent. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was third with 17 percent. The poll’s sample of likely Republican caucusgoers had a margin of error of plus or minus 6.5 percentage points.
Trump, who won New Hampshire’s GOP primary, launched his presidential campaign by dubbing Mexican immigrants “rapists,” drug-runners and criminals, and in December focused on immigrant-related crime as he rallied an enthusiastic crowd at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino.
Trump’s road show leans heavily on anti-immigrant rhetoric, and his vow to build a border wall at Mexico’s expense.
“It’s the incompetent people (in U.S. government) — they allow these people to come into our country,” Trump said of lax border enforcement that he says enables immigrants accused of vicious crimes to enter the U.S. “It’s a disgrace.”
At the Dec.14 Las Vegas event, Trump was interrupted by protesters several times, and those doing the disrupting were jettisoned each time to the delight of Trump’s fans.
“Light the (expletive) on fire,” someone in the crowd shouted as a Black man was shown the door.
David Damore, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, warned that Trump’s perceived hostility toward immigrants and minorities is a liability for Republicans in Nevada.
“It hurts. We’ve done some polling on that that shows that inflammatory rhetoric sort of spills over to the whole party,” said Damore, who also is a senior analyst for Latino Decisions. “Even today, for example, the Democrats are running a bunch of ads on the Web asking, ‘Does Joe Heck support Donald Trump?’ So you can sort of see that as the playbook, if you will.”
Beyond traditional base
Whether Republicans can compete beyond their traditional base, attracting voters such as Filoteo, is part of what’s at stake for them in the immigration debate.
The Republican National Committee’s postmortem on the 2012 loss of its nominee Mitt Romney to Obama starkly warned that U.S. population growth, and the declining influence of White voters, was working against the party.
The 1980 electorate was 88 percent White, compared with 72 percent in 2012, the report’s authors noted. The Hispanic bloc was 10 percent in 2012 and growing.
“The nation’s demographic changes add to the urgency of recognizing how precarious our position has become,” the GOP report said. “... Unless Republicans are able to grow our appeal the way GOP governors have done, the changes tilt the playing field even more in the Democratic direction. ... If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to engage them and show our sincerity.”
The rhetoric about immigrants from Trump and Cruz could have the opposite effect. But others among the 2016 Republican presidential field could have more success at winning over Latinos.
Rubio, as a member of the “Gang of Eight,” helped negotiate a bipartisan comprehensive immigration-reform bill that passed the Senate but was ignored by the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. As a presidential candidate, Rubio has abandoned the concept of strengthening border security, legalizing undocumented immigrants and revamping the visa system in a single, massive piece of legislation.
And trying to straddle both the conservative and establishment wings of the Republican Party, Rubio struck a tougher tone on immigration in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, where anti-“amnesty” voices dominated the conversation among the Republican base.
With Nevada’s GOP caucus days away, Rubio could use the momentum from a strong caucus showing after a disappointing fifth-place finish in New Hampshire.
The overwhelming support from Latino voters, driven in large part by the powerful Culinary Workers Union that represents many employed in the state’s casino and hospitality industry, helped Obama carry Nevada and secure a second term in the White House.
But Republicans have been gaining ground with Latino voters in Nevada. In 2014, Sandoval, the state’s first Latino governor, won re-election with 47 percent of the Latino vote, up from 17 percent in 2010, according to Latino Decisions.
Under Sandoval, the then-Democratic-controlled Nevada Legislature passed a bill in 2013 allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s authorization cards. Sandoval’s signature on the legislation helped his party make inroads with Latino voters. The Legislature also voted the same year to boost education funding by $50 million for English-language learners, most of whom are Latinos.
Those efforts at the state level could
“We view Nevada as a state that is critical for us to win in 2016, and that is why you have seen our commitment so early.”
REPUBLICANRUTH GUERRA NATIONAL COMMITTEE SPOKESWOMAN
show the way for the Republican Party’s national effort to reach out to Latino voters in hopes of regaining the Silver State in the November presidential election.
Another opportunity for Republicans: reminding Latinos that Obama failed to deliver on immigration reform despite promising in the 2008 race that it would be an early priority of his presidency. While the Republicancontrolled House of Representatives unquestionably can be blamed for killing immigration reform in 2013 and 2014, Obama took office in 2009 with a Congress dominated by Democrats, and did not act on the issue.
“We view Nevada as a state that is critical for us to win in 2016, and that is why you have seen our commitment so early,” Ruth Guerra, an RNC spokeswoman, said in December, on the day of the Republican presidentialprimary debate in Las Vegas.
One way Republicans are trying to win is by recruiting and training Latino Millennials such as Luis Rodriguez to go to heavily Latino neighborhoods to register voters. But that effort hasn’t always gone so well.
The 20-year-old is a third-year University of Nevada-Las Vegas, student studying political science.
The son of Cuban immigrants, Rodriguez was raised a Republican. But many of the Latinos he encounters in Las Vegas are Democrats. Going door to door gives him an opportunity to ask Latinos, “Hey, why are you a Democrat?” in hopes of selling them on a GOP agenda of shared social values and economic growth.
“We’d give them our story of why we’re a Republican and see if they might change,” Rodriguez said, taking a break from escorting Republican presidential candidates during the debate at the Venetian Hotel and Casino on the Strip.
In a few instances, Latinos he encountered told him, “I identified myself as a Democrat for so long that I never realized that I wasn’t truly a Democrat, I was a Republican.”
But for the most part, it has been frustrating. “It was a lot of closed doors,” he said.
Turned off by rhetoric
Many Latinos such as Ingrid Montenegro have been turned off by Republican candidates’ rhetoric on immigration.
“Republicans, definitely not,” Montenegro said, when asked who she was voting for.
She was seated next to a “victory” poster in the headquarters of the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, within the shadow of Las Vegas’ Stratosphere tower.
Montenegro, a 41-year old Guatemalan immigrant, works as a snackbar attendant at Bally’s Hotel and Casino and is a member of the union, which, with 57,000 members, represents more than 90 percent of bartenders, bus boys, restaurant workers and other non-gaming employees on the Strip. It wields considerable political power in Nevada, with the ability to turn out large numbers of Democratic voters.
Fifty-three percent of the union’s members are Latinos, a large portion of them immigrants, according to Yvanna Cancela, the union’s political director. As a result, the union supports pro-immigration-reform candidates.
The union was the first labor group in the nation to endorse Obama, Cancela said, helping him win Nevada in 2008 and 2012. And its support was critical to Reid’s 2010 re-election.
Montenegro admits she didn’t know much about the American political system when she became a citizen in 2006.
“At first I had to ask, ‘What is the difference between a Democrat and a Republican?’ ” she said. “The answer that they gave me was, ‘Well, Democrats are going for the poor, and Republicans are the rich people.’ ‘ OK,’ I said, ‘then I’m Democrat because definitely I am poor.’ ”
Now she is involved with the union’s efforts to get Latinos to vote. For many union workers, immigration is a key issue because they have family members who are undocumented, or were once undocumented themselves, Montenegro said.
Her mother brought her to the U.S. illegally when she was 14, but she was able to get a green card after her mother received asylum. She said several relatives, however, still don’t have their papers and worry about being sent back to Guatemala.
“It is a big issue for me because a lot of families are falling apart because of the immigration,” she said.
The Democratic candidates, former Secretary of State Clinton and Sanders, support immigration reforms giving undocumented immigrants a chance to legalize their status and eventually become citizens.
But Obama’s support among Nevada Latinos in 2012 was down from 2008. And after Obama failed to deliver on his promise to pass immigration reform, there is a concern among Democrats that many Latinos may stay home in November.
That is what happened during the midterm elections in 2014, when Democrats got crushed in every statewide race here.
As a result, first-term Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford lost to Republican challenger Crescent Hardy in Nevada’s 4th Congressional District, which is 29 percent Latino and includes parts of North Las Vegas and most of central Nevada.
Republicans also took control of both chambers of the Legislature, “giving the party unified control of state government for the first time since the late 1920s,” Damore wrote.
Cancela believes Trump’s attacks on undocumented immigrants and promises to build a giant wall on the border with Mexico will galvanize Latinos to vote in 2016.
But Trump’s rhetoric has resonated with at least some Latinos.
John Elizondo’s relatives came to the United States from Mexico. A former Democrat, Elizondo, a 65-year-old Las Vegas limo driver, was one of about 5,000 people who packed a ballroom at the Westgate for Trump.
Elizondo brought along a package of toilet paper with a homemade label taped to the front that said, “Time to wipe the crap out of Washington!”
Elizondo said he supports Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the U.S.Mexico border. Immigrants should come legally, he says, the way his mother and grandparents did decades ago.
“Build that wall high. I’d electrify it too,” Elizando said as he waited for Trump to take the stage.
Democrats, meanwhile, are focusing on the 120,000 Latinos in Nevada who are eligible to vote but haven’t registered, said Andres Ramirez, a Democratic strategist.
“That is large enough to flip any election,” Ramirez said. “Although we are confident in the current majorities we hold among registered voters, there is no way we can allow ourselves to not continue to focus on mobilizing and increasing and maintaining our advantages with these new voters who have not registered yet.”
Chance at reforms
At Rubio’s rally in Las Vegas, Filoteo said the candidate’s background as the son of Cuban immigrants reminded him of his own background.
Originally from Veracruz in southern Mexico, Filoteo worked as a veterinarian for the state animal-health department before coming to the U.S. in 1985 hoping to further his professional studies at Brigham Young University in Utah. Instead, he ended up staying in the U.S. illegally and working as a bus boy, a dancer, a Spanish teacher and a ranch hand.
In 1986, Filoteo managed to became a legal permanent resident through President Ronald Reagan’s amnesty law. After that, he worked as a janitor until he eventually started his own business.
But Filoteo said he was disappointed that Rubio avoided talking about his previous support for immigration reform.
“Nobody is talking about the immigration, they are talking about the security of this country and they are including the people without papers and they are saying they are a risk for this country,” Filoteo said.
Still, Filoteo also thinks that as a Republican, Rubio might have a better shot getting a Republicancontrolled Congress to pass immigration reforms allowing undocumented immigrants to gain legal status.
After all, he said, it was Reagan, today revered as a conservative icon, who allowed Filoteo to gain legal status.
To this day, “Ronald Reagan is one of my heroes,” Filoteo said.