Contemporary Chicano/Latino Studies political science

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173

Chapter 9

t he prop 187 ef f e c t: t he poL i t ics of immigr at ion a nd

L e ssons f rom c a L if or ni a With Elizabeth Bergman, David Damore,

and Adrian Pantoja

Attempting to separate “Latino” politics from “immigration” politics is a fool’s errand. While Latinos care about the same issues as other Amer- icans (economic opportunity, education, health care), as Table 9.1 il- lustrates, immigration sits at or near the top of the Latino agenda. The economic collapse of 2008 and its subsequent effects drew attention to economic concerns, but as we approach the 2014 midterm elections it is immigration that is the priority of Latino registered voters.

Repeated polling over the last several years by Latino Decisions and others has made it clear that a large share of Latino registered voters are intimately connected to individuals who are affected by immigration policy. A stunning 67% of Latino registered voters nationwide reported knowing an undocumented person personally. Moreover, most of those connections were familial: 51% of respondents who reported knowing

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Barreto, Matt, and Gary M. Segura. Latino America : How America's Most Dynamic Population is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation, PublicAffairs, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csupomona/detail.action?docID=1681926. Created from csupomona on 2020-02-26 10:55:52.

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one or more persons without documentation identified a family member as undocumented.

Yet, despite the intimacy of Latinos’ deep and close connections to immigration, both political parties have routinely misunderstood those connections—especially the Republican Party. In fact, over the last decade the GOP’s rhetoric has become increasingly hostile toward immigrants, especially Latinos, and its policy prescriptions have moved further and further to the right. As a result, Latinos and other minorities are increas- ingly casting their ballots for Democrats.

In this chapter, we assess the electoral consequences of anti-immigrant politics. We begin at the national level by contrasting the GOP’s present positioning and politics to George W. Bush’s handling of immigration, and then we take an in-depth look at California.

g o P i mm i g r AT i o n P o L i T i c s: B e f o r e A n d A f T e r g e o r g e W. B u s h While serving as the governor of Texas between 1995 and 2000, George W. Bush never went down the anti-immigrant path, though it might have been easy for him to do so. Instead, he supported a compromise response to the Fifth Circuit Court’s decision in Hopwood: pending the re-hearing in Fisher, that compromise ensured the continued presence of minority students at the University of Texas after the university’s affirmative action policy was struck down.1 His efforts as president to reach out to Latinos were notable. Bush was the first president in American history to deliver a

tabLe 9.1 The Most Important Problems for Latino Registered Voters, 2012 and 2013

November 2012 July 2013

Immigration 35% 53% The economy and jobs 58 28 Education 20 15 Health care 14 12

Source: Latino Decisions election eve poll, November 2012, and Latino Decisions/America’s Voice poll, July 2013.

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175Latino America

speech (a weekly radio address) entirely in Spanish. He and his chief polit- ical adviser, Karl Rove, firmly believed that future GOP growth would be among Hispanics. Bush was rewarded for his efforts in this vein when an estimated 40% of Latinos voted for his reelection in 2004.

However, not all Republicans were supportive of the Bush-Rove strategy of Latino outreach, and soon after the 2004 election, conserva- tive Republicans in the US House of Representatives began to ratchet up their anti-immigration efforts. In December 2005, Congressman James Sensenbrenner, then chair of the House Judiciary Committee, authored HR 4437, which proposed making undocumented status a felony and, by extension, creating a lifetime ban on US citizenship for any individual in the country without proper documentation.

The reaction to HR 4437 was immediate and widespread: the 2006 im- migration rights marches turned out more than 3 million people in over 150 American cities and provided some of the impetus for immigration reform efforts in 2006 and 2007. In both years, members of the Senate came close to agreement but were unable to overcome the opposition to move the legislation forward. As a consequence of these failures, the last reform of the country’s immigration laws remained the Immigration

FIgUres 9.1 and 9.2 Types of Interpersonal Connections between Undocumented Immigrants and Latino Registered Voters, June 2013

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Reform and Control Act, which was passed in 1986, during President Ronald Reagan’s second term.

Examining Latino participation in the last four national elections cap- tures the electoral repercussions of these legislative failures. While there was a good deal of finger-pointing among both parties and their allied in- terests as to who was responsible for derailing immigration reform, there was no such equivocation among Latino voters. According to exit polls, Latinos have increasingly and overwhelmingly favored Democratic candi- dates in the ensuing elections.

Republicans, who once spoke compassionately about immigration re- form, forfeited their standing on the issue and left the party with few if any credible immigration advocates.

These dynamics are nothing new. Rather, what is happening nationally for the GOP is essentially a repetition on a grand scale of what occurred in California, beginning in the 1990s. Indeed, focusing on California enables us to observe at a finer level of analysis and over a longer period of time how immigration politics is capable of reshaping the political landscape.

c A L i f o r n i A T he n A n d n o W California is a Republican state—or at least it was a Republican state. From the end of World War II until 1994, Democrats lost every presi- dential election in the state save two—the Lyndon Johnson landslide over Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Bill Clinton’s plurality victory in 1992. The Democrats were two for ten over forty years. In gubernatorial elections, it was little better. Democrats won only four races during this period, to the Republicans’ nine.

Moreover, between 1980 and 1994, Republicans were moving Latinos into the party. Field poll data make it clear that Latinos in the state were less Democratic every year between 1980 and 1994.2 Between 1980 and 1984, former California governor Ronald Reagan raised his share of the Latino vote from 35% to 45% while carrying 59% of the entire state as he cruised to his second term as president. In response to his strong showing, Reagan famously quipped to pollster Lionel Sosa that “Hispanics are Re- publicans, they just don’t know it.”

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177Latino America

But any movement among Latinos toward the GOP abruptly ended in 1994 with the passage of Proposition 187. That ballot initiative was a crit- ical moment in Latino political development in California: it reversed the decade-plus drift in the state toward the GOP, mobilized over 1 million new Latino voter registrations, and consequently shifted the state firmly to the Democratic column in subsequent elections. Moreover, that shift back to the Democrats among Latinos occurred at precisely the moment when Latino population growth in California exploded.

Today the Democratic Party controls every constitutional office in the state and holds supermajorities in both chambers of the California Legislature. At the federal level, both US senators are Democrats, as are thirty-nine of the state’s fifty-three-member delegation to the House of Representatives. The state has voted Democratic in the last six presidential elections, and in 2012 Barack Obama bested Mitt Romney 60% to 37%, with an electoral margin of over 3 million votes (which accounted for more than half of his national margin of 5 million). Although Latinos are not solely responsible for this margin of victory in California, they have proven critical in shifting the state legislature and the congressional dele- gation to the Democrats.

Proposition 187, which required law enforcement agents to report any arrestee who violated immigration laws to the California Attorney General’s Office and to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and prohibited unauthorized immigrants from accessing government ser- vices, including education, was championed by Republican governor Pete Wilson in his 1994 reelection bid. It would also form the cornerstone of his short-lived 1996 presidential bid. Although Proposition 187 passed with 59% of the vote, the bulk of its provisions were ruled unconstitu- tional in federal court. After an extended legal battle, California withdrew its legal defense in 1999 and that effectively killed the law.

Emboldened by their success at the ballot box in 1994, conservatives qualified two other ballot measures consistent with the spirit of Proposi- tion 187 in the next two elections: Proposition 209 (1996) sought to ban affirmative action in the state, and Proposition 227 (1998) significantly limited the state’s bilingual education program. As with Proposition 187, both ballot measures passed. In hindsight, however, it was clear that any

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victories achieved by the proponents of these ballot measures and their GOP allies were fleeting at best, while the long-term consequences have been disastrous.

The timing of these ballot measures could hardly have been worse for California Republicans: they coincided with explosive growth in the state’s Latino electorate, a trend that has been extensively documented in political science research.3

An overview of these trends is offered in Table 9.2, which reports pop- ulation and voter registration growth in California from 1994 to 2004 bro- ken down by racial and ethnic group. Overall, California grew by nearly 15% (or 4.6 million people) during this period, but this growth was almost entirely driven by Latinos and Asian Americans. Similarly, Latinos and Asian Americans were the primary drivers of growth in voter registration. Between 1994 and 2004, the state of California added an estimated 1.8 million newly registered voters, of which 66% were Latino and 23% were Asian, leaving just 11% of new voters who were either white or black.

tabLe 9.2 Population and Voter Registration Growth in California, by Race/ethnicity, 1994–2004

Total Black Latino Asian White

Population in 1994 31,523,000 2,197,155 9,084,787 3,306,782 16,662,672

Population in 2004 36,144,000 2,240,928 11,891,376 4,192,704 16,843,104

Growth 4,621,000 43,773 2,806,589 885,922 180,432

Growth rate 14.7% 2.0% 30.9% 26.8% 1.1%

Voters registered in 1994 14,723,784 957,046 1,766,854 736,189 11,263,695

Voters registered in 2004 16,557,273 993,436 2,980,309 1,159,009 11,424,518

Growth 1,833,489 36,390 1,213,455 422,820 160,824

Growth rate 12.5% 3.8% 68.7% 57.4% 1.4%

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179Latino America

Of course, in and of itself, growth in the registration of California’s minority population does not explain the state’s Democratic shift. For this to be the case, these new voters must not only identify as Democrats but also turn out to vote for Democratic candidates. With respect to the first requirement, the evidence could not be clearer. For instance, in an analy- sis of voter registration records in Los Angeles County between 1992 and 1998, Matt Barreto and Nathan Woods found that just 10% of new Latino registrants were affiliated with the Republican Party in the aftermath of the three so-called anti-Latino propositions in California.4

More importantly, the anti-Latino initiatives motivated many newly registered Latinos to vote. Adrian Pantoja, Ricardo Ramírez, and Gary Segura found that Latinos who naturalized and registered to vote during the 1990s were significantly more likely to turn out.5 Likewise, Barreto, Ramírez, and Woods found that the best predictor of voter turnout in 1996 and 2000 was whether or not Latinos were newly registered follow- ing Proposition 187.6 The overall result, then, was more Latinos register- ing than in previous years, and more Latinos voting as Democrats.

The 2000 presidential election provided an opportunity for the GOP to regain its standing with Latinos in California and elsewhere. George W. Bush used his understanding of Latino voters in Texas to rally sup- port for the Republican ticket in the Latino community. However, even as Bush attempted to introduce a new compassionate face to the Republican Party, the Republican brand continued to be problematic for California Latino voters. Most notably, a survey conducted by the Tomás Rivera Pol- icy Institute during the 2000 election revealed that 53% of Latino voters in California still associated the Republican Party with Pete Wilson.7

More generally, Figure 9.3 illustrates that as the Latino vote grew Cali- fornia became a more Democratic state. Most notably, the Latino vote be- came 10% to 13% more Democratic following the anti-immigrant policies endorsed by the GOP in 1994. In 1992 Democrats won 65% of the Latino vote, in 1996 they won 75% of the Latino vote, and by 2012 Democrats were winning 78% of the Latino vote.

In addition to voting in presidential elections, Latinos in California have also become consistent Democratic voters in other statewide elec- tions since the Reagan era. Statewide results indicate that Latinos voted

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two to one on average in support of Democratic candidates for governor and US senator in every election between 1992 and 2002.8

Some observers saw the 2003 gubernatorial recall election as a potential shift away from the Democratic Party.9 Most analysts now suggest, how- ever, that the circumstances and context of this election were unique and that inferring trends from it is not valid.10 Still, that election does highlight just how important Latino voters are to the Democratic Party in California: owing in part to the approximately ten-point drop in Latino Democratic support, Democratic governor Gray Davis was recalled from office and re- placed with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.11 Had Latinos turned out at slightly greater rates and voted at their average support rate for Demo- cratic candidates, Davis would not have been recalled in 2003.

T he P r o P o s i T i o n 187 e f f e c T Research by Shaun Bowler, Stephen Nicholson, and Gary Segura pro- vides perhaps the most comprehensive evidence of the broad and lasting

FIgUre 9.3 California Presidential Vote for the Democratic Candidate, 1980–2012

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181Latino America

effects of Propositions 187, 209, and 227 and the GOP’s embrace of anti- immigrant politics.12 Specifically, using data from the California field poll from 1980 to 2002, they demonstrate at the individual level of anal- ysis that California’s partisan shift represented more than a demographic transition from white Republicans to Latino Democrats.

As noted earlier, Latinos in California had been moving toward the GOP prior to 1994, as was happening in much of the rest of the coun- try. Perhaps because of its role in proposing and passing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the Republican Party experienced sub- stantial gains in voter identification among California Latinos.13 Starting in 1994, however, this trend was reversed as large numbers of California Latinos moved away from the Republican Party and toward the Demo- cratic Party.

Bowler, Nicholson, and Segura’s analysis suggests specifically that, prior to the initiatives, there had been a partisan breakdown among Lati- nos that favored Democrats 38% to 34%, with a substantial number of Latinos registering as independents but largely voting Democratic.14 After the passage of Proposition 227 in 1998, the Democratic advantage among Latinos increased from four percentage points to fifty-one, while the probability that a Latino would identify as a Republican decreased from 34% to 12%.

Interestingly, their analysis indicates that absent the three ballot prop- ositions, and all other things remaining the same, over the twenty-two years there was an almost 18% increase in the probability of a Latino thinking of himself or herself as a Republican. This, of course, makes the results for the ballot initiatives even more compelling: the propositions effectively eradicated all of the GOP’s gains among Latinos between 1980 and 2002. The propositions reversed a trend that had been drawing larger numbers of Latino voters into the GOP fold. Moreover, it was the cumu- lative effect of the Republicans’ sustained support for anti-immigrant pol- icies that made the pro-Democratic shift so sizable.15

While the magnitude of these effects may be startling, the general di- rection of the relationship should not be all that surprising given that Propositions 187, 209, and 227 targeted Latinos. What California Repub- licans probably did not anticipate, however, was the extension of these

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effects to other segments of the state’s electorate. To this end, research by Tali Mendelberg suggests that when white voters perceive campaign messages as overtly racist, these messages are less likely to activate anti- minority stereotypes or racial resentment and instead may be perceived as violating norms of racial equality.16 Indeed, the racially charged rhetoric (proponents referred to Proposition 187 as the “Save Our State” initiative and produced messaging that blamed Latinos and immigrants for most of the state’s economic and social hardships) combined with the partisan nature of the campaigns surrounding the initiatives created a context that may have caused white voters to question their partisan loyalties.17

Consistent with these expectations, Bowler, Nicholson, and Segura found evidence of backlash among white Californians.18 Prior to Prop 187, Republicans had an eight-point advantage among whites, and the predicted probability that an Anglo Californian would identify as a Re- publican was 38%, as compared to a 30% probability of identifying as a Democrat, all else remaining the same. After the passage of the three propositions, Democrats had reversed the situation: they held a six-point advantage over Republicans, 37% to 31%, with the largest shifts occurring after the passage of Propositions 187 (in 1994) and 227 (in 1998). Perhaps more importantly, the effect among non-Hispanic whites, though smaller in magnitude as compared to Latinos, erased much of the rightward shift of the white population over the time period studied.

While the GOP may have anticipated, yet underestimated, the political blowback from Latinos, it is unlikely that they expected blowback from Anglo voters. Had this factored into their strategic calculus, it is unlikely that prominent Republicans in the state would have attached their names to the anti-immigrant propositions. As a consequence of this miscalcu- lation, by 2002 both Latinos and non-Hispanic whites were substantially more likely to be Democrats and less likely to be Republicans than before Proposition 187.

Since 2002, there is little evidence suggesting that the trends docu- mented by Bowler, Nicholson, and Segura are abating (see Figure 9.3) or that California Latinos have forgotten what occurred in the 1990s.19 Even in 2010, when Democrat Jerry Brown squared off against Republican Meg Whitman in the gubernatorial race, 80% of Latino voters were very or

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somewhat concerned that Whitman had appointed Pete Wilson as a cam- paign co-chair—twelve years after Wilson left office and sixteen years af- ter the passage of Proposition 187!

h A s T he g o P h i T r o c k B o T T o m i n c A L i f o r n i A? Given the Republicans’ emaciated standing in the Golden State, it seems hard to believe that the party could become even less of a factor in Califor- nia politics in coming years. However, with a depleted party organization and no statewide officeholders or prominent mayors around whom the party might rally, it is equally difficult to imagine scenarios that would re- turn the GOP to its prior standing anytime soon. The GOP’s best path to relevancy may be slowly and methodically expanding its ranks within the state’s delegation to the US House of Representatives and in the Califor- nia Legislature. Yet even in these more homogenous and geographically concentrated electoral contexts, analysis conducted by Latino Decisions suggests that a number of districts presently held by Republicans are vul- nerable to Latino influence and hence are potential Democratic pickups.

california’s house districts

Nationally, there are forty-four Republican-held and sixty-one Democratic- held districts where the 2012 Latino voting-age population was larger than the 2012 margin of victory. Depending on the ratio between the Latino voting-age population and the incumbent’s 2012 margin of victory (as well as the district’s 2012 presidential vote), these districts can be placed into one of three tiers, as illustrated in Table 9.A1 in the appendix.

Given the growth in California’s Latino population, the average Latino voting-age population in California’s fifty-three House districts is 34%. This is roughly two and a half times the national average. In thirty-one California House districts, the Latino voting-age population exceeds the 2012 margin of victory. While Democrats represent most of these districts, including six tier 1 districts (see Table 9.A1), in 2012 Republicans did win nine of them. Among these nine districts, three Republican incumbents appear to be particularly susceptible to the politics of immigration and

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Latino influence: Jeff Denham (CA-10th) and Gary Miller (CA-31st), who represent tier 1 districts, and Buck McKeon (CA-25th), whose district was classified as tier 2 but will be retained by the GOP.

So while the Republicans’ failure to respond constructively to Califor- nia’s changing political demography has cost the party plenty in the last two decades, they could lose yet more seats. The continued vulnerability of California’s dwindling number of House Republicans is largely an arti- fact of the state’s 2001 redistricting plan, which was designed to preserve the state’s seniority in Congress by protecting incumbents of both parties. As a consequence, just one of California’s House seats (the 11th in 2006) changed parties under the old maps—a particularly notable accomplish- ment given that majority control of the House of Representatives changed parties twice during the decade.

With the passage of Proposition 20 in 2010, however, authority over redistricting was removed from the California Legislature and placed in the hands of a fourteen-member panel of citizens, the Citizens Redistrict- ing Commission (which also oversees state legislative redistricting). As part of this reform, neither incumbency nor partisanship could be con- sidered in the state’s new congressional boundaries. Instead, districts were required to follow city and county boundaries and, wherever possible, preserve neighborhoods and communities of interests.

By removing the political machinations that often determine redistrict- ing outcomes, the districts that emerged in California in 2011 are more or- ganic and may allow for a truer expression of voters’ political preferences than is the norm in House elections. Unfortunately for Republicans, out- side of a few dwindling pockets, the new maps provide another indicator of how little appetite California voters have for the GOP and its policies. Running in unprotected districts, Republicans lost four times as many House seats in 2012 than during the prior five elections combined—not a promising omen for a delegation whose ranks have dwindled to fifteen.

The california Legislature

The dynamics working against Republicans in California are even more visible in the California Legislature, where, since the 2012 election,

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Republicans hold a total of 37 of 120 seats—12 in the Senate and 25 in the Assembly. The state legislative context is also where the effects of Cal- ifornia’s open primary—another reform intended to weaken partisan in- fluences—can be more easily observed. Because of another 2010 ballot measure, California elections are now two-round affairs with all voters and candidates operating in the same pool. The top two vote finishers, regardless of party, move to the second round; this process ensures a ma- jority winner, but not necessarily two-party competition.

As with the state’s new redistricting process, its primary reforms offer indirect evidence of the GOP’s problems this time in terms of the par- ty’s capacity to even field candidates. Specifically, in November 2012, all eighty Assembly seats and half of the state’s forty Senate seats were on the ballot. However, just 74% of these contests featured a Republican and Democrat competing on election day. In twenty districts (eleven Demo- cratic and seven Republican Assembly districts and two Democratic Sen- ate districts), two candidates of the same party faced off. In four other contests Democrats defeated minor party opponents, and in two Assem- bly districts Democrats ran unopposed. Put another way, in nineteen of one hundred state legislative elections, the Republicans did not even have a candidate. If that was not bad enough, the politically neutral district boundaries further exposed the GOP’s diminished standing as the Demo- crats picked up three additional state Senate seats in 2012.

Given the growth in the state’s Latino population (as measured in the 2010 census), in forty-nine of the seventy-four state legislative districts that were contested by both parties in 2012, the Latino voting-age pop- ulation exceeds the margin of victory, and in over half (sixty-four) of the seats in the California Legislature the Latino voting-age population ex- ceeds either the 2012 margin or the party registration difference between Democrats and Republicans (see Table 9.A2 in the appendix). Yet, as is the case with California’s US House seats, there remain a handful of com- petitive state legislative districts where Latino voters are positioned to be influential in coming election cycles.

We applied the methodology used to identify Latino-influence districts in our US House analysis to the California Assembly and Senate, with three differences (see Table 9.A2 for results). First, we did not incorporate

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information about the 2012 presidential vote. Second, absent election re- turns, for the twenty Senate seats that will be on the ballot in 2014, we used voter registration data to estimate competitiveness. We consider a district competitive if the difference in Democratic and Republican voter registration is ten points or less (based on the California secretary of state’s February 2013 update). Third, because of data limitations, we used the 2010 census, as opposed to the 2012 voting-age population estimates. Thus, if anything, our analysis underestimated Latino voting-age popula- tion and overestimated the white electorate.

Across both chambers there are twenty districts—nine in the Senate and eleven in the Assembly—where either the 2012 margin of victory or the two-party voter registration difference is 10% or less and the Latino voting-age population exceeds the difference in support between Dem- ocrats and Republicans. In the Assembly, two Democratic-held districts (the 36th and 65th) and two Republican-held districts (the 40th and the 60th) are rated as tier 1 Latino-influence districts, as are two Democratic- held Senate districts (the 5th and the 34th) and three Republican-held Senate districts (the 12th, the 14th, and the 18th). That is, these districts are highly competitive and have significant numbers of voting-age Lati- nos. The three tier 1 Republican-held Senate seats, all of which will be contested in 2014, appear to be particularly vulnerable owing to the substantial Democratic registration advantages and majority-minority voting- age populations. Indeed, all three have Latino voting-age popula- tions that either exceed or are close to 50%. The other eleven districts are rated as tier 2 districts where Latinos are influential, but these districts are less competitive. In terms of partisanship, Democrats hold seven of the tier 2 districts, including four in the Senate.

The implications of this are at least twofold. Even with the Democrats enjoying supermajority status in both chambers of the California Legisla- ture, the relentlessness of the state’s political demography provides addi- tional opportunities for the Democrats to expand their margins. While so much of the increased Democratic support in California stems from the growth in the Latino electorate and these voters’ overwhelming support for Democratic candidates, the full consequences of this shift may not yet be fully realized in the California Legislature.

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In contrast, even if the GOP were to put forth a less alienating brand of politics, there are few opportunities for the party to improve its standing owing to the limited number of competitive state legislative districts. To this end, even if the GOP were to sweep all tier 1 and tier 2 districts in 2014 and 2016 (while holding all of its present seats), the party would still be a significant minority in both chambers.

•

Looking back to the mid-1990s and early 2000s in California politics pro- vides many clear lessons for the Republican Party today. The California that delivered 60% of the vote to Obama in 2012 did not occur by hap- penstance; not long ago, California was a winnable state for Republican presidential candidates.

Today the Republican Party in California is in free fall. Republi- can presidential candidates have lost the last six elections in California and thus abdicated to the Democrats 20% of the Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency. Presently, there are no Republican state- wide officeholders and the party’s ranks have fallen below one-third in both chambers of the California Legislature, while Republicans represent just over one-quarter of the state’s seats in the House of Representatives. In 2010, when Republicans picked up sixty-three House seats nationally, the party failed to pick up a single seat in California. Running in polit- ically neutral districts in 2012, the GOP lost seven state legislative seats and four congressional seats and is poised to lose additional seats in com- ing elections. Consistent with these dismal electoral showings, the share of Californians registered as Republican declined from 37% in 1992 to less than 30% in 2012.20 If these trends continue, by 2020 more Californians will be registered as independents than as Republicans.

To be sure, the GOP’s political decline in California is not simply the result of the state’s changing political demography—it is more than a mat- ter of Latino and Asian American voters having rapidly replaced white voters. Rather, the data and narrative presented here underscore the im- portance of immigration politics against the backdrop of a burgeoning minority electorate. Quite simply, the decision of California Republicans to embrace anti-Latino and anti-immigrant policies during the mid-1990s

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alienated not just the fastest-growing segments of the state’s electorate (immigrants, Latinos, Asian Americans, and other minorities) but also many white voters.

Today Arizona, Florida, Texas, and even Virginia and North Caro- lina are facing their own immigration politics and fast-growing Latino electorates. Already the pattern in California has surfaced in neighboring Nevada to save Democrat Harry Reid’s Senate seat in 2010 in what was otherwise a strong Republican electoral cycle. The question is whether Re- publicans in Washington and in other critical states are willing to learn the lessons of the California GOP in order to remain politically viable, not just in 2014, but in 2016 and beyond.

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