Hispanic Leadership Out of Touch
An Opening for Republicans on Education, Policing
August 6, 2002

By Tamar Jacoby

When Congress moved earlier this summer to repudiate a California court ruling striking “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York was one of only three House members to sit out the unanimous vote. Few people seemed to notice, but when she returned to New York the next week, she was met on the steps of City Hall by 50 Latino clerics protesting her action. Bronx Pentecostal minister Ruben Diaz, who also happens to be a City Council member, summed up their complaint: We’re a very conservative community, he told the New York Sun, and we were offended.

With Hispanics in New York and nationwide emerging this year as an important swing constituency, one can’t help but wonder: is this the only issue on which the community’s traditionally left-leaning leadership is out of sync with the rank and file? It’s a particularly important query here in New York, where Hispanics account for nearly 30% of the population and are being courted assiduously by Republicans as well as Democrats. And indeed, an array of evidence — including a new survey to be released this week by the Hispanic Federation — suggests that there may be a leadership gap, with a corresponding opportunity for Republicans.

To be sure, New York’s Hispanic community bears scant if any resemblance to the Miami-based Cuban-Americans or Texas Mexican-Americans who hold the most promise for the national Republican Party. But if New York Latinos too — by some measures, the most left-leaning constituency in American politics — are potentially susceptible to Republican appeals, that would be big news indeed, for the GOP and the nation.

Once almost exclusively Puerto Rican, Latino New York has traditionally been poor, uneducated, marginalized by language barriers and — because of their relative lack of interest in politics — rarely courted by mainstream elected officials. To the degree they paid attention to politics, these and other circumstances placed them well to the left end of the spectrum, and the leaders who emerged to represent them also generally hewed to a far-left line, even by New York standards. Already in 1970, this cadre included a U.S. congressman and an array of state and city officials. Still — in part because of their leftist tendencies — they rarely played a leading role in city politics.

Today, all this is changing. Puerto Ricans have been leaving the five boroughs and other Latino groups have been pouring in, to the point that Puerto Ricans now account for less than 40% of the Hispanic community. The second largest group is Dominican (perhaps 20%), followed by Mexicans and a growing contingent of South Americans, many of whom come from very different cultural and political backgrounds. Though still overwhelmingly poor, often Spanish-speaking and on average younger than native-born New Yorkers — all factors that tend to discourage political participation — together Latinos now make up the city’s largest ethnic minority, and they are beginning to find their political voice.

Just what kind of voice is it? Republicans have taken heart in recent years from what some see as an emerging trend. Like all New Yorkers, Latinos still register overwhelmingly as Democrats. But beginning in 1989 when Rudolph Giuliani first ran for mayor, GOP mayoral candidates have racked up increasingly large shares of the Hispanic vote, culminating last year when Michael Bloomberg won a whooping 47%. What’s more, exit polling suggests, some of the more recently arrived nationalities — the South Americans in particular — are posing a growing counterweight to left-leaning Puerto Ricans and Dominicans: better educated, middle-class, family-oriented and often in business for themselves, they strike some observers as natural Republicans.

Of course, the bulk of New York’s Hispanics are still poor, ill-educated Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, and at first blush it is all but impossible to imagine them as swing voters. Despite the trend in mayoral politics that is so encouraging to Republicans, New York Hispanics lean heavily Democratic in all other contests. The leaders they elect and reelect by overwhelming margins still believe unquestioningly that government rather than the market is the answer in poor neighborhoods: Reps. Nydia Velazquez and Jose Serrano, for example, have staked their political careers on upping federal subsidies and opposing welfare reform. They take a conventionally liberal line on social issues. When it comes to racial minority politics, they stand immovably by affirmative action. And both have voted consistently against school choice and in favor of bilingual education. 

On government services, welfare and affirmative action, there is little if any sign that the rank and file diverge from them. But surprising things start to happen when pollsters ask about other preferences. Among the greatest discrepancies between leaders and followers are on social issues — abortion, gay rights, gender roles and the like — but these are of little interest politically, at least in New York. (No New York politician who actually hopes to win is going to campaign against abortion or gay rights.) More surprising — and more important — surveys also show a leadership gap on issues like education and law enforcement.

One of the most striking gulfs is on school choice. National polls show all Latino constituencies consistently in favor of choice, and New York Latinos are no exception. Last year’s annual survey by the Hispanic Federation showed that 60% endorsed charter schools (with only 25% opposed) and a statistically identical 59% supported the still stronger tool of vouchers. According to the president of the New York Charter School Resource Center, Gerry Vazquez, this is a preference born of pragmatism. “Perhaps unlike some other communities,” he explains, “your typical Latino parent doesn’t get caught up in whether something is politically correct or not. They know they need better schools and will enroll their children in the best available, no matter how they’re funded.”

When it comes to bilingual education, the evidence is a little murkier but still telling. The Hispanic Federation asks if respondents believe that schooling should be conducted in English, in Spanish or both equally, and finds 57% in favor of either mostly Spanish or both equally. But if you pose the question differently, as the Zogby polling firm does, asking if parents prefer English immersion for any student who isn’t fluent, Latinos opt overwhelmingly in favor – by margins of between 60% and 80%. The bottom line: like all immigrants, Latinos would be pleased if their children happened to retain their mother tongue and wouldn’t mind seeing Spanish taught in school — but not if that means the second generation is not learning English, all too often the result with bilingual education.

Finally, and perhaps most dramatic, there are the law enforcement issues. Reps. Velazquez and Serrano have rarely met a law and order measure they didn’t want to vote against: they prefer alternative sentences to jail time, oppose trying juvenile offenders as adults, dislike mandatory “three-strikes” sentencing, and in many cases would substitute life in prison for the death penalty. (The only exception for them is hate crimes legislation.) Here in New York, they and other Latino officials played a leading role in anti-police protests occasioned by the Diallo and Louima incidents.

Rank and file Latinos joined those demonstrations, too, and still — though in ever declining numbers — express concern about police brutality. But unlike their leaders, they nevertheless support the police — and by and large look favorably on law enforcement. Even before 9/11, according the Hispanic Federation, six out of 10 rated the NYPD’s performance as good to excellent — roughly the same level of support as before Diallo and Louima — and the number will only go up in the 2002 survey. More dramatic still, roughly two-thirds want more, not less, policing in their neighborhoods. The last time the question was asked, in 1995, a near majority supported the death penalty. And — on what is likely to be one of this year’s most contested political issues — according to Zogby, nearly half (49%) feel that reducing the tough prison sentences mandated by the Rockefeller drug laws would be “soft on crime.”

On law enforcement and bilingual education, then, as on school choice, New York Latinos seem driven above all by practicality. The ideological concerns that motivate their leaders are a luxury most of them can ill afford, and what they want from politics is solutions — particularly solutions to problems close to home. There’s a lesson here for the Latino leadership, but also for Republicans looking to woo Hispanics. The contest is not about who speaks better Spanish (though ethnic identification will play some role). Nor is it about political ideas, whether multiculturalist, statist or market-oriented. What matters will be coming up with answers that actually work for Latino families — on these issues but also others, like homeownership and opportunities for entrepreneurs, that help people make the leap into the middle class. Surely this is just as it should be — and may the best party win.

©2002 New York Sun

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