The Curious Case of the Hispanic Republican

There are few participants in American politics taken less seriously than the Hispanic Republican. He or she, skeptics insist, is either a dimwitted traitor to the cause, or a figment of the imagination produced by Republican operative Houdinis. Plenty of people have taken the mention of a Hispanic Republican as the perfect cue to crack a joke. "Latins for Republicans -- it's like roaches for Raid," quipped comedian John Leguizamo at 2004 Democratic Party fundraiser.

Despite the snickering, Karl Rove and company have been serious the past few years about netting more votes from the community that once adopted the slogan "Viva Kennedy." Four months after Leguizamo's controversial comment, their efforts yielded a surprising six-point increase in Hispanic votes for President Bush.

Prior to this spring's nasty battle over immigration reform, the Republican Party had directed more funding into Spanish-language advertising, struck a conciliatory tone on creating a guest worker program, and put Hispanics in visible local and national positions of power. Their inclusive approach seemed to be slowly chipping away at a base Democrats assumed was safe.

Now here's the shocker: If you thought the recent extremist rhetoric coming from some Republicans on immigration would finally prove the party to be a haven for racists and Hispano-phobes, a new survey by the Pew Hispanic Center indicates otherwise. It found that Republicans hadn't suffered a "significant slippage" in affiliation with Hispanics and no discernable increase in the number of newly registered Hispanic Democrats. Other surveys have shown a slightly more negative response to the GOP. While this polling offers a surface-level perspective of the changing relationship between Hispanics and both major political parties, a new book by Bill Minutaglio is somewhat of a case study.

"The President's Counselor" is a careful biography of Alberto Gonzales, the nation's first Hispanic attorney general and a confidante of George W. Bush. Minutaglio has the challenging task of charting the life of a man who is not only tight-lipped with the press, but also with his closest friends. As a result, the author pieces together a life story based on speeches and memos, interviews with ancillary characters and articles penned by other journalists. Though it sometimes borders on repetitive and two-dimensional, "The President's Counselor" is important at this crossroads in American culture because in its analysis of Gonzales, it pins down and tries to understand the supposedly fictional creature that is the Hispanic Republican.

Son of migrant workers

The son of migrant workers and a brother to seven other siblings, three of whom never finished high school, Gonzales went on to attend Rice University and Harvard Law School, eventually joining a prestigious law firm in Houston and handling cases for Enron. In every immigrant -- or son-of-immigrant -- Horatio Alger story there are details that become shorthand for the person's improbable success. When political parties use them in tear-jerking convention speeches, they often give way to codified Hallmark sentiments that lose all sense of texture and nuance. In Gonzales' case, Minutaglio lists the following buzzphrases: worked in the fields with parents, sold cokes at Rice football games, and grew up "impoverished" in a two-bedroom house (remember the seven brothers and sisters) without hot water and a telephone line.

With knowledge of these telling details, to which close friends of Gonzales aren't privy until President Bush begins mentioning them publicly, Gonzales' gravitation to the Republican Party begins to make sense. It's too easy to argue that Gonzales betrays a legacy begat by union organizer and farmworker César Chávez when the promise of money and prestige are dangled before him, though Minutaglio suggests the incentives may have been a factor considering Gonzales' desire to "maximize earning potential."