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Jewish World Review July 13, 2000 / 10 Tamuz, 5760
Chris Matthews
Mexico a week ago elected Vicente Fox, leader of the
National Action Party (PAN), ending a 71-year reign of
power by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
The PAN platform reads like pure Bush Republicanism.
It emphasizes greater business investment, more
incentives to investment, tough law and order to create a
better investment environment, stronger education to
create a better-educated workforce, and more
entrepreneurship.
If Americans with roots in Mexico vote for those same
principles here, it's good news for the Republicans, who
subscribe to those priorities, and bad news for the
Democrats, who continue to sell the advantages of strong
government programs over the risks of self-reliance.
"I think that the voters in Mexico voted for change,"
California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante argues. "I don't
know that they necessarily approved all the politics that
are surrounding that party.
"I think that anybody who comes in trying to talk about
reform, somebody who is new, people are going to take
a chance."
Bustamante, who co-chairs the California campaign of Vice President Al Gore,
argues that the major Republican problem among Latino voters is the party's
image, highly pronounced under the governorship of Pete Wilson, of being
hostile to the Mexican American community. GOP candidates employed
"wedge-like issue politics" and presented themselves as anything but inclusive.
He referred specifically to Proposition 187, which sought to deny health and
education benefits to illegal immigrants and their children.
Bustamante says that Latino voters discovered that "all the discussion
(Republicans) were having about family values, they weren't included somehow
in any of that."
"There's not a whole lot of difference when you compare Wilson and Bush,"
Bustamante concludes, "no matter how charming or how affable a man he is."
Tony Garza, Texas railroad commissioner and a Bush ally, offers a view that
sees Mexican Americans looking for the same economic and social platform as
the winning party of Vicente Fox.
"I think in the United States, the Hispanic population is looking for change. And
with Gov. George W. Bush, we see a striking contrast not only to other
Republicans but certainly to the leadership we've had in Washington," he says.
"I really would like to invite Cruz to come to Texas and visit the border, where
we've had 100,000 new residents (with) water and wastewater hook-ups. Our
test scores are moving. I think it goes without saying when you look at any
immigrant community over the course of this nation's history, its hope is in our
classrooms and opportunity in our marketplace."
The latest national poll has Gore at 47 percent among Hispanic voters — who
include those Americans with roots in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and other
Latin countries — and Bush at 45 percent.
If that rough split continues through the first week in November, the presidential
election here will repeat the message of the balloting to the south: The voters'
desire a
07/10/00:Another kind of McCarthyism
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