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Jewish World Review July 13, 2000 / 10 Tamuz, 5760

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Consumer Reports


Mexicans elect a Bush Republican


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- IF MEXICAN AMERICANS vote like Mexicans, George W. Bush will be the next president.

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 "change."



JWR contributor Chris Matthews is the author of Hardball. and hosts a CNBC show of the same name. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

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