The Hispanic Republic of Texas: It's coming. Soon

National Review, Oct 14, 2002 by John J. Miller

When a sink's overflowing, the first thing to do is shut off the water, and one potential solution for Republicans is to try cutting legal immigration. Yet this strategy may have fatal drawbacks. "The restrictionists are asking us to take a huge gamble on the unlikely odds that immigration reform will succeed. The whole project would alienate Hispanics from Republicans even further, including those who haven't even arrived yet," says Dan Griswold of the Cato Institute. Hope may have to rest on assimilation. "Middle-class Hispanics are basically split, 50-50, between the two parties," says Richard Murray, who directs the Houston Chronicle's political polling.

But that's the long term. The short-term good news for Texas Republicans is that they look ready to have a successful 2002 election. In March, the Democrats nominated the so-called "Dream Team" ticket -- a black for the Senate (Kirk), a Hispanic for governor (Sanchez), anand an Anglo for lieutenant governor (John Sharp). This sort of racial and ethnic balancing may represent the political future of Texas, but it hasn't electrified the state this time around.

Demographic destiny probably won't come soon enough for Ron Kirk. As mayor of Dallas, he earned a solid reputation for working with the business community, and had the look of a center-seeking New Democrat - - but it may be old-time liberalism that undoes his campaign. In AuAugust, The New Yorker quoted Kirk summarizing his election this way: "What it comes down to is whether white people are going to vote for a black man." For most voters, of course, it will come down to something else, such as Kirk's views on Iraq and his willingness to support the president.

At a rally in San Antonio on September 13, Kirk made what may go down as the great belly-flop comment of his candidacy. "You go look at the people that are responsible for all the corporate wrongdoing in this country, you ain't gonna find a whole lot of people who look like us. You go to Wall Street and look at the people who have been defrauding our nation and brought our economy to its knees, you ain't gonna find a lot of people who look like us," he said to a heavily minority audience.

This loose talk about The Man was obnoxious, but the worst -- by far -- was yet to come: "You go to the battlefield of Afghanistan, you lolook in the burial grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, you go to [the] Vietnam [Memorial], you find us anywhere. . . . I wonder how excited [my critics would] be if I get to the United States Senate and I put forth a resolution that says the next time we go to war the first 500,000 kids have to come from families who earn a million dollars or more." This moment of racial hysteria, by the way, comes courtesy of a man who said he opposed Bush judicial nominee Priscilla Owen -- a native Texan -- because he found her lacking the "even temperament" to be a federal judge.

What remains clear is that Texas Democrats really might have threatened Republicans in this election -- but only if they had nominated candidates like John Breaux and Zell Miller. Kirk is no race hustler like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton -- he has tried to help Dallas corporations, not shake them down -- but he still is to the left of where Texans want their politicians to be. The last Democrat to occupy the seat Sen. Phil Gramm is giving up was Lyndon Johnson, and the next one probably won't be Ron Kirk; at least not in 2002. But he or someone very much like him is in the cards for Texas -- and much sooner than most Republicans realize.