Partial to Gov. Bush’s Style, Latinos Look for Substance : Politics: Some fear that the candidate, who has long connected with voters, might be wavering on key issues.

Massed in the thin air of an El Paso winter, the women gripped their signs, determined to be noticed. Texas Gov. George W. Bush was in town.

For decades, the 100 or so Spanish speakers had toiled sewing grommets and seams. Then, along with about 15,000 other workers, they lost their jobs due to NAFTA, the international trade pact Bush endorses. So when he came to town that 1998 day, the women waved signs asking for bilingual job training--and willed him to pay attention. He did more than that, said Democratic state Rep. Norma Chavez, who proposed that Bush greet the crowd.

“His staff was like: ‘No! Absolutely not . . . he’s late for an appointment,’ ” Chavez recalled. But then Bush genially strode up to the protesters and said: “Estoy aqui. I’m here. Tell me the problem.” He joked with them, then he listened, gazing intently into each speaker’s eyes.

Yet when the training they wanted came up for vote that spring, Chavez said, it died on the vine, the governor’s support utterly absent.

For Texas Latinos of all parties, at least one part of that encounter instantly rings true. Whether gulping tamales or sweating through a 16th of September parade, Bush has made a calling card of his rapport with Latinos. Audiences delight at his frequent visits to the often-neglected border, and his non-self-conscious, conversational Spanish.

Now, as Bush roams the country campaigning for president, his gift for connecting with Latino voters is being put to a broader, more intensive test. The caring persona, Latinos of both parties agree, is beguiling. But what about the substance? The answer is a lot more complicated. For one thing, the governor’s record of appointing Latinos is not strong, and as he runs a nationwide race, some think he may be wavering in his earlier support for Latino-friendly issues.

Among the 7 million registered Latino voters nationwide, agenda priorities vary. But with about 70% of Latinos historically voting Democratic, they are a roughly identifiable voting bloc, with interests including immigration, education, affirmative action, health care and economic empowerment. Asked to rate Bush’s performance on these issues, a cross section of Texas Latinos rated him variously as courageous, passive and, sometimes, simply unknown.

Adding to the uncertainty about some of his positions, Bush declined an interview for this article.

“His responsiveness to the quote, unquote Latino agenda is good in comparison to a pretty low standard set by other members of his party,” said Charles Kamasaki, senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Latino advocacy group. But, like several other activists, Kamasaki questioned whether Bush’s support for Latino causes may be wavering now that he is campaigning in a broader venue.

Political Landscape for Latinos Changes

Many Latino Republicans, meanwhile, say the advocacy groups have different priorities than Latinos at the grass roots. Less liberal than the leadership, these Republicans say, rank-and-file Latinos care more about education, economics and family values than issues such as affirmative action.

“I have a huge section of Texas that goes 500 miles across and 350 miles around,” said Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla of San Antonio. “[Latinos’] agenda is no different from the Anglo community up the road.”

In fact, the Latino electorate nationwide is changing in character due to enormous growth--25% in four years, said Rice University political scientist Bob Stein. As more Latinos vote nationally, he predicted, their cultural and historical differences will make their priorities less predictable.

“Latinos in Florida, California and Texas are very different,” Stein said. Texas Latinos, he noted, are far more politically active than those in California and benefit from the state’s longtime, heavy trade with Mexico. California Latinos, on the other hand, tend to be less integrated, more recently arrived and far less politically organized.

Indeed, a poll last week of Latino voters by the William C. Velasquez Institute in San Antonio showed Bush running neck and neck with Vice President Al Gore in Texas, but trailing him by a 2-1 ratio in California.

Even in Texas, pollsters dispute the extent of Bush’s popularity among Latinos. In the 1998 election, in which Bush resoundingly beat Democratic candidate Garry Mauro, the Voter News Service agency found Bush received 49% of Latino votes.

But a study by the Velasquez Institute showed Bush won only 39%. Whereas the Velasquez Institute researched heavily Latino precincts, the VNS poll also included Latinos in largely Anglo precincts.

In a state where Republicans usually snare about 25% of Latino votes, even the lower figure is striking. Analysts credit much of it to the goodwill Bush earned during his first term, denouncing California’s galvanizing Proposition 187 that would have barred illegal immigrants from services and public schools. “He made it clear that there was another perspective within the Republican Party, and it helped diminish what might well have been a national trend,” Kamasaki said.

Ironically, the same issue that burnished Bush’s image for many Latinos scarred the GOP’s image for the same voters. Now it’s that image that Bush today must circumvent.

As governor, he shored up goodwill with early, high-profile Latino appointments. The very first, secretary of state, went to Tony Garza, now Texas’ railroad commissioner and a Bush confidant. The governor later appointed Houston lawyer Alberto Gonzalez to the post, and then to Texas’ Supreme Court.

Bush is nearly inseparable from 29-year-old press aide Israel Hernandez, a second-generation Mexican American. “Izzy,” as Bush calls him, started in 1994 as his travel aide, a humble job with a long Texas tradition as a steppingstone. He now is part of the campaign’s informal Latino strategy group.

Tallied numerically, however, Bush’s appointments lose some of their luster. About 30% of Texas’ population, Latinos make up only 13% of Bush appointees, according to figures supplied by his office. Latinos constitute 19% of the governor’s staff. There are no Latinos on his nine-member senior staff.

Moreover, especially after the last Legislature, some Latino leaders are voicing distress and confusion about Bush’s convictions. In part, they say, Texas’ political structure, which mainly grants governors veto power, has prevented him from taking clear stands.

Latinos in Texas have been enthusiastic about his centrist “compassionate conservatism,” said Lydia Camarillo, executive director of the Southwest Voter Education Project. “But we don’t really know what that stands for [until] he has to take positions on the wedge issues that are important to us,” such as bilingual education and affirmative action.

“He’s handled all the symbols very well. He’s handled some of the cultural politics very well. Now beyond that, he’s a Republican, and Republicans don’t handle poverty very well,” said University of Houston political scientist Rodolfo de la Garza. “He wants to eliminate obstacles, but it’s not clear to me that he wants to generate opportunities.”

To some activists, Bush’s leadership shone most in his first term, with his signature program requiring school accountability. Bush in part pitched the plan as a boon for Latinos, plagued by a high teenage dropout rate.

But Bush disappointed many leaders this session on CHIP, a health insurance program for children. Noting that 56% of impoverished Texas children are Latino, leaders criticized Bush’s absence in the debate over what level of poverty should merit coverage.

And Bush openly resisted a minority-backed alteration to Texas’ hate crimes law that specified protected groups and increased penalties. Bush argued that all violent crimes are hate crimes and that current laws, toughened in 1997, are sufficient.

In education, he earned mixed reviews. Joe Sanchez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund praised Bush for signing into law a $3,000 pay raise for teachers, proposed by Democrats, and for supporting new funding for early childhood programs and fast-growing school districts. But he criticized Bush’s failed push for school vouchers, an idea on which most Latino leadership disagrees with him. Nevertheless, studies show that Latino voters approve school choice under some circumstances, Stein said.

And to activists’ chagrin, Bush let die a program he supported in his last term, restoring food stamps to elderly, disabled and young legal immigrants cut off by the 1996 federal welfare bill. To critics, the bill’s failure suggested a reversal of Bush’s first-term attitudes, a reversal they fear will continue.

Governor’s Positions Fuel Heated Debate

Advocates are also beginning to question Bush’s stand on bilingual education and affirmative action, two issues for which he initially won praise. Bush consistently has touted the importance of “English plus” (speaking English as well as another language) and opposed efforts to dismantle bilingual education as long as it “works.”

But longtime political organizer Andy Hernandez, now a visiting professor at San Antonio’s St. Mary’s University, said the approach sounds good, but begs analysis. “Who defines whether it works? By what measure?” Hernandez asked.

On affirmative action, Bush appears moderate yet vague. Refusing to support California’s Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action, he said, “I support the spirit of no quotas and preferences.”

In practice, this meant Bush didn’t challenge a federal court’s recent decision banning race-based admission to Texas universities, but publicized his support of a Democrat-crafted law meant to offset the ruling by admitting the top 10% of public school students to elite state universities.

Republicans such as Garza argue that Bush effectively serves mainstream Latinos’ true values: “instinctively conservative” priorities including local control and pocketbook issues. “It’s been an article of faith in the Hispanic community that [small-business ownership] was the single fastest road to advancement,” Garza said. “So consequently the issues on which the Republican Party has done so well--tax [cuts], tort reform--are of more relevance to Hispanics.”

Like other Republicans close to Bush, Garza was raised along the border by conservative, apolitical blue-collar parents. Bush, who as governor underplays partisanship, appeals to such Latinos, Garza said.

In fact, that’s who he courted in his last campaign, according to his media director, Lionel Sosa, who notes that in some radio ads Bush omitted party reference altogether. The message was, “ ‘We have a lot in common. We think alike,’ ” he said. “It’s very subtle. It’s all very emotional . . . We never say: Vote Republican.”

In several of the ads, Bush extemporized in Spanish, learned in high school and practiced throughout his career. Though his tenses are not always perfect and his accent is pure Texan, he often captivates Latino audiences with his sheer openness.

To Sosa, that assurance reflects the way Bush approaches all ethnic groups. Others, though, think Bush’s connection with Latinos is a Texas trait.

“[Today] you say Latino; 15 or 20 years ago it was Mexican American, then Chicano, then Hispanic,” Garza said. “But you want to know the most popular self-characterization in South Texas? It’s Tejano. . . . Texans and Tejanos, they’ve both got a little swagger.”

An Appreciation for Latino Culture

Several Bush friends say his appreciation for Latino culture is firmly entwined with appreciation for their growing numbers. “I think he’s similar to a CEO at a corporation who understands the changing demographics of this nation,” said Rep. Bonilla. “And instead of looking at that and saying, ‘Why can’t it be like the good old days?’ a good CEO thinks, ‘What a wonderful chapter for this country.’ ”

What’s clear is that Bush’s first formal contacts with Latinos would have come after his school days in Midland, Texas, the oil town where he lived until seventh grade. Latinos and blacks were educated separately from whites during Bush’s childhood, said former grammar school Principal John Bizillo.

It’s hard to find a defining moment when the sheltered Bush suddenly embraced members of a minority group, associates said. “I don’t think he reached this epiphany one day in the campaign and said, ‘My gosh, Hispanics are important,’ ” said Israel Hernandez.

And for some Latinos, the Bush family culture is as appealing as Bush’s politics. They appreciate the story of the patriarch, the striving son, the cherished mother, the gatherings of three generations in Kennebunkport and Bush’s Mexican sister-in-law, Columba Bush, married to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said University of Texas sociologist Nestor Rodriguez.

But echoing some Latinos’ concerns, Rodriguez asked: “How far can he keep this open-mindedness and not endanger his candidacy within the Republican Party? Because he’s got limits. What he did in Texas may not work in the country as a whole.”