This morning, we hosted a breakfast with Latino Decisions to talk about Latino voters, the future of the GOP, and the importance of passing immigration reform with reporters.
Since the 2012 election (in which President Obama trounced Mitt Romney by more than a 3-1 margin among Latino voters) many Republicans have come around to the fact that the Party is in serious danger if they don’t start attracting more Latino–and Asian, and moderate, and young voters. Other Republicans still have their heads in the sand, insisting that they can get by with voters from their base alone. They discussed the role of the immigration issue with California voters after Prop. 187, back in 1994. And, that trend accelerated nationally after the Sensenbrenner criminalization bill in 2006 and Arizona’s SB 1070 in 2010. In California, for GOP House members trying to decide what to do (like GOP Whip Kevin McCathy) , the truth is that “the demography is relentless,” as Latino Decisions principal and Stanford professor Gary Segura said today. GOPers can either get with the program, pass immigration reform, and preserve an electoral future for their Party. Or they can continue chugging off the demographic cliff.
View the slides from this morning’s presentation with Latino Decisions below: