The RHCA is one of the many groups vying to be players in the Republican bid to attract Latino votes. I’ve visited with them several times and they are a friendly, outgoing group. The leadership has changed several times over the past year and it changed again for this meeting. Ernie Garcia, who was the president of the group since its inception, resigned, presumably to focus on his new law practice, having recently graduated from South Texas College of Law and passing the bar. I think more likely it was because of a disagreement between himself and other board members over the recent Arizona immigration law. Ernie posted extensively against it on the groups Facebook page, upsetting others on the board.
So last night was the first meeting for the new interim president, Able Garcia. He seems like an able leader (pardon the pun) and I think I remember him saying that he owned an executive search firm. He thinks that the best way to attract Latinos to the Republican party is to:
- Blame Obama for not passing comprehensive immigration reform when he could have – instead he focused on health care
- Talk about Cap and Trade and the impact it will have on the economy
- Education – I think he really means “messaging”, as in educating the voters about Republican values and issues
He stated that he thought that focusing on immigration was “distracting”, although his first bullet point was about that. And indeed, most of the meeting was about immigration. It is hard not to focus on it, I think.
During her report on the recent Texas GOP convention, Bernadette McElroy stated that the passage of a resolution on immigration would make it harder to attract Latinos. I asked her why, what part of it makes it harder? After discussing what she thinks needs to be done (dialogue?), she basically admitted that she hadn’t read the resolution and didn’t know what was in it. This was confirmed by Paul Simpson, who said he hasn’t had a chance to read it because it was passed in a rush at the end of the convention, as part of a package. Interesting.
There was also talk about using pastors to build up the flock, er, voter base, by focusing on faith based issues. Sound familiar?
Randy Kubosh, of bail bonding and red light camera fame, is now an active part of the group. He was passionate about the immigration issue but not in the way that news media would report. He talked about it being unfair to deport people that have been here, built lives and families, paid taxes through rent and purchases, etc. One anecdotal story he told would be certain to raise the ire of many of those that want strict immigration reform. Seems as though one of his clients (remember, he is a bail bondsman) had a little trouble with the law. He was a good guy, been here a while, but somehow got in trouble. He went down to put bail up and lo and behold, they arrested him for being here illegally. Now, I’m not sayin’ but…I’m sayin’, I don’t think he isn’t going to find too many people to sympathize with him on that one. I might be wrong, as most of the people in the room seemed to sympathize with him, but outside of that room, I’m just guessing not.
Speaking of Mr. Kubosh and red light cameras, recall that I brought them up Monday, in regards to a Stan Stanart robocall. I was curious as to who paid for that. So I asked him. He said no one did. I said, well someone did because it went out. Then he said, the Harris County Republican Party must have because they passed a resolution in favor of it. Makes sense to me because Stan needs the name recognition and probably doesn’t have a lot of money in his warchest but it still seems odd that no one claimed credit for it.
Paul Simpson made an astute observation: our judicial candidates do not know how to connect with people. Ain’t that the truth. But what are we doing about it? Here’s what I would do: I’d have Jared Woodfill give several training sessions. The guy is a great campaigner, working the room with the best of them. Paul also stated that we need to send a positive message, not the negative ones we’ve been sending. His agenda:
- Pro-life
- Pro-family
- Pro-small business
Obviously, I’d agree on that one, with the caveat that we can still have some levels of disagreement on them. But definitely focus on the positive.
Berna Mac also talked about support for specific candidates, having recently changed the bylaws to allow that. They have decided to go all in for Fernando Herrera in his quest to unseat Jessica Farrar in Texas House District 148 and they are helping with his block walk this Saturday. She also said something I thought was odd about the Roy Morales campaign – she said she talked to him about helping his campaign and he told her that he had “sufficient volunteers” but wouldn’t turn down more. Roy is the vice-president of this club, although he wasn’t at the meeting.
I had to laugh at one thing that Mr. Garcia said. At one point, during the somewhat heated discussion on immigration, he stated: “We are a Hispanic organization trying to recruit Hispanics” – most of the discussion was between Randy and Paul.
A few pictures:
UPDATE: Paul Simpson writes in to tell me I got it wrong:
while I like the points you said were made about the positive message (Pro-life, -family, -small business), I think those were Able’s or Randy’s points. My comment about a positive message was that we ought to sell the positive aspects of assimilation and why encouraging immigrants to be fully assimilated as Americans is good for them and their families. We don’t get that message across and, instead, the Dems wrongly paint Republicans as racist bigots.
Well, I guess that means I’ll have to start carrying my little recorder again. Bummer. My notes clearly show that he said it!