Latino Republican Dilutes Latino Votes, Lies About It
By Anthony Gutierrez, Deputy Executive Director of the Texas Democratic Party
During the 82nd legislative session, I watched Republican State Representative Aaron Peña – Edinburg, stand on the House floor and vehemently say he had nothing to do with the creation of that gerrymandered mess of a district that was created for him in Hidalgo County. I also happened to be sitting in the courtroom in San Antonio recently when the counsel for the House Redistricting Committee, the person who physically drew the state house map, said under oath that he and Peña drew it together.
When we called Peña out for this blatant lie, his response was to argue about the meaning of the word “draw.” Yes — seriously. Then he said this was a personal attack. As annoying as Peña’s bizarre fixation with tweeting about Texas Democrats is (go check his Twitter feed), our rationale for bringing this to the public’s attention isn’t the least bit personal nor does it really have anything to do Peña himself.
See, there are a ton of important races in 2012 that we’re concerned about, but Aaron Peña’s odds of re-election are about the same as his odds of becoming the starting point guard for the San Antonio Spurs.
That district he was given as a reward for selling out is just too much of a Voting Rights Act violation for anyone to seriously think it’ll survive a court challenge. It’ll get struck down and Peña will be forced to either run in a fair district, which he would lose, or he’ll choose not to run and go beg Rick Perry for some kind of an appointment.
So, electorally, Peña is a non-factor. But, at the moment, he’s still in office and is the leader of the Hispanic Republican Conference as well as a member of the Redistricting Committee.
And that’s what makes this a huge deal — the guy Republicans put in charge of Hispanic outreach was so scared of facing Hispanics after this legislative session that he cut 30,000 of them out of his own district. And then he lied about it on the floor of the House of Representatives. Now, Peña can quibble about whether he lied and he can bloviate about the meaning of “draw” but the fact that he cut 30,000 Hispanics out of his district is indisputable. It’s simple math based on publicly available information.
And his motivation for doing it is obvious. His Republican Party made the sanctuary city bill an emergency item, they introduced immigration reforms so extreme they made the Arizona law look Hispanic-friendly (see: “Laundry Loophole”), they cut public education by $4 billion and they used tactics like Voter ID and redistricting to try to keep the Hispanics they so blatantly attacked from being able to voice their opposition at the ballot box.
I don’t care how many Spanish language ads they do or how many George P. Bush photo ops they trot out, the fact that this Republican Party is downright hostile to Hispanics and our values is indisputable. And they know it. Otherwise the Chairman of their Hispanic outreach efforts wouldn’t be running scared from Hispanic voters.
Anthony Gutierrez is the deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party.
