GOP Candidates Ignore Latinos, Then Lie To Them

If you ask me, and no one did I’m just saying, this is a pretty lame way to treat a huge voting bloc. Let me break it down. The reason that there were no Republican presidential contenders speaking at yesterday’s National Council of La Raza conference is because none of them wanted to go — Mitt Romney’s campaign even lied about not wanting to go, claiming they never got an invitation, then changing their story to say there was a scheduling issue.

Qué gacho. I figure, you know, the least you can do is be honest with someone when you reject them.

The Huffington Post did a nice little writeup, reaching out to the campaigns of Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman to ask why they declined NCLR’s invitation to speak. Here’s what HuffPo found:

Campaign spokesmen for Bachmann, Gingrich and Huntsman did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Romney initially said that the former Massachusetts governor never received a request to appear at the conference. When HuffPost produced an email from the Romney campaign cordially declining the invitation, the spokesperson clarified that there had been a scheduling conflict.

The Pawlenty campaign acknowledged they received an invitation, but spokesman Alex Conant said they could not attend due to a scheduling conflict. Of all the candidates invited, however, Pawlenty has perhaps the most wiggle room. He was the only candidate to attend former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Hispanic-outreach summit a few months ago.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in this election, though I’m keeping my eyes and ears open, but if I were running for president, I would be losing my mind trying to figure out ways to network with a ton of Latino leaders. NCLR was just that, and every single one of these candidates lost out on that opportunity. That tells me they either don’t know (doubtful) or don’t care (much more likely).

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD