Will Perry Make The Same Mistakes As McCain With Latinos?

By Melissa del Bosque

On the night of Rick Perry’s presidential announcement, two of Perry’s top advisers called Fort Worth Republican political consultant Juan Hernandez to ask for his support and advice. It could have said a lot—after all, Hernandez has been a major player in building a Republican Latino base. He served as John McCain’s Hispanic outreach directory during McCain’s 2008 presidential bid. In earlier years, he foundPerry a language school in San Miguel de Allende so he could work on his Spanish. Hernandez also stumped for Perry in his 2002 campaign for governor.

But don’t necessarily expect to see Hernandez out in front of the Perry campaign this time. McCain’s team wound up pushing Hernandez to the sidelines for fear he would make McCain sound too moderate on immigration. And Rick Perry’s camp may well have the same fear.

In Rick Perry’s battle to prove his conservative bonafides, certain things are easy: he loves tax cuts for the wealthy and showing off his relationship with the big guy upstairs in crowded stadiums. But when it comes to immigration, Perry has always been a moderate.

Conservatives are already in a lather. Recently, in a Politicoop-ed, former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, an immigration hardliner, lashed into Perry for granting in-state university tuition to undocumented students in 2001 and for saying that Arizona’s harsh anti-immigrant law SB 1070 was “not the right direction for Texas.”

In a state with a 39 percent Latino population and strong family and business ties with Mexico, Perry’s moderation on immigration not only made policy sense; it was politically expedient. Now that he’s running for president it’s a different story.

Anticipating the drubbing from conservatives, Perry pivoted to the hard right on immigration last legislative session. Suddenly, the formerly moderate governor waspushing for an unpopular Arizona-style immigration bill to ban “sanctuary cities”—even though his biggest Republican donors were lobbying against it. It’s all too little too late, according to hardliner Tancredo.

So how will Perry walk this tightrope between border hawks like Tancredo and more moderate conservatives? A tough anti-immigrant stance could win over conservative Republican primary voters but it might alienate moderate conservative and swing voters. It’s a Catch 22.

No one knows this rocky terrain better than Hernandez. The Christian conservative speaks Spanish fluently and holds citizenship in both the United States and Mexico. He’s a go-to guy when it comes to bridging the significant disconnect between the Latino community and Republican establishment.

Like Perry, McCain is a politician from a border state. Way back when, he was moderate on immigration too. But the minute his presidential campaign started taking hits from anti-immigration hardliners, McCain flip-flopped.

In terms of Latino outreach, it was disastrous – just 31 percent of Latinos voted for McCain compared to 67 percent for Obama. McCain’s campaign agonized to the point of paralysis over how to appeal to Latinos without alienating the older Anglo Republican base. As I wrote in my profile of Hernandez in April, McCain’s campaign filmed dozens of TV spots talking about the need for immigration reform and other issues important to Latinos—only to ditch the commercials and never air them. McCain also asked Hernandez to gather Latinos to be in campaign photo ops with him, only to switch them out at the last minute for older Anglos.

“Every day it felt like acid in my stomach,” Hernandez says of those turbulent months trying to pitch McCain to the Latino community only to find himself eventually cast aside by McCain’s campaign.

In many ways, Perry has already made his move to the right on immigration policy. It will be interesting indeed, to see if he hires Hernandez to reach out to Latinos.

But times have changed in the Republican Party. Hernandez’s pro-immigrant stance, his stint working for the Mexican government and his views against the border fence have made him a pariah in the Tea Party decade. Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin has referred to Hernandez as a “sovereignty-undermining extremist.”

Perry’s moderation on immigration will be seen as a weakness to the increasingly right-wing GOP, says Hernandez. “I’ve been there before in the trenches and I’ve lived it.” The political consultant says he doesn’t want to name Perry’s advisers who called him. “I haven’t officially been asked to work on the campaign,” he demurs. “I haven’t received a call from Rick himself.”

Nevertheless, he has advice for Perry’s campaign, which he learned the hard way working for McCain. “Don’t let them single you out on issues of immigration,” he says. “Talk about jobs, talk about the economy and always emphasize the whole picture.”

And in a few months, we’ll see just how important the whole picture is for GOP primary voters.