BAD NEWS FOR IMMIGRANT BASHERS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2010, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“BAD NEWS FOR IMMIGRANT BASHERS”

There’s bad news in the offing for America’s political immigrant bashers, beyond even the fact that the most egregious among those who sought to make hay by blasting newcomers in last fall’s elections all lost, to their consternation.

Maybe that was because the likes of Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell and Nevada’s Sharron Angle and West Virginia’s John Raese just didn’t know the risks of constantly bashing immigrants, illegal or not.

For their benefit, and others’, here is a look at some numbers that should interest them:

Immigrants who have arrived here since the great influx from Latin American and Asia began in 1965 (with many legalized in the 1986 federal amnesty) and their offspring now account for one in ten registered voters nationwide. In California, their portion of the electorate is far larger, slightly over one-fourth of all voters now falling into that category. That rendered almost suicidal last spring’s primary-season illegal immigrant-bashing contest between billionaires Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman as they sought the Republican nomination for governor.

Only the fact that Whitman plunked down 144 million of her own dollars, plus about $40 million donated by others, saved her from the kind of landslide defeat suffered by U.S. Senate hopeful O’Donnell.

This should be a cautionary note for others who pursue the same tack – and for the GOP in general. If California is indeed a solidly “blue” state – as it has been in every major election since 1992 in which Arnold Schwarzenegger was not a candidate – that is primarily because of all the voters who are fairly new immigrants or their children and grandchildren.

Just one factor: Since 1996, more than 2 million Latino immigrants have won citizenship and registered to vote in California. Anyone who doesn’t think 2 million new voters can shift things around just a bit must not be able to add.

Which might mean the Republican Party, where immigrant bashers are concentrated far more heavily than among Democrats, is not “the party of no,” as President Obama has called it, but rather has become a party that simply denies reality.

For the more Republicans lash out at immigrants – legal or illegal, it doesn’t really matter – and blame them for everything from unemployment to crowded jails and lousy car washes, the more they turn off what some in politics now call “the new Americans.” That certainly happened last fall in California, where Whitman fell from a dead heat with Gov.-elect Jerry Brown to a six-point deficit in all public polls within days of the revelation that she fired her illegal immigrant housekeeper immediately upon learning the maid’s status.

Immigrants and their children could relate to the story of a wealthy woman essentially tossing her longtime employee – one she called “almost a family member” – to the curb with a declaration that “From now on, I don’t know you and you don’t know me.”

It was no coincidence that the internal numbers in every survey showed little movement among whites, blacks and Asian-Americans after that incident, while about 20 percent of Latinos switched to Brown from either the Whitman column or the undecideds.

Essentially, a 20 percent movement among an ethnic group that amounts to almost a quarter of the electorate produced slightly more than a five-point shift in the overall numbers.

“It’s as if some politicians think there’s no cost for immigrant bashing,” said Lynn Tramonte, deputy director of the pro-immigrant lobby America’s Voice. “Well, they’re wrong.”

That’s what Whitman learned, to her chagrin. Not even the subsequent tempest over a Brown aide calling her a political “whore” could change that. For once they saw how Whitman treated her employee, the vast majority of Latinos, whether immigrants or not, wanted no part of her. So ended any realistic shot at the governor’s office she might previously have had.

It is no accident that Latinos feel defensive when they hear immigrant bashing, regardless of how many generations their families have been Americans and regardless of whether the rhetoric targets only illegals. The FBI reports that hate crimes against Hispanics in general rose 32 percent between 2003 and 2008 ( the last year for which data are available). At the same time, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League both have documented a correlation between political immigrant bashing and anti-Latino crimes.

So even in the midst of the fall’s Republican tide, it was no coincidence that the most extreme of the immigrant bashers lost. That’s because many Latinos see such rhetoric as an existential threat, giving it more importance in moving their votes than deficits, out-of-control government, health care, supposed threats of “socialism” and the rest of the conservative complaints that resonated so widely in recent months.

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E-mail Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

NOT JUST A NEW GUV, BUT A WHOLE NEW STYLE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2010, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“NOT JUST A NEW GUV, BUT A WHOLE NEW STYLE”

Back in the early 1970s, just a few years after Pat Brown was knocked out of the governor’s office by Ronald Reagan, it was not uncommon to see him tooling along California freeways behind the wheel of his silver American-made sedan with a personalized license plate saying “THE GUV.”

That was about as pretentious as things ever got with the late ex-governor, father of the new – and old – governor. No beefy security men, no chauffeurs, no caravan of SUVs.

So it also was while Gov.-elect Jerry Brown was attorney general over the last four years. It was common for him to show up to deliver a speech in a battered state-owned Pontiac with a single driver-bodyguard. Not quite the old blue Plymouth he used to demonstrate his frugality during his first go-'round as governor, but close.

Which means you can be sure Brown won’t be outfitting his personal staff in expensive leather jackets resembling those worn by high school and college athletes, as Schwarzenegger did. There will be no privately-paid security phalanx to accompany the mandatory security given all governors by the California Highway Patrol. There will be no lighting specialists setting up before each and every event to make sure the governor looks perfect. No one worrying about perfect sound systems or conference call setups. The trappings Schwarzenegger used to make himself seem like some Middle Eastern satrap will be gone, along with Arnold’s ubiquitous all-day coat of pancake makeup and his shared-use private jet.

No wonder Brown suggested immediately after the fall election that “a little more humility is in order in the governor’s office.”

The changes in the verbal style will be just as substantial. The new governor possesses an English-language vocabulary; his first post-election press conferences included words like “ephemeral” and “acrimonious” and “coherent,” along with many other terms that have never crossed Schwarzenegger’s lips.

The approach will also be different. Where Schwarzenegger claimed from the day he declared himself a candidate that he would be beholden to no one, Brown made no such pompous declaration. Rather, he said everyone in California will likely have to sacrifice a bit to get the state out of its hole and that became abundantly clear during the first of his promised series of forums on the budget.

As he did when Proposition 13 passed over his opposition in 1978, he seems ready to accede to whatever the public wants, saying his role will be to make it work and not to make all the decisions. He could seem contemptuous at times during his previous eight years in office, but he vowed during the campaign that there would be none of that from him now, and no arrogance, either. And in his first forum, he listened carefully even to Republicans who adamantly opposed his election.

“What do the people want as the key parts of their government?” Brown asked at one press conference. “Do they want substantial firefighting, protection of the environment, great public universities, taking care of the poor? They might not be able to have it all, but we can certainly live with the choices the people make. But they have to be informed. I will do that and then we will live with what the people want.”

Brown, then, does not sound eager to shove anything down anyone’s throat. No “like it or not” bravado like that shown by incoming Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom when he declared gay marriage legal in his city while mayor of San Francisco.

Instead, Brown has elaborated a bit on his decades-old theme of an “era of limits.” “We may have to rethink the structure of government,” he said while wondering aloud at one point whether he should even have a chief of staff. “We need to make government leaner and meaner.”

Consistent with his campaign talk about wanting to move more government decisions to the local level, he said any restructuring he does will be “a very inclusive process. Right on the face of it, solutions do not appear obvious. We’ve been in a stalemate (between Republicans and Democrats in Sacramento), but somehow we now have to break out of it and earn people’s respect.”

And he said economic recovery is the key to anything positive he might be able to do, especially because several votes in the last two years indicate taxpayers are not willing to dig further into their pockets. “If the economy doesn’t grow,” he said, “this could be a very painful, even acrimonious process.”

The key word here is process. Brown doesn’t plan to tell anyone what to do, but rather to offer alternatives and then make the public’s choices work.

It’s a much more humble view of the governor’s office than California has seen in many years.

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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

TEA PARTY WILL HIT A WALL SOON UNLESS IT MODERATES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2010, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“TEA PARTY WILL HIT A WALL SOON UNLESS IT MODERATES”

No political development of the last two years was more remarkable than the rise of the Tea Party movement, which began with a few rallies around California in April 2009 and soon mushroomed into a national phenomenon.

But the Tea Party tide didn’t go far in California, as Republicans here failed to pick up even a single congressional seat.

That was partly because of the extreme anti-illegal immigrant tone of many Tea Party rallies, which helped Democrats keep the bulk of Latino votes securely in their camp, and partly because of the candidates the Tea Party ran.

A look at some positions taken by prominent Tea Party-backed candidates is enough to show why this movement – which purports to be purely grass-roots, but is really financed in large part by the far-right billionaire Koch brothers and their oil refineries – may have peaked in the fall election.

There has probably been nothing akin to the Tea Party since the Know-Nothing movement of the mid-19^th Century, which was spurred by a widespread belief that a wave of German and Irish Catholic immigration would put America under the control of the Pope and the Vatican. A similar belief that the current tide of Mexican immigration will lead to the end of traditional American values has been a major moving force behind the Tea Party.

But Know-Nothing candidates rarely espoused beliefs as odd as those purveyed by some Tea Party adherents this year.

There was the failed Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller, who believes unemployment benefits are unconstitutional and would like a repeal of the 17^th Amendment to the Constitution, which created direct elections of U.S. senators, rather than letting state legislatures appoint them. There was losing Delaware candidate Christine O’Donnell, who inveighed against masturbation, never a major political issue in the past. There was losing New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, who said it was okay to email bestiality pornography and insisted being homosexual occurs by free choice, despite holdings to the contrary from every significant medical and psychological organization.

There was David Harmer, narrowly defeated congressional candidate in Northern California, who opposes public schools. Merely closing down the federal Department of Education isn’t enough for him. And there was frustrated Senate candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada, who wants to get the U.S. out of the U.N. There was an Ohio congressional candidate who dressed up as a Nazi S.S. officer for a father/son “bonding experience.” Several others advocated eliminating Medicare.

It took a remarkable tide of xenophobia and fear to make any of these candidates at all competitive. Unless unemployment rises well beyond even today’s levels and the foreclose crisis continues indefinitely, it’s hard to see that tide continuing to flow.

Some of the Tea Party’s most prominent candidates would have been considered far-out wing nuts in almost any other campaign season. If conditions in America return to anything resembling normal, those candidates will once again be out of the mainstream. This would make it highly unlikely that in future years Tea Party candidates could win anywhere near the 70 Republican nominations for major office they took this year.

Which means that much of the Tea Party’s future probably rests on how its new officeholders perform. If senators like Ron Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida demonstrate an ability to build coalitions and cooperate with others of less extreme bents – as Scott Brown of Massachusetts has done – they and the group may have a long-term future. But if they develop reputations as nut cases, they will drag their movement down with them.

That doesn’t faze some Tea Partiers. Harmer may be the classic example. He’ll be back for another try two years from now in a district that long sent Republican Richard Pombo to Congress before he was eventually ousted four years ago. But Harmer will assure himself another defeat in 2012 if he becomes vocal in opposing public schooling.

That’s what Pombo did to himself, harping continually against the Endangered Species Act until Democrat Jerry McNerny knocked him off in the Democratic tide of 2006. Pombo is probably finished in politics, as demonstrated by his not even coming close to winning the GOP nomination in a nearby district last spring.

The bottom line: The Tea Party probably doesn’t have much future in California, where Latinos are steadily becoming a more and more important electoral factor. And it will only survive nationally if its leaders can avoid being seen as crazies.

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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

BROWN’S BIGGEST TASK: CHANGING THE FREE LUNCH ETHOS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2010 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“BROWN’S BIGGEST TASK: CHANGING THE FREE LUNCH ETHOS”

Back in his very first term, Gov.-elect Jerry Brown often used clichés old and new to make his points.

University professors who sought pay raises didn’t need them as much as some other people because they get “psychic rewards” in addition to their pay, he said, trying for a cliché of his own making. Later, he reminded voters who expected new freeways without paying higher gasoline taxes that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

That last old saw somehow eluded outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose administration devised myriad ways to move California’s debt into the future, creating what looked at times like a figurative free lunch, but one that came to haunt him right up until these, his last days in office.

The ultra-irresponsible Schwarzenegger approach appears to have rubbed off on most Californians. They want it both ways, according to every poll. They favor cuts to the state budget, found a November survey by the Los Angeles Times and USC. But they vehemently object to cutting programs they like – and good numbers of Californians value almost every current state program.

Meanwhile, just half those surveyed said they would deign to consider even a small tax hike linked somehow to spending cuts. And 65 percent said the current state budget deficit of about $25 billion should be eliminated either exclusively with program cuts or mostly with such cuts.

Contradictory as they seem, these findings must be taken seriously, since the Times-USC poll proved the state’s most accurate in the runup to the fall election.

It adds up to an unrealistic electorate that right now appears still to believe in free lunches.

Which means Brown’s biggest and most urgent task once he takes over early next month will be to convince voters they will either have to make do with much less of what they like or be willing to pay more for it.

He was pretty successful at this while mayor of Oakland in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Voters there by 2-1 margins twice approved Brown-backed parcel taxes to pay for new charter schools and more police officers and firefighters.

But Oaklanders, with a high crime rate and poor-performing public schools at the time Brown became mayor, felt an urgency. So his task may have been much easier there than it will be to convey an “if you want to keep what you’ve got, you’ll have to pony up” message statewide.

One reason is today’s high level of distrust of government, fueled in part by the obscenely high salaries and pensions some city officials have voted themselves in recent years, with the now-notorious Los Angeles County cities of Bell and Vernon two extreme – but not unique – examples.

Another is the habit of instant gratification many Californians adopted in their personal lives and finances over the last decade or so. One major cause of the foreclosure crisis that afflicts California more than most states is that homeowners here delighted in the seemingly “free” money to be had via refinanced mortgages while real estate was booming. “Tapping home equity” became a major pastime in those years, with many borrowers figuring they’d never have to repay the loans. They thought they could keep on refinancing into the distant future whenever large payments came due.

They bought boats and flat-screen TVs and SUVs and other toys with the easy money, and if property values dropped beneath the amounts of their refinanced loans, many simply walked away from the houses that once fueled their lifestyles.

The same mentality prompted Schwarzenegger to back big bond issues in order to balance budgets and to employ endless gimmickry when bonds became unacceptable.

Brown may need a series of television addresses to begin turning this mindset around. He may need to lay out exactly what will have to be cut and by how much if voters should reject any and all new taxes to help balance the budget.

There’s no question Californians are generous when it comes to providing programs to aid the elderly, the indigent, the infirm, the students and more – so long as it costs them no more than they’re already paying. That’s what every poll of the last few years has indicated, with local taxes to help schools perhaps the lone exception.

So it will be quite a trick to convince a majority of them to dig deeper into their pockets to pay for anything. If Brown can get them to go for even a mix of program cuts and tax increases, he will have achieved a massive shift in the way Californians think and behave.

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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net