Hispanics, Evangelicals and the Mid-Term Elections

Hispanics, Evangelicals and the Mid-Term Elections; Have their political loyalties shifted?

Many in the political center are declaring the beginning of the end for the values movement as they clink their raised champaign glasses in celebration over last Tuesday’s elections. These same voices are now huatedly and cheerfully calling on the two main parties to hurry toward the political center, forsake their base, and endeavor at all cost to attract the much vaunted moderate voters. “The Democrats didn't win the election for being liberal, Republicans lost it for being too conservative” they say.

It is also said in addition to this worrisome abasement of conservative values that the right has also lost all progress made in the past two election cycles with the Hispanic electorate because Hispanics are loyal to a centrist voice.

The fact is, none of the election data or the exit polling bears this out.

I will address the issue of Hispanic voters shifting their party loyalty first, and the calls to have evangelicals go soft on their values and prostrate themselves at the pedestal of political moderation second.

It must be stated that loyalty has to be earned. It must be earned by addressing and respecting the wishes of the electorate (note: I did not say one must endeavor to blindly bestow or obsequiously provide all things desired – that is for a later thesis). The Hispanic vote, like it or not, is now a major force to be reckoned with in the American body politic. As these elections proved, when candidates choose to ignore, and worse yet antagonize an entire constituency, they will experience bitter disappointment.

And so, Hispanics turned out massively against candidates who stridently campaigned against comprehensive immigration reform, and not in rejection of a conservative agenda espoused by these same candidates. Accounting for 8 percent of the total vote on Tuesday, only 29% voted for Republican candidates. In 2004, 44% of Hispanics surveyed in exit polls said they voted for President Bush.) More importantly, 69% of these voters declared to exit pollsters that immigration was their #1 priority compared to 19% who stated the war in Iraq was their #1 priority.

This was not unexpected. Karl Rove, the President’s Senior Policy Advisor, in an interview with the folks from Townhall on the eve of the 2006 mid-term elections stated “. I do think that individual Republican candidates are going to look back after this election and find that the rhetoric that they adopted hurt them in the Hispanic community. And we’re going to find other candidates who are going to look back and find that the rhetoric that they adopted by emphasizing a comprehensive solution to our border problems won them support in the Hispanic community. So I think there’s going to be... And in that instance, I think immigration will be seen as…a comprehensive approach will be seen as a winner, and a narrow restrictionist approach will be seen as a loser.”

Indeed, many of the candidates who took those “restrictionist approaches” to immigration reform are now having to look for jobs outside the Halls of Congress. Moreover, many GOP party leaders have been rightly blaming harsh rhetoric on immigration for the reversal of political fortunes with the Hispanic electorate. The incoming Congress should take heed of these political realities when taking up immigration reform anew, and give immediate consideration to a bill that provides a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who pass a background check and pay fines for entering the country illegally. If the Democrats want to stick around longer than a two-year election cycle, they must reach across the aisle to achieve approval in the House.

On Wednesday, President Bush identified immigration as an area in which he'd work with Democrats. The President has stated “A temporary worker program would meet the needs of our economy, reduce the appeal of human smugglers, make it less likely that people would risk their lives to cross the border, and ease the financial burden on State and local governments by replacing illegal workers with lawful taxpayers. Above all, a temporary worker program would add to our security by making certain we know who is in our country and why they are here.” He added on Wednesday "I would hope we can get something done.. There's an issue where I believe we can find some common ground with the Democrats."

But make no mistake; neither party will be able to approve a comprehensive immigration reform package on its own. In fact, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have yet to identify immigration as a priority. If these past elections have served any lesson, the winds of change are blowing a strong and mighty gale. At the rate that anti-immigration candidates are being rejected by the electorate, I have a feeling continued and persistent Hispanic voter turn out, now more than ever, will help bring about much needed comprehensive immigration reform.

And so, you may ask, if Hispanics did not vote heavily Democrat in rejection of traditional values, then what happened? The moderate’s interpretation of the 2006 midterm election is “..a rejection of a Christian fundamentalism as expressed by the religious right,'' said Robert Parham, a self described centrist Baptist from the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville, Tennessee. Famed moderate Senator Arlen Spector added the election results represented a 'seismic earthquake' and that the Republican Party must become 'a lot more progressive and a lot less ideological”.

Let me be clear with the respect to the stated demise of the values voting community; the vast majority of evangelicals (and I am speaking as one) could not and will not align themselves with a candidate that defends a pro-abortion policy, advances a non-traditional marriage agenda, and votes against prayer in schools and other issues that they consider contradictory to Holy Scripture. We cling tightly to individual responsibility and spiritual accountability. Our generation has made a collective decision that we will not stand idly by as we observe countless abortions of innocent life across the land, the misguided experimentation with traditional marriage, unfettered pornography on the web, indecency increasing day by day on our public airwaves, fantastic spikes in illegitimacy, ever increasing incarceration rates, and uncontrolled teen pregnancy (to name a few of the social ills).

The numbers bear this out. According to exit polling by the Pew Research Center, white Christian evangelicals turned out in essentially the same proportion to other voters this week as they did in the last couple of elections. The Gallup Poll showed “religious, white voters tended to be extraordinarily Republican, as usual”. They of course vote Republican because the party’s platform is more compatible to their political and ideological sensibilities. But the Republicans should know, Evangelicals are more loyal to the issues than they are to the party. Voters for the marriage amendment ran hundreds of thousands of votes better than for Republican Senator George Allen in Virginia; which speaks to how discerning the voters are (the initiatives banning gay marriage passed in seven of eight states where they were on the ballot).

No, the election was not a repudiation of conservative values, especially when you consider that most of the incumbents who lost re-election were moderate Republicans such as Senators Chafee and Dewine, or faced conservative candidates such as Bob Casey; who is openly religious and anti-abortion.

If one vies that evangelicals have lost their faith based on the loss of Congress and the Senate by the Republicans, they make the mistake of being shortsighted and assuming they only vote one party. The fact is, the mid-term elections demonstrated the war in Iraq was a compelling factor for many Americans who were frustrated by the perceived lack of progress, and wanted to effectuate a change in course by virtue of their vote. But make no mistake, the Evangelical community will continue to fight for Godly principles and a moral agenda that makes America strong, and we will continue to vote for candidates that advance traditional family values.

The 2006 elections proved Evangelical values voters and the Hispanic electorate (sometime these constituencies are one in the same as it is in my case) are discriminating voters that will not be taken for granted. It also proved the political loyalty of the Hispanic community is yet to be determined.

Daniel Garza is President of Council on Faith in Action www.confianow.com