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Border chaos inflames GOP-Latino split

Presidential presence absent from Latino conference for first time

By THOMAS BEAUMONT and BILL BARROW, Associated Press
Published: June 23, 2018, 10:18pm

When more than 1,000 Latino officials — a crop of up-and-coming representatives from a fast-growing demographic — gathered in Phoenix last week, no one from the Trump administration was there to greet them.

It marked the first time a presidential administration skipped the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials in at least 24 years. But the absence was striking for another reason. As jarring images of severed Central American migrant families played out on television, the White House chose not to make the case for its immigration policy to these key politicians.

For some, the choice was more evidence that the relationship between Latinos in the U.S. and the GOP is not just fractured, but broken — a breach with both immediate and long-term consequences.

GOP strategists are bracing for the potential fallout the turmoil at the border might have on November’s midterm elections, where control of the House — and possibly the Senate is in play. Some Republicans are warning that President Donald Trump’s racially charged appeals to white voters, on display again at a recent rally he held in Minnesota, will doom the party’s relationship with minorities.

Peter Guzman, a Republican who is the president of the Latin Chamber of Commerce in Nevada, said the president is hurting the GOP’s outreach to Latinos in his state, which Trump lost in 2016 and where control of the Senate may hinge this fall. He said Trump damaged the GOP’s standing among Latinos by first showing ambivalence to the plight on the border and then stoking ethnic stereotypes.

“When you call them rapists and say they’re all criminals, it’s bad,” he said. “When he looks into the camera and marginalizes all Hispanics, it’s not good for the party.”

Others say the administration’s approach to the crisis at the border adds to the perception that the nation’s top-ranking Republican cares little about Latinos’ plight.

“Latinos don’t just feel misunderstanding and meanness from Republicans. It’s abject cruelty,” said former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who was the senior adviser to 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain. “For the Hispanic community, the Republican brand is gone forever. Kaput. They will never consider voting for a Republican.”

Schmidt ended his 30-year relationship with the GOP in the past week, blasting the “complete and total corruption of the Republican Party among its elected officials.”

His outrage reflects frustration among some Republicans, particularly those aligned with George W. Bush, about the party’s long-term ability to harness the growing segment of Latino voters. Bush was re-elected in 2004 with the support of 44 percent of Latinos. The Trump administration’s decision to skip the Latino conference showed how far the GOP has shifted from Bush’s “compassionate” conservatism.

“There is a great amount of anxiety about what is happening throughout the country facing the Latino community, and it’s not just immigration,” said Arturo Vargas, the Latino group’s executive director. “Absence of the nation’s leadership at such a meeting is a real problem.”

Census data released recently showed non-Hispanic whites were the only demographic group whose population decreased from July 1, 2016, to the same date in 2017, declining .02 percent to 197.8 million. The Hispanic population, meanwhile, increased 2.1 percent to 58.9 million during that time period.

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