At their convention in Dallas, Texas Republicans are haunted by race
watches bThe shout came from a burly, tie-wearing Republican delegate at the state convention in Dallas. He was standing in line, late on the convention's final day, to comment on a hotly debated immigration plank. And his wake-up call was warranted. Like most of the 12,000 Republicans in the main auditorium of the blandly cavernous Dallas Convention Center on the second weekend of June, reporters had been lulled nearly to sleep by the squabbling convention's endless delays. The official proceedings on Saturday hadn't been gaveled open until 13 minutes before the scheduled close of the convention. For nearly six hours we'd watched endless parades of statewide and congressional candidates and watched video clips from Dr. Zhivago, a Jimmy Stewart Western and a history lesson about the War of 1812. But when debate finally began, Texas Republicans' race problem bubbled straight to the surface- and things got real thick, real fast.
The convention's first day had largely gone according to script, all shiny and telegenic. There was the long-awaited make-up moment between Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (see "Talk of Texas," p. 2). There was the delegates' ritual hissing-of-a-moderate, this year directed at House Speaker Joe Straus. (Hutchison, the traditional target, had skipped out after her event with Perry.) And there was Perry's televangelistic acceptance speech, in which he sounded at times like he was still running against Hutchison: "Electing my opponent will accelerate the Washington takeover of our state," he said, as the delegates roared their agreement. "We're engaged in a struggle for the very heart of the state."
But there is also a struggle for the heart of the Texas Republican Party. Coming into this convention, there were questions about how the new Tea Partiers would fit in. But for a party with a platform that already read at times like a 1960s-era John Birch Society manifesto, there wasn't really too much suspense about that. The Tea Partiers did help defeat incumbent party chair Cathie Adams, replacing her with Steve Munisteri of Houston, who founded Young Conservatives of Texas. But what dominated the proceedings was the pressing realization- among some- that if Republicans remain overwhelmingly Anglo, they won't be dominating Texas politics for long. While the Texas GOP appears poised for a fourth straight sweep of statewide offices this November, there is a cloud hanging over it all. Call it Victor Carrillo's ghost.
In the March primaries, Carrillo, an incumbent Republican Railroad Commissioner, was defeated by David Porter, a less-qualified candidate who'd run no discernible campaign. The outcome became a symbol of Texas Republicans' "Hispanic problem." The commissioner made no bones about his belief that there was racial bias to blame.
Carrillo did not attend the convention- he was, most conveniently for everyone, overseas. But as immigration debates broke out, the shadow of Carrillo's defeat seemed cast across the convention hall.
On Friday morning, Gov. Perry had boldly announced to the Hispanic Republican Caucus that he aims to win 50 percent of this year's Hispanic vote. "This is the home of a Hispanic in America: The Republican Party," Perry enthused. But only about one-third of the caucus crowd was Hispanic, according to The Dallas Morning News. And there was a notably awkward moment when Adams, the party chair, explained her reasons for wanting more Hispanics in the GOP tent: "I want to include you. Why? Because you are Americans."
That kind of talk would not surprise Steve Navarre, who was manning a tabl
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