Politics

Bush, Rubio, Bring Spanish Fluency to 2016 Campaign

Published

10 years ago

April 29, 2015

In this April 28, 2015, photo, Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks at an event organized by Town Hall Los Angeles in Los Angeles. Republicans are bringing something unique to the 2016 presidential campaign: an ability to speak to Americans in both of their main mother tongues, Spanish as well as English. It remains to be seen how much Jeb Bush and Rubio will use their fluent Spanish in the campaign. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press
CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Republicans are bringing something unique to the 2016 presidential campaign: an ability to speak to Americans in both of their main mother tongues, Spanish as well as English.

Democrats can’t match it. Previous GOP candidates couldn’t.

But now, paradoxically, the party that’s on the outs with many Hispanic voters over immigration is the party that has serious presidential candidates who are surefooted in their language.

It remains to be seen how much Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio will use their fluent Spanish in the campaign. Rubio offered a few words of it in his presidential campaign announcement, quoting his Cuban grandfather, a small but notable addition in a speech meant for everyone to hear, not just a Hispanic crowd.

Bush peppered his remarks with Spanish in Puerto Rico on Tuesday, making an obvious cultural connection with many in his audience.

Even a modest amount of Spanish will be more than presidential campaigns have known.

President George W. Bush rarely used his barely high school-level Spanish and, when he did, it was a token nod, not a real conversation. President Barack Obama and 2016 Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton have gamely tried a few lines now and then.

Bilingualism is a tricky issue in politics and you can be sure that careful calculations are being made on how and when to display it in the Bush and Rubio campaigns.

Bush the former governor and Rubio the senator have spoken Spanish liberally in Florida politics and other settings. But this is a national campaign for the highest office.

Republicans, on the one hand, want to win over Hispanic voters. On the other, they want to avoid upsetting some traditional supporters who — whether because of immigration concerns, nativism or simple cultural tradition — want English only.

A second Hispanic-American in the Republican race, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, has largely lost the language of his Cuban-born father and calls his Spanish “lousy.” (Another contender, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also is not fluent.)

Should Bush or Rubio go on to win the nomination, and should Clinton take the Democratic prize, history is sure to be made in 2016. After having elected the first black president, Americans would now be putting either the first fluent Spanish-speaker, or the first woman, in the presidency.

HOW MUCH DOES LANGUAGE MATTER?

No one thinks speaking Spanish is an easy ticket to Hispanic votes. Especially for Republicans, who saw Obama take 71 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012.

But it’s a sign of respect, says Bob Quasius, founder of Cafe Con Leche Republicans, which presses for the Republican Party to become more inclusive of Hispanics. “Even if your Spanish isn’t very good, it’s welcome.”

Hispanic turnout has increased in every election for nearly three decades, meaning it may top 10 percent of the electorate in 2016, according to Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic Research at the Pew Research Center. Even so, among registered Hispanic voters, 83 percent prefer English or are bilingual, Pew has found. Only 17 percent identify Spanish as their dominant language. Spanish is much more heavily preferred among Latinos who are not registered to vote.

“If a candidate can speak Spanish, it could at least get Hispanics interested,” Lopez said. “But it’s not going to be the deciding factor.”

___

RUBIO

The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio hails from heavily Hispanic West Miami and grew up bilingual. He shifts comfortably between the two languages while running Senate meetings, appearing at news conferences and interacting with people.

Rubio delivered two versions of the 2013 Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union, in English and Spanish. As a Senate candidate, he used both languages with South Florida crowds.

Al Cardenas, former head of the Florida Republican Party, remembers Rubio firing up volunteers in the two languages while working for Bob Dole’s unsuccessful 1996 White House run.

“He was then, and he is now, just as comfortable doing that in one language as the other,” Cardenas said.

It’s too early to know how much Rubio will do that outside of Hispanic-heavy events in the presidential campaign. When he spoke about his grandfather to Iowa social conservatives on the weekend, he did not use Spanish.

___

BUSH

Bush speaks Spanish at home with his Mexican-born wife, Columba, and whenever he encounters people who approach him in that language. Like Rubio, he clearly wants to draw more Latinos behind his effort, and he can be expected to address a variety of Hispanic functions, as he was doing Wednesday in Houston.

He earned thunderous applause in Puerto Rico at events where he mixed English with effortless Spanish.

“I love it,” said Maria Elena Cruz, a 59-year-old government worker from Toa Baja. “He speaks Spanish just like us.”

“That makes us feel good,” said Paola Bazzano, 72, a doctor’s assistant. “It’s a way to establish good rapport.”

How far he will go with his bilingualism, though, is not yet apparent.

His speech announcing his candidacy, whenever it comes, will offer a clue as to what he will do when speaking to a national audience. Will he say a few words of Spanish, like Rubio? Make a bolder statement, with even more?

___

CRUZ

Cruz is the first Hispanic senator from Texas, where many residents are native Spanish speakers. He struggles with the language, however, and nixed a proposal for a debate in Spanish in his 2012 Senate campaign.

“Like many second-generation Hispanic immigrants, he is conversational, though not fluent in Spanish,” Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said. “But that will not hinder his efforts to build a robust Hispanic outreach operation.”

___

Associated Press writer Danica Coto contributed to this report from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Woodward reported from Washington.

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U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Speaks on Democracy at Commonwealth Club

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages. Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

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: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs Council on Dec. 2. Photo by Johnnie Burrell. Book cover: "The ABCs of Democracy" by Hakeem Jeffries.

By Linda Parker Pennington
Special to The Post

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed an enthusiastic overflow audience on Monday at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, launching his first book, “The ABCs of Democracy.”

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages.

Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

Less than a month after the election that will return Donald Trump to the White House, Rep. Jeffries also gave a sobering assessment of what the Democrats learned.

“Our message just wasn’t connecting with the real struggles of the American people,” Jeffries said. “The party in power is the one that will always pay the price.”

On dealing with Trump, Jeffries warned, “We can’t fall into the trap of being outraged every day at what Trump does. That’s just part of his strategy. Remaining calm in the face of turmoil is a choice.”

He pointed out that the razor-thin margin that Republicans now hold in the House is the lowest since the Civil War.

Asked what the public can do, Jeffries spoke about the importance of being “appropriately engaged. Democracy is not on autopilot. It takes a citizenry to hold politicians accountable and a new generation of young people to come forward and serve in public office.”

With a Republican-led White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court, Democrats must “work to find bi-partisan common ground and push back against far-right extremism.”

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Dorothy Roberts. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Special to The Post

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A graduate of Yale University with a law degree from Harvard, Dorothy Roberts is a legal scholar and public policy researcher exposing racial inequities embedded within health and social service systems.

Sine 2012, she has been a professor of Law and Sociology, and on the faculty in the department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Roberts’s work encompasses reproductive health, bioethics, and child welfare. She sheds light on systemic inequities, amplifies the voices of those directly affected, and boldly calls for wholesale transformation of existing systems.

This work prompted Roberts to examine the treatment of children of color in the U.S. child welfare system.

After nearly two decades of research and advocacy work alongside parents, social workers, family defense lawyers, and organizations, Roberts has concluded that the current child welfare system is in fact a system of family policing with alarmingly unequal practices and outcomes. Her 2001 book, “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare,” details the outsized role that race and class play in determining who is subject to state intervention and the results of those interventions.

Through interviews with Chicago mothers who had interacted with Child Protective Services (CPS), Roberts shows that institutions regularly punish the effects of poverty as neglect.

CPS disproportionately investigates Black and Indigenous families, especially if they are low-income, and children from these families are much more likely than white children to be removed from their families after CPS referral.

In “Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (2022),” Roberts traces the historical, cultural, and political forces driving the racial and class imbalance in child welfare interventions.

These include stereotypes about Black parents as negligent, devaluation of Black family bonds, and stigmatization of parenting practices that fall outside a narrow set of norms.

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Roberts argues that the engrained oppressive features of the current system render it beyond repair. She calls for creating an entirely new approach focused on supporting families rather than punishing them.

Her support for dismantling the current child welfare system is unsettling to some. Still, her provocation inspires many to think more critically about its poor track record and harmful design.

By uncovering the complex forces underlying social systems and institutions, and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them, Roberts creates opportunities to imagine and build more equitable and responsive ways to ensure child and family safety.