“We have to do better in reaching out to traditionally non-Republican voters,” said Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee chairman who now is chairman of the RSLC, which helps Republicans in statewide races other than gubernatorial contests and in state legislative elections. “We’re committed to grow our Republican Party with a strong diverse team.”

The group aims to raise $50 million in the 2014 election cycle, Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux reported.

Gillespie spoke on a conference call with reporters today along with several minority lawmakers whom the RSLC helped elect in previous years. The RSLC finished a two-day conference in Austin, Texas, to develop plans to elect more minorities and women to office as Republicans.

“We’re going to continue to actively recruit sand support these candidates,” said Jason Villalba, a Texas Republican representative.

One obstacle standing in the way of increasing Republican support among minorities is the party’s support of voter-identification laws that studies show hinder those residents’ ability to cast ballots. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University reported that 25 percent of voting-age blacks, 16 percent of voting-age Hispanics and 15 percent of voting-age Americans in households earning less than $35,000 lacked the identification required by the laws.

Villalba said some Republican-controlled legislatures, including his own in Texas, are not pushing those measures this year. “We recognize as a party that thore kinds of issues can be divisive,” Villalba said.

Original post is Republicans Boosting Diversity Appeal at State Level by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

Dominican immigrants pose for photos after becoming American citizens at a special Valentine’s Day naturalization ceremony for married couples on Feb. 14, 2013 in Tampa, Florida.

There’s a lot of optimism and happy talk from President Barack Obama and lawmakers on Capitol Hill these days about the prospects of pushing through a bipartisan immigration rewrite this year. Yet among those tasked with hashing out such a compromise, there’s also a hefty dose of realism about the difficulty of that job.

Staffers grinding away on the plan made a private plea today to Latino elected officials not to abandon the legislation once it’s unveiled, warning them that it would be a compromise that wouldn’t fully please either side. It’s an acknowledgement that, even as momentum gathers behind an immigration revamp, the challenges that have undermined past efforts remain.

It would take “Armageddon” to derail the effort this time, Enrique Gonzalez III, immigration counsel to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida told a group of Latino elected officials at a private briefing today, according to two people present.

Still Gonzalez, who Rubio recently brought on board to spearhead his immigration efforts, also warned that the measure won’t be perfect and exhorted those present to get behind it anyway, according to attendees, or risk seeing it collapse as a similar effort did in 2007.

The comments came at a luncheon sponsored by the National Association of Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund and the people described them on condition of anonymity since it was declared “off the record.”

The session also featured an aide to another of the Senate’s bipartisan gang of eight on immigration, Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, as well as to two staffers to House members working on a parallel effort, Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra of California and Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida. All were bullish about their chances of reaching an agreement, and the Republicans described a sea change among lawmakers in their party they said gave them hope.

Indeed, Republicans have moved off their opposition to allowing a path to legal status for the 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the U.S., after their party’s 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney drew only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote compared witho Obama’s 71 percent. Yet some prominent lawmakers, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, are still against allowing them to eventually gain citizenship — a central demand of Obama, congressional Democrats and advocacy groups.

Insiders are already warning that longtime proponents of an immigration overhaul may not get everything they want. Attendees said Menendez’s chief counsel, Kerri Sherlock Talbot, asked Latinos at today’s briefing to remain united behind the legislation even though it would be a “centrist bill” and a compromise, knowing it would be “the best we can do.”

Original post is Immigration Authors: Optimism, Caution by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeff Daly/Invision/AP Photo

Actress Eva Longoria participates in an Early Vote Canvass Kickoff in West Palm Beach, Florida.

That was President Barack Obama’s job approval rating among Hispanics in January, according to Gallup.

The figure is close to the 71 percent support Obama received from Hispanic voters in the 2012 election, according to a national exit poll.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney received 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, one reason he lost to Obama by 5 million votes nationwide and in key states such as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where Hispanics are more than 20 percent of the population.

“If you’re going to lose Hispanic votes by 44 points — and that is the largest-growing demographic in America — you’re going to consign yourself on a national level of being a minority party in perpetuity,” Peter Wehner, who advised Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, said yesterday on C-Span’s “Washington Journal” program.

Some Republicans say they can begin to improve their party’s poor image among Hispanics by pushing for an overhaul of immigration laws that offers a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Obama wants to enact an immigration plan this year and has sought support from business executives.

A rewrite of immigration laws “is something that we should be able to get done certainly this year, and I’d like to see if we can get it done sooner, in the first half of the year is possible,” Obama said Jan. 30 in an interview with the Spanish-language television station Telemundo.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 70 by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

Undocumented Guatemalan immigrants are body searched before boarding a deportation flight to Guatemala City at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Arizona.

President Barack Obama, calling the proposal for an immigration overhaul from a bipartisan group of senators “very much in line” with his own goals, says he sees “a genuine desire” in Congress to accomplish this soon.

“The good news is that – for the first time in many years – Republicans and Democrats seem ready to tackle this problem together,” Obama plans to say at an appearance in Las Vegas today. “Members of both parties both chambers, are actively working on a solution.”

The plan proposed by Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio and two other Republicans, working with Sens. Chuck Schumer, Mike Bennet and two other Democrats, “are very much in line with the principles I’ve proposed and campaigned on for the last few years,” Obama plans to say, according to excerpts from the White House.

Congress must act on “a comprehensive approach” that deals with the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S., the president will say. The senators have proposed a “road-map” for green cards and ultimately citizenship for many of the undocumented.

The Republicans in the group say they are spurred by the 2012 elections, in which Obama took 71 percent of the Hispanic vote.

“At this moment, it looks like there’s a genuine desire to get this done soon,” Obama plans to say in Nevada, one of the states where Hispanic voters helped re-eelect him. “And that’s very encouraging.”

Original post is Obama: ‘Genuine Desire’ on Immigration by Political Capital.

Photograph by David J. Phillip/AP Photo

A campaign sign for Republican candidate for Senate Ted Cruz is reflected in the sunglasses of campaign intern Lorenzo Garcia in Houston.

Before anyone gets carried away with the Kumbaya dance of Sens. John McCain and Chuck Schumer promoting a comprehensive and “permanent” fix for the nation’s immigration problems, take note of what’s coming from the new senator from Texas.

“I have deep concerns with the proposed path to citizenship,” Ted Cruz, the newly elected and first Hispanic senator from Texas, says. ‘To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with rule of law and profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who waited years, if not decades, to come to America legally.”

On Twitter, the Republican who won election with Tea Party backing, writes:

Appreciate efforts to fix broken immigration system. However, I have deep concerns w/ proposed path to citizenship: 1.usa.gov/WK4MOW

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) January 28, 2013

Yet there’s a significant word missing from the senator’s Tweet or initial formal statement: Amnesty.

The battle-cry of opponents of immigration reform confronts a couple of new realities:

The growing influence of the Latino community, a constituency that gave 71 percent of its vote to President Barack Obama in November — in Cruz’s own state, Hispanics account for 38 percent of the population. It was a former governor and president, George W. Bush, who came to Washington with an understanding of the need for immigration reform. Family values, Bush liked to say, didn’t stop at the Rio Grande.

McCain, Schumer and company also have been careful to craft the path to citizenship as something that must be worked for — with Schumer underscoring the fines that would be levied along the way to a green card for an undocumented immigrant. Few people are punished forever for their crimes, Schumer noted in an appearance with McCain on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today. And the 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally should not be punished forever, he said.

Sen. Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American Republican from another state with a powerful Hispanic constituency (23 percent), put it this way on Hugh Hewitt’s show this morning: “First of all, there’s no such thing as a path to citizenship. What there is, is a path to permanent residency, a path to a green card. That’s what we have in this country. Nobody can come here and say I want to come in as a citizen. What you get is a green card, which you have to qualify for through a process of applying. Ultimately, if you have a green card, five years after you get it, you can apply for citizenship, which is something you have to qualify for. As you know, you have to pass an exam and a series of other things that you have to do.”

Cruz won election with a direct appeal to the catchwords of polarization. He called Obama the “most radical president,” railed against the “gay rights agenda” and warned against new threats to “religious liberty.” The National Review anointed him “the next great conservative hope.”

The impetus for an immigration overhaul — the 2012 elections — will come face to face with hard-line opponents who have blocked it in the past. That means critics such as Cruz, who is driving a certain line of balance between Texas and the Tea Party.

How hard his line is remains to be seen.

Original post is Cruz Control on Immigration: Driving a Line Between Texas and Tea Party by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

People attend an orientation class in filing up their application for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program at Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

That’s how many undocumented immigrants lived in the U.S. in March 2011, according to an estimate by the Pew Hispanic Center.

That’s down from a peak of about 12 million in 2007, according to the center’s estimates.

A bipartisan group of senators announced broad principles yesterday to govern a rewrite of immigration laws. The as-yet-unwritten legislation would include a path to citizenship for some of the 11.1 million undocumented immigrants.

“We believe this will be the year Congress finally gets it done,” New York Democrat Charles Schumer said at a news conference yesterday with four other members of the group, Bloomberg News reported.

John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and a member of the group, called attention to his party’s struggles with Hispanics as one reason to enact an overhaul. Mitt Romney, last year’s Republican presidential nominee, won 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, exit polls show.

“The Republican Party is losing the support of our Hispanic citizens,” McCain said yesterday. “And we realize that there are many issues on which we think we are in agreement with our Hispanic citizens, but this is a preeminent issue with those citizens.”

President Barack Obama plans to travel to Nevada today to voice support for an overhaul of immigration laws. Nevada is 27 percent Hispanic, according to a  2012 Census Bureau estimate, and the state backed Obama’s re-election by 52 percent to 46 percent.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 11.1 Million by Political Capital.

Photograph by Getty Images

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, seen speaking at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, is working with Senate Democrats on an immigration package. Photo by Getty Images.

Senate Democrats plan to put forward an immigration proposal next week, with President Barack Obama telling Hispanic lawmakers that he intends to push legislation as quickly as possible.

Obama will begin a public campaign to build support for an immigration package that will include a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants. A bipartisan group of six senators also plans to release a detailed framework laying out their principals for a bill as soon as the end of next week, Senate aides say.

The president “made it very clear that this is his number one legislative priority,” Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, said after meeting yesterday with Obama at the White House. “In every sense of the word he is in the starting gate.”

The immigration proposal will be the centerpiece of the president’s planned stop on Jan. 29 in Las Vegas, Nevada, a state that Obama won in the last two elections and where Hispanics make up 27 percent of the population.

Passage of a comprehensive immigration bill would fulfill a promise Obama made in both of his presidential campaigns. He won 71 percent of Hispanic voters in his re-election victory. Last June, he took executive action to halt deportations of young people brought illegally to the U.S. as children and make them eligible for work permits.

Since Obama won a second term, the administration has intensified its work on a legislative plan with immigrant-rights advocates, law-enforcement officials and religious leaders who support a change.

A bipartisan group of senators is working on a parallel track to write a bill, and they may release an agreement as soon as next week. White House officials and Democratic leaders are negotiating over who will release their plan first, according to congressional aides.

The Senate proposal will cover four major areas, border enforcement, managing the future flow of immigrants to the U.S., workplace verification standards and a pathway for citizenship for undocumented immigrants, Senate aides said. While Republicans have pushed to take a piecemeal approach, taking up the different components in separate bills, the legislation will be comprehensive, the aides say.

The group includes Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida, along with Democrats Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, aides say. Rubio, weighing whether to offer his own legislation, joined the group after November’s elections. Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee have also been involved in the discussions, according to Senate aides.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to hold hearings on the issue next month. The goal is for legislation to reach the Senate floor by May or June.

While many Republicans in Congress have criticized creating a system to grant citizenship to undocumented immigrants as amnesty for people who entered the U.S. illegally, the party has softened its stance as Hispanic political clout has grown.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour says the nation needs to revamp its immigration laws, including citizenship for undocumented people and is urging his party to reach out to minorities or face more electoral losses.

“We’ve got to face up to some demographic issues” if Republicans hope to win the White House in 2016, he says in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt” airing this weekend.

National exit polls showed that 10 percent of the electorate was Latino in November, compared with 9 percent four years ago and 8 percent in 2004. Hispanics constitute 16.7 percent of the total U.S. population, the largest ethnic or racial minority, according to the Census Bureau.

The former Mississippi governor says allowing many of the illegal immigrants in the U.S. to stay makes economic as well as political sense.

“If we will follow what’s good economic policy, we will recognize that we are in a global battle for capital and for labor,” Barbour said. “We need the labor, not just H-1B visas for PhDs and engineering from India, but also we need agricultural labor.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney says Obama will be promoting the same set of proposals that were part of his election campaign.

In his Jan. 21 inaugural address, Obama said the immigration issue is tied to economic growth.

“Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity, until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country,” the president said.

Original post is Immigration: Obama, Senate Leaders Pushing Reforms at ‘Starting Gate’ by Political Capital.

Photography by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images

Latino supporters of President Barack Obama had their inauguration moment tonight, when Vice President Joe Biden made a surprise appearance at a star-studded gala celebrating Hispanic artists and performers.

“One thing that happened this election is you spoke,” Biden told the cheering crowd. “The Hispanic community was a decisive factor in the outcome of not just our election but so many.”

Hispanic voters were a crucial force for the president, backing his reelection by more than 70 percent. Their overwhelming support for Democrats has prompted a wave of soul-searching for Republicans, who fear they are losing one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups.

“I think you underestimate your power,” said Biden. “This is your moment.”

The appearance was the first by a vice president at a Latino inaugural event, according to activist and producer Henry Munoz III.

The event at the Kennedy Center boasted a bold-faced roster of Latino superstars, featuring appearances by actress Eva Longoria, television host Mario Lopez, broadway star Chita Rivera and Ballet Hispanico.

Politics, though, was the star attraction, with speaker after speaker highlighting the growing force of the Latino community.

“It just feels good,” said Puerto Rico-American singer Marc Anthony. “Our united voice got us all here tonight and got the best man for the job in the White House.”

Latino activists have been pushing the president to take up a comprehensive immigration bill, a promise he made in his first campaign. White House officials plan to unveil a proposal in the coming weeks that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants– an idea expected to face fierce opposition on Capitol Hill.

“We have a long way to go to achieve our goals,” San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro told the audience. “The voice of America’s future is in this room and it calls us forward.”

Original post is Latino Inaugural Gala: First with a VP by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Minchillo/AP Photo

Martha Nunez, 53, of the Bronx, reacts to positive predictions for President Barack Obama as crowds watch election results in Times Square on Nov. 6, 2012 in New York.

Political Capital is collecting and analyzing the official results of the November 2012 presidential election at various levels of geography, including the vote in the more than 3,000 counties.

Following are the 10 counties or county equivalents where President Barack Obama took his largest share of the vote. Most are black-majority areas that historically are staunchly Democratic and were eager to re-elect Obama, the first black president in the nation’s history.

1. Shannon, South Dakota (93%): included within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the southwestern part of the state.

2. Bronx, New York (91%): about one in nine residents in New York City’s northernmost borough is non-Hispanic white. Bronx has been the most pro-Democratic New York City borough in five straight presidential elections.

3. Petersburg, Virginia (90%): a black-majority area about 25 miles south of Richmond.

4. Prince George’s, Maryland (90%): a black-majority area that abuts Washington, D.C.

5. Jefferson, Mississippi (89%): a sparsely populated, black-majority area by the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg.

6. Claiborne, Mississippi (88%): a black-majority county that abuts Jefferson to the north.

7. Baltimore city, Maryland (87%): more than three in five residents are black in Maryland’s biggest city.

8. Macon, Alabama (87%): a black-majority area that includes Tuskegee, the birthplace of Rosa Parks and the site of a university founded by Booker T. Washington.

9. Menominee, Wisconsin (86%): includes the Menominee Indian Tribe about 45 miles northwest of Green Bay.

10. Starr, Texas (86%): about 96 percent of residents are Hispanic in this low-income area on the Mexican border in south Texas.

Original post is Obama’s Top 10 Counties in 2012 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Voting at a polling station in the garage of the Los Angeles County lifeguard headquarters on Nov. 6, 2012 in Los Angeles, California.

Just how strongly Democratic is California, the nation’s most populous state?

In the Nov. 6 election, California voted more Democratic for president than the rest of the nation by the biggest gap in the history of the state, according to data compiled by Political Capital.

President Barack Obama won 60.2 percent of the vote in California and 49.9 percent elsewhere, making the state 10.3 points more Democratic than the rest of the nation. The president won 51 percent nationwide.

That gap exceeded the 9 point difference in 2008, when Obama won 61 percent of the vote in California and 52 percent in the other 49 states and the District of Columbia.

California has voted more Democratic than the rest of the nation in the past eight presidential elections. It last voted more Republican than the rest of the nation in 1980, when Ronald Reagan, a former California governor, won 52.7 percent in his home state and 50.5 percent elsewhere.

The following chart underscores how much the gap has grown in Democratic voting between California and the rest of the nation. For each presidential election year listed, the Democratic presidential nominee’s vote percentage in California is listed first, followed by his vote percentage in the rest of the nation. The third number shows the gap between the two.

2012: 60.2% / 49.9% / 10.3%

2008: 61.0% / 52.0% / 9.0%

2004: 54.3% / 47.6% / 6.7%

2000: 53.4% / 47.8% / 5.7%

1996: 51.1% / 49.0% / 2.1%

1992: 46.0% / 42.6% / 3.4%

1988: 47.6% / 45.4% / 2.1%

1984: 41.3% / 40.5% / 0.8%

1980: 35.9% / 41.6% / -5.7%

California is strongly Democratic in part because so much of its population lives in large metropolitan areas and less than 40 percent of its residents are non-Hispanic white, according to a 2011 Census Bureau estimate.

Original post is California More Democratic Than Rest of U.S. By Biggest Gap Ever by Political Capital.