Gotta thank Trump for taking time to campaign in California
Don't forget to thank Pete Wilson. This didn't happen overnight; it was a long term project....
Even Before Donald Trump, California Republicans Had a Huge Latino Problem
'Pete Wilson killed the Republican Party in California, but Trump is putting the corpse in the wood chipper.'
Latinos' antipathy toward the Republican Party in California developed long before Trump entered the 2016 race. It can be traced back at least as far back as 1994, when a state ballot initiative known as Proposition 187 was passed with overwhelming support.
Then-governor Pete Wilson, a Republican, campaigned for re-election in 1994 behind Prop 187, which sought to deny public services to illegal immigrants. It was marketed to voters with a racially charged message that demonized immigrants, warning in one infamous campaign ad that, "They keep coming."
For its backers, Prop 187 was a response to growing anxieties among white, black, and even US-born Latinos that the surge of undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants crossing the border in the 1990s posed a threat to the state. But in political terms, the 187 campaign felt to many of the state's emerging Latino voters like an attack, creating wounds that have yet to heal, says Lisa Garcia-Bedolla, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
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