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Potpourri on Fisher v. University of Texas
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- Written by Roger Clegg
Two excellent books are coming out soon, each of which ought to be of particular interest to the Supreme Court justices as they take up the issue of racial admission preferences in Fisher v. University of Texas this term (the case will be argued on October 10).
GOP-Style Immigration
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- Written by Linda Chavez
Some prominent Republicans, including Mitt Romney, have recently signaled their willingness to consider legal immigration reform -- but it's not clear they understand the magnitude of the problem or the proper solution.
Winner and Losers in Teacher Strike
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- Written by Linda Chavez
Children in Chicago may soon be back in school, if members of the 26,000-member Chicago Federation of Teachers vote to accept a new contract whose details at this writing are still being finalized. But are there any winners in this confrontation in the nation's third-largest school district with some 350,000 students?
Penetrating, Knowledgeable, and Tenacious
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- Written by Roger Clegg
I was asked by the Christian Science Monitor to participate last week in a discussion on “whether the US still needs affirmative action. Here’s what my coauthor and I had to say:
Snoop Dogg and Chilean Norwegians
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- Written by Roger Clegg
As our readers know, the Center for Equal Opportunity has been every involved with urging (successfully) the Supreme Court to hear Fisher v. University of Texas, a case in which the use of racial and ethnic admission preferences in school admissions is challenged. That case will now be argued next month, and CEO continues to discuss the case and how it ought to be decided. Last week, I participated in a symposium on the case, published on the influential SCOTUSBlog website. Below are some excerpts from my contribution, and you can read the whole thing here:
Media Bias and the 47 Percent
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- Written by Linda Chavez
The narrative of the Romney campaign as portrayed by most major media last week has been one of a tone-deaf, elitist candidate. In a presidential race as tight as this one -- the Gallup daily tracking poll Thursday showed the candidates tied at 47 percent -- the media potentially can tip the balance for or against a candidate in a decisive way.
Can Romney Win Over Hispanics?
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- Written by Linda Chavez
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney traveled to New Mexico this week in search of the state's 5 electoral votes, but he has a significant hurdle to overcome. The latest Rasmussen poll numbers in the state show Romney trailing the president by 14 percent.
Romney began his campaign in Hobbs, New Mexico, by talking about his energy plan. It's good politics to talk about energy in the West, where the energy business provides lots of job and economic growth. But Romney's problem in the state has little to do with energy and much to do with demographics.
Romney has, so far, largely ignored the elephant in the room: the large Hispanic population in the state. New Mexico boasts the largest proportion of Hispanics of any state. A large majority of New Mexican Hispanics are native-born U.S. citizens. Hispanics in NM have a long history of political involvement from the state's founding to the present and make up almost 40 percent of eligible voters. What's more, NM voters have elected several Republican Hispanics, including current Gov. Susanna Martinez.
While New Mexico's share of electoral votes is small, Romney will need all the votes he can to overcome Obama's big advantage in electorally rich states like California, New York, New Jersey and other safely Democratic havens. With 191 electoral votes from states likely or leaning his way, Romney needs 79 of the remaining swing state votes, while Obama needs only 49 because he is already likely or leaning to win in states with 221 votes. The math is much more difficult for Romney unless he can win all the states he now leads in plus Florida, Virginia, Ohio and at least one other large toss-up state like Michigan or Wisconsin, or a couple of smaller ones, like Colorado or Nevada.
Gov. Martinez is scheduled to speak at next week's Republican National Convention in Tampa in prime time. But that's not enough to assuage Hispanic voters in her home state -- or elsewhere. Like Hispanics in other politically important states like Florida (where 14.5 percent of eligible voters are Hispanics), New Mexicans aren't keen on Romney's handling of the immigration issue, one he's largely ignored once he secured a lock on the nomination. Nor are Hispanic voters in Colorado or Nevada, where they make up about 13 percent of all eligible voters.
The candidate seems to think he can remain silent on the issue, but he'd be smarter to come up with a positive approach that emphasizes legal immigration reform and a willingness to consider alternatives to "self-deportation" (his phrase during the primaries) for the country's 11 million illegal immigrants.
President Obama has provided Romney with some opportunity to make inroads on the Hispanic. Hispanic support for Obama is among the highest of any group (70 percent in recent polls), but that's in part due to the GOP's hesitance to aggressively exploit Obama's weaknesses in the Hispanic community.
Hispanic unemployment is at record levels over the last four years. The economic downturn -- especially in construction -- has eliminated jobs in which Hispanics workers found a niche and an opportunity to move up the economic ladder. Hispanic unemployment now exceeds 10 percent. Obama's dismal record in creating jobs has hit the Hispanic community hard. And the 2010 poverty level among Hispanics (28 percent) exceeded that of blacks, when the economic benefits of food stamps, subsidized housing and other non-cash benefits are included.
Romney has begun airing an ad (in Spanish) accusing the Democrats of "fooling" Hispanics on the economy. But the ad is pretty generic and does little to sow doubts about whether a second Obama term might stall the impressive gains Hispanics have made in upward mobility over the years. But the problem for Romney and the GOP in general is that they have not made it clear enough that they actually believe in Hispanic economic mobility and the assimilation of Hispanics into the American mainstream. Instead, they've spent too much time talking about the threat of illegal immigration and allying themselves with groups that oppose legal immigration as well. It's no wonder many Hispanics don't feel welcome.
It's not too late for Romney to fix the problem, but time is running out. He should begin this coming week in Florida by offering up not just a few Hispanic stars but real solutions on the immigration front. Sooner or later, he'll have to. He'd be better off doing it on friendly turf than waiting for the issue to emerge during the presidential debates.
CEO Activities Report
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- Written by Roger Clegg
We thought you might be interested in this summary of CEO’s recent activities. We’re proud of the activities discussed below, and remember that frequently our work is hard to publicize because it is behind the scenes and relatively technical -- for example, writing and coordinating amicus briefs. We have had good success in explaining why the “disparate impact” approach in civil-rights law (equating statistical imbalances with discrimination) encourages race-based decision-making, but even though this is a major problem it will never get wide exposure in the mainstream media.
Obama’s Bad Brief
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- Written by Roger Clegg
Last week the Obama administration filed an amicus briefwith the Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas, supporting the school’s use of racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate admissions.
