07/17/2002

By RUBEN NAVARETTE JR. / The Dallas Morning News

So accustomed are Americans to politicians turning themselves inside out for votes that one might shrug off the latest example from House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt as par for the course. But some efforts to woo voters are so incredibly transparent as to be insulting.

First elected to Congress in 1976, the Missouri Democrat has never displayed much interest in Hispanics, their issues or their condition. Like many in his party, his record on racial politics is most often stated in black-and-white terms – from his support for affirmative action to protests about alleged voter disfranchisement in the 2000 Florida election. And despite the fact that Hispanics have been voting mostly for Democrats for 40 years, he seems to share a belief among many in his party that it is Hispanics who are indebted to Democrats and not the other way around.

Still, when it comes to convincing a career politician of the virtue in outreach efforts, there is nothing like a potential showdown with a president who is wildly popular with Hispanics to concentrate the mind. And at the moment, Mr. Gephardt's mind is mighty concentrated. In recent days Mr. Gephardt, who is known to have presidential ambitions himself, has studied Spanish in Mexico, appeared on Spanish-language television, schmoozed with editorial boards of Spanish-language newspapers and even launched his own Spanish-language Web site. He has also hired a full-time staff member whose job it is to reach out to Spanish-language media and downplay Republican outreach efforts.

That is not a bad start, although Mr. Gephardt has been a bit late to the fiesta. Not long ago, his office's Hispanic outreach efforts consisted of propaganda pieces detailing how Republicans were "anti-Hispanic." These days, the Gephardtistas are trying to be more upbeat, but the message is still the same: Vote Democrat because the GOP – despite overtures by President Bush – isn't user-friendly to Hispanics. Maybe the candidate should stop the bogeyman routine and talk about the contributions Hispanics make to our economy, society and country.

He doesn't have to look any further than his home state. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Missouri is now home to nearly 100,000 Hispanics. About a third of them live in the metropolitan area around St. Louis – the same area that Mr. Gephardt represents in Congress.

You would think that Hispanics would have been on Mr. Gephardt's radar screen for some time now. They haven't. For most of his congressional career, the pragmatic Mr. Gephardt has been a passionate advocate when he fights for the interests of the powerful and deep-pocketed. He takes good care of labor unions, teachers' groups and trial lawyers because – every two years – they take good care of him and of other Democrats running for Congress.

All that caretaking sometimes puts Mr. Gephardt at odds with Hispanic interests. He has opposed education vouchers despite their popularity with Hispanic parents. He took the lead in fighting the North American Free Trade Agreement, which strengthened relations with Mexico. And then once it passed, he resisted allowing Mexican trucks access to U.S. roadways. He held his tongue on immigration issues until labor unions backed off their call for tight borders. Now Mr. Gephardt says he supports amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.

But his most shameful act was in presiding over a devil's bargain last winter with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. As part of the pact, Hispanic members agreed to support Democratic incumbents against Hispanic challengers in exchange for possible committee assignments should their party retake the House in November.

Now, with the midterm elections getting closer and his own presidential ambitions factoring prominently into the equation, Mr. Gephardt is repackaging himself as a true amigo to the ethnic group soon to become the nation's largest minority.

Not willing to take any chances, the Gephardtistas resort to the old scare tactics now and then. After I noted in a column that Republicans in Congress had softened their opposition to restoring food stamps to legal immigrants, a member of Mr. Gephardt's staff called to disabuse me of the notion that the GOP is anything less than heartless to immigrants, especially if they are Hispanic.

When I asked the staffer if she could cite any examples of Hispanic causes that her boss had championed during his quarter-century in Congress, she veered off into a discussion of the achievements of the Democratic Party as a whole.

Mr. Gephardt and his crew will have to do much better if he mounts a presidential campaign for 2004. Spanish-language Web sites and hit pieces against the GOP are not going to cut it. If you want people's votes, you have to start by respecting their intelligence.

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is an editorial writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News. His e-mail address is rnavarrette@dallasnews.com.