News from Mississippi and Georgia RNHA

Republican National Hispanic Assembly

News coverage on the work of two RNHA members.

Rosemary Barbour is the Chairwoman of the Mississippi Republican National Hispanic Assembly.

Jose R. Perez is the Chairman of the Gwinnett County (GA) Republican National Hispanic Assembly.

Pedro Celis, Ph.D.

Republican National Hispanic Assembly

Washington State Chairman

May 12, 2004

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040512/NEWS01/405120388/1002

Bush selects gov.'s kin

Rosemary Barbour hopes to add to GOP

By Ana Radelat
Clarion-Ledger Washington Bureau

J.D. Schwalm/The Clarion-Ledger

Rosemary Barbour juggles phones as she coordinates the arrival of food for a Bush-Cheney campaign fund raising at Liberty Park in Madison on Sunday. Her loyalty to the GOP resulted in her being President Bush's Mississippi point person for attracting Hispanics.

The Rosemary Barbour file

Occupation: Owner of Quik Internet in Jackson. She formerly worked for the federal government.

Political experience: Her experience includes volunteering in the Reagan White House and serving as an intern for the Republican National Committee and the first Bush administration.

Family: Married to Hinds County Supervisor Charles Barbour. They have two children: Camille, 13, and Allen, 7.

WASHINGTON — Rosemary Barbour is President Bush's Mississippi point person to woo Hispanics to the Republican Party.

Barbour, tapped because of her background and loyalty to the GOP, is one of a few dozen Hispanic Republicans the Bush-Cheney re-election team named to a special committee that the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, will lead. The Republicans' Hispanic project was announced last month in Orlando.

The Bush-Cheney team hopes to position Hispanic Republicans like Barbour in every state because the Hispanic votes could determine who wins the White House in November.

Barbour, 37, born and raised in Guatemala and Gov. Haley Barbour's niece by marriage to Hinds County Supervisor Charles Barbour, said her job is to convince Mississippi's Hispanics that the GOP should be their political party of choice.

"In the immigrant world, you can't just say, 'Vote Republican' because they don't know about American political parties," Rosemary Barbour of Jackson said. "You have to explain the Republican world to them."

With all voters nearly evenly split between the Democratic and Republican parties on presidential politics, swing voters are more highly prized than ever.

"We're seeing an unprecedented amount of attention to court Latino votes," said Rosalind Gold of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund. "Both parties are realizing that Latinos don't march in lock step and are up for grabs."

But Mississippi is not a swing state. It is solidly Bush country. The president won the state with 58 percent of the vote in 2000.

But the GOP is looking toward the future, when the Hispanic community may be older and larger and a key voting bloc in Mississippi.

In addition, the influence of Hispanic votes in Mississippi is expected to be minimal this year. About 150,000 Hispanics live in the state, about 5 percent of the state's population, Rosemary Barbour said. However, as new immigrants, many of the state's Hispanics aren't citizens and can't vote.

J.D. Schwalm/The Clarion-Ledger

Rosemary Barbour (left) worked to develop a contact list for Hispanics attending the Sunday fund raising for Bush-Cheney.

Another problem for the GOP: Most Hispanics tend to vote for Democrats, not Republicans.

"The family is the central part of the Hispanic culture supported by a strong religious background," said Eduardo Martinez, 48, a Jackson-area lawyer. "Those values are the ones that the Hispanics find very much alive in the Democratic Party."

Martinez, who has been active with the Democratic Party since February, said he was unaware of an organized effort from either Democrats or Republicans to woo Hispanic voters in Mississippi. He said he plans to vote for Bush's Democratic rival John Kerry of Massachusetts because Kerry is a former Navy officer and Martinez is a Navy officer in the reserves. He also said Kerry "seems to offer some intelligently aggressive alternatives" to Bush.

Robert Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said the fight for Hispanic voters isn't limited to this year's elections because the Hispanic community's explosive growth might determine which party holds the edge in government for the next few decades.

"Both parties are looking to the future and trying to develop a long-term constituency," he said.

Bush won about 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000, more than any GOP presidential candidate in recent history, according to exit polls. He'd like to do better this year.

"Republicans don't have to capture a majority of Latino votes nationwide," Suro said. "For them, it's a matter of incremental gains."

Rosemary Barbour, a former White House intern, said she was attracted to the Republican Party because she was impressed with President Reagan and the GOP's traditional values. The GOP's message to Hispanics in Mississippi focuses on housing, education and entrepreneurship.

She said her job is to steer Mississippi's Hispanics to adult education classes that would teach them English. She also helps Hispanics open bank accounts, which paves the way for credit and eventually a mortgage, and for help in starting up small businesses.

"So many Hispanics have wonderful ideas but don't know how to get started," she said.

Q&A / JOSE R. PEREZ, State Board of Education

'I've lived' Latino issues, says longtime mentor

Published on: 05/12/04
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/atlanta_world/0504/12perez.html#

Jose R. Perez was 12 years old when his family left Cuba for the United States.

He remembers sitting in a Miami classroom, not being able to understand the language everyone was speaking. He remembers what it was like to take tests in a foreign language and to have to catch up with his classmates.


Business owner Jose R. Perez has served as a mentor to Latino students.

On Thursday, Perez, the owner of an international business consulting firm, will be sworn in as a member of the state Board of Education, which oversees the education of Georgia's 1.5 million public school students, including more than 100,000 Hispanic students. Perez, who state officials say is the board's first Hispanic member, was tapped by Gov. Sonny Perdue to fill the vacancy in the 7th Congressional District for the next seven years. A tireless community advocate, Perez, 57, is an active member of the Gwinnett Republican Party.

He hopes to bring the problem-solving techniques he uses in business to the state boardroom. And he hopes his appointment serves as an inspiration to Georgia's growing Latino student population. Perez spoke recently with Journal-Constitution education reporter Dana Tofig (dtofig@ajc.com). Here are excerpts from the interview.

Q: While you've never been in education professionally, what have you done in schools?

A: Obviously we've had great fortune in our lives. We've been healthy. Both my wife and I have great jobs, great careers. I began approaching schools asking to be a mentor to some of the Latino kids who were at risk. It was really, really amazing to me and really rewarding. . . . Maybe that simple interaction of having someone you can relate to and [who] takes some interest in you can make a difference one kid at a time.

Q: What do you bring to the state Board of Education that's unique?

A: I'm a problem-solver. I tend to focus on facts. . . . I tend to make decisions based on evidence. Obviously, I have lived through some of the English-learning experiences [and that] will be helpful. Not only can I analyze the issues and try to solve them, but I've lived them. So I have some background.

Q: Is it about time that more Hispanics were appointed to leadership posts in Georgia?

A: I'd hate to say "it's time for that to happen." We need to lead, not be given. I'd like to encourage every Latino to get involved. We can't just sit around. Nobody is going to come knocking on the door . . . I'd like to think [the appointment] wasn't about [my being Hispanic]. Have I been appointed as a token before to some boards? Yes, I have. Have I been offended? No. It's part of the bridge building.

Q: What are the challenges that Hispanic students are facing in public schools today? Obviously, the language barrier is a huge issue.

A: I'm afraid so. English is the universal business language. This is a nation that is just amazing to me. This is a nation that feels guilty because they don't speak Spanish. . . . I think it's a shame. English is critical to being successful.

Q: Any other challenges?

A: Culturally, we are driven by time here. I helped a company in Mexico launch a new telephone company. The CEO would call a 9 a.m. meeting that began at 10 a.m. It's an understanding [in Latin countries] that relationships are more important than time itself. If [Americans] have a meeting from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. and it's 11 a.m., the meeting is over. That's got to be one of the biggest adjustments.

Q: The achievement gap between Hispanic students and white students is, in places, even greater than the gap between black and white students. What causes that gap?

A: My belief, and I don't have any hard data, [is that] we have been so successful with the mainstream. I think the numbers show that in Gwinnett, [the vast majority] of the students graduate from high school and many of them go on to college. That means that many of the low-end occupations go unfilled. So we need to import people to do that. And then the imports come in and take their kids to school and they don't have the kind of education that the other students do. But if they come into the fold, then we need to take them and improve upon them and help them achieve.