Whit Ayres’s comments on Latino voters and the Republican Party:
GOP strategist Whit Ayers responded yesterday to a new Fox News poll illustrating the Democratic Party’s significantly higher popularity among Latino voters, calling the process of winning over the demographic “the great challenge of the Republican Party going forward.”
“We will do better, in part because we are not stupid. We can count,” Ayres told reporters Thursday, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
The Fox poll showed that 60 percent of those Latinos contacted favored Democratic politicians, while only 10 percent identified as fans of Republican candidates.
“It is pretty obvious that we can’t continue to lose Latinos two to one as we did in 2008 and remain competitive as a national party,” he explained. “If we don’t do better among Latinos, we are not going to be talking about how to get back Florida in the presidential race, we are going to be talking about how not to lose Texas.”
Ayres is currently president of Texas’ North Star Opinion Research, which “provides research and strategic advice to companies and Republican candidates,” CSM says.
“The immigration debate and the tone of some people in discussing it hurt the Republican Party,” Ayres said. “I don’t think there is any way you can deny that. On the other hand there are clear sources of opportunity and there are clear examples of doing better.”
“An awful lot of the discussion about immigration involves tone,” he added. “You cannot come across as someone who doesn’t care about the concerns of Latinos. There is no unanimity in the Hispanic community about what exactly should be done about immigration. But there is certainly unanimity that they don’t want someone who acts like they don’t care about the votes and support of Latinos.”
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