New GOP Caucus Races After Latinos

Group Will Register Voters, Groom Future Candidates

Moments after Alma Preciado was sworn in as a U.S. citizen, a volunteer with the Democratic Party asked whether she wanted to register to vote.

She readily agreed. Within weeks, Preciado says, her mailbox was flooded with campaign literature from Democratic candidates, and she soon became a reliable party-line voter.

It wasn't until nearly a decade later that Preciado, a native of Mexico, happened upon a rally for presidential candidate George W. Bush and realized that her views were actually more in line with the GOP.

In retrospect, muses the Silver Spring mortgage broker, it seems incredible that her revelation was so long in coming. "But I didn't really understand what was going on when I registered," she said. "And I had no reason to question it because there were no Republicans in Maryland reaching out to explain the party's values to Hispanics like me."

Now Preciado has helped found a group of conservative Latinos dedicated to doing just that. Known as the Maryland Hispanic Republican Caucus, the group is the first statewide organization of its kind and was recently recognized by the state Republican Party.

There have been county-based attempts by Latino Republicans to organize in Maryland, including two small clubs recently formed in Prince George's and Montgomery counties.

But the caucus's leaders -- many of whom have lived in the United States for decades and are veteran volunteers for Republican causes -- predict that their group's impact will prove more lasting this time because of two factors: the state GOP's increased clout since Republican Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. was elected governor in November, and the growing presence of Hispanics, now the nation's largest minority group, in Maryland -- where they make up 4 percent of the overall population, 12 percent in Montgomery and 7 percent in Prince George's.

Being a Republican and a Latino in Maryland had been "very lonely for very long," Carmen Farinas-Camacho of West Laurel, a caucus member, said with a laugh. "But no longer."

Since its first meetings in November, the caucus's dues-paying membership has grown to more than 100. And in May, when the group held its first election of officers in a chandeliered hotel ballroom in Columbia, there was a palpable sense of anticipation.

Most of the roughly 45 members, who chatted excitedly in a mix of English and Spanish, were from Montgomery County, where the caucus's first chapter was organized. Baltimore County was also well represented, and there were several delegates from Prince George's, Howard, Anne Arundel and Harford counties.

The group -- which also wants to groom Hispanic Republicans to run for office -- aims to attract 300 members every three months by next year and ultimately have chapters in every county, said Chairman Jorge Ribas, a native of Ecuador who lives in Laytonsville.

"This is going to grow very big," he said.

If so, the caucus will dovetail with a nationwide strategy by Republicans to break the Democratic Party's traditional hold on Hispanic voters -- an effort that gained momentum when Bush won an unprecedented 35 percent of the country's Hispanic vote in 2000.

Since then, several state GOP leaders, including Gov. George E. Pataki in New York and Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida, have won election to office at least in part by wooing segments of the Hispanic vote.