Our Flagging Faith in the GOP

But chiefly, it's because immigration reform failed in the Senate last June that the Democrats stand poised to make significant inroads into the Hispanic values vote. That failure could be to the national GOP what the passage of the anti-immigration Proposition 187 was to the GOP in California in 1994, when then-Gov. Pete Wilson's support alienated Hispanic voters.

The greatest indicator of the trouble between Republicans and Hispanic faith voters are the actions of diehard Republican operative Rev. Mark Gonzalez of Dallas. Last week, Gonzalez captured the collective disappointment of the Hispanic community when he said that his primary objective in this election cycle is to register voters in the 10 states with the largest Hispanic population. He doesn't care, he says, whether they vote Democrat or Republican, as long they vote -- and demonstrate that Latino Christians represent a meaningful, and valuable, constituency.

In the end, Hispanic evangelicals are married to neither the Christian right nor the Christian left. We are the standard-bearers of Christian equilibrium. And this fall, we may force both the Democrats and the Republicans to move to the center to capture the Latino vote.

hispanicchurch@aol.com

Samuel Rodriguez Jr. is president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, an organization of Hispanic evangelicals.