Ah yes...a 26 year old "student" who doesn't even know that Arnold ended California's illegal car tax.
That's fairly typical of the state of liberal education.
Posted on 07/15/2006 12:35:03 PM PDT by calcowgirl
Mention Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in this heavily Hispanic section of Los Angeles County and the response is almost invariably negative.
"I still think he's an actor, and not a good one at that," said Flora Lopez, 56, a supervision aide at a local school.
"To me, Arnold hasn't done anything," said America Aguilar, 26, a student at California State University, Fullerton.
"He cut the budget for the schools," said Arely Gonzales, a 27-year-old nurse, who pronounced the governor, "Awful."
Their harsh views illustrate how far Schwarzenegger's star has fallen among Hispanics since the heady days of the 2003 recall election, when he won 32 percent of that community's vote. That accomplishment was magnified by the fact that his main Democratic opponent was Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who is Hispanic.
Today, polls indicate that Schwarzenegger's support among Hispanic voters is much lower as he seeks re-election. A recent survey by San Jose State University found 58 percent supported his Democratic rival, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, while just 12 percent supported the governor.
Schwarzenegger's support among Hispanics is likely higher than that, although still below his 2003 levels. The Field Poll had it at 23 percent in April and the Public Policy Institute of California put it at 26 percent in May, which Schwarzenegger's campaign says is more in line with what they are seeing.
Schwarzenegger strategist Matthew Dowd said Hispanics are a key part of the coalition the governor needs to win re-election. Dowd said the governor will recover the support he had among Hispanics in the recall on the basis of the same issues that appeal to other voters: education and the strong economy.
This week, Schwarzenegger began courting Hispanics with a show of support at a Mexican restaurant in Lynwood, south of Los Angeles. But even there, he stepped on his own message by repeating his support for the Minutemen, a volunteer militia that has patrolled the Arizona border with Mexico, infuriating many Hispanic leaders.
The governor's slide in support among Hispanics has been tied in part to his support for the group a year ago on a Los Angeles talk radio station. It was widely repeated in the Spanish-language media, and Schwarzenegger advisers say they have had trouble getting beyond it to draw attention to what else he has done to improve the lives of Hispanics.
Angelides uses the Minutemen comment at every opportunity to undermine the governor's support among Hispanics. And the remark is expected to figure prominently in Angelides' efforts to target Hispanics in the fall campaign.
But in this working class neighborhood, where many residents own modest homes, rely on the public school system and are beginning to send a first generation of children to college, voters often did not remember the Minutemen episode.
They were focused almost singly on education and blamed the governor for cutting money to schools, repeating the arguments of the California Teachers Association. The union lashed out at him last year after he reneged on a promise to pay public schools money they temporarily gave up to help with the state budget deficit. Although the governor has since restored the money, almost no one interviewed gave him credit for doing it.
Instead, they said Schwarzenegger could not be counted on to support education, which is typically the top issue for Hispanic voters, followed closely by health care.
Gonzales, the nurse, said the governor's decision to repay schools this year was "just a trick he has up his sleeve, so he can get the voters to vote for him, especially the Spanish population."
Hispanics make up just 14 percent of the California electorate, but they are important because they are the fastest growing group and in recent years have tipped elections toward Democrats. While white voters have more or less split their support between the two major parties, Hispanics have voted overwhelmingly Democratic.
This year, however, things could be different. The San Jose State poll showed Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, with a big lead among white voters, who comprise about 74 percent of the electorate. He had 52 percent to Angelides' 32 percent.
If that holds up, it will be a departure from what has happened in the last two governor's races, when conservative Republicans only won half or slightly less of the white vote and lost as the overwhelming number Hispanics sided with the Democrat.
"If the race is close, then Arnold has a problem," Bruce Cain, director of the Institute for Governmental Affairs at the University of California, Berkeley, said, referring to his low support among Hispanics. "If the race is not close, then Arnold can forget about the Latino vote."
The governor's advisers say that for a Republican to win in Democratic-leaning California, he still needs a third of Hispanics along with a majority of white votes. To that end, Schwarzenegger has embarked on a series of campaign and state-sponsored events designed to win coverage in the Spanish-language media. He also has hired Hispanics in his state office as well as his campaign.
Dowd said Hispanic opinions about the governor are improving along with those of other voters, despite what the San Jose State poll found.
"We're actually closer to our goal than the Angelides campaign is to theirs," he said, without releasing his own internal polling numbers.
Even in Norwalk, where the governor's stock is so low, some Hispanic voters have come back to his side. Fernando Vasquez, 52, a groundskeeper for the city of South Gate, voted for Schwarzenegger during the recall but got turned off by last year's special election because he opposed propositions the governor sponsored that Vasquez believed would have hurt schools.
But as the governor has done a political about-face this year, paying back education and acting in ways calibrated to win over moderates, Vasquez has forgiven him.
"You know how people change their minds I like him again," Vasquez said with a smile. "Probably I'm going to vote for him if he doesn't do anything crazy again."
Ah yes...a 26 year old "student" who doesn't even know that Arnold ended California's illegal car tax.
That's fairly typical of the state of liberal education.
No way did school budgets in California see a **decrease** in spending.
Can somebody please tell this dumb lib reporter that all Hispanics do not think alike and many of us think high taxes and big government, to put it eloquently, suck?
Agreed. The CTA propaganda campaign was quite effective in establishing myth as fact.
They view Arnold as an Anglo alien twice removed from we American citizens (compared to my regarding him as a rich RINO too comfortable with the Kennedy's). The difference is that I regard Schwarzenegger as a citizen legally elected to a state's highest office in our democratic Republic while they want all of us to go back to Europe based on mythological BS passed off as truth.
After he gets through kicking all the conservative Republicans in the face there isn't enough hispanics to elect him unless he finances a drive to register all the illegals so they can vote for him.
Good grief - hold your tongue! You might inspire Tony Villar to run for his job and foment actual separation of Califoria from the United States.
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