What was prop 187 about exactly? What were the provisions, etc.? What consequences?

I live in California, (then and now), and the reference to prop 187 is unclear to me. Non-Californians would probably appreciate more details also.

What was prop 187 about exactly? What were the provisions, etc.? What consequences?

I live in California, (then and now), and the reference to prop 187 is unclear to me. Non-Californians would probably appreciate more details also.

you are 110% spot on about Prop 187. it did not destroy the CA GOP.

I might add that you can point to NY-IL-NJ or OR & WA plus several other states that were roughly close to California as far as political control in the early 1990′s. None of those states had a prop 187 but like CA the GOP went into a prolong decline in those states.

Straying from the path of conservatism and not having a winning message killed the GOP. That’s just my opinion. I know its more complex then that but how can you account for states like MI-PA-CA-NY-OR-WA that went GOP in several Presidential elections in the 1980′s just being lost to the GOP since then. None of those states had a prop 187.

Must be another reason?

I’m on the phone and conference calls at least twice a week with GOP seniors in AZ, especially in Maricopa county where some pleasant upsets have occurred. The new seniors that is. As a new committeemen elected just over a month ago, I’m also a part of the movement that has gained ground in taking over the GOP in CA.

Both movements are making surprising advances. We don’t have the ‘proof of concept’ in any statewide elections yet, and this year will be a bit unusual because of dissatisfaction on the left with Congress and the Administration.

But give us two more years in AZ and CA and I think we will see significant GOP advances.

Because the GOP will be a different animal.

Meg Whitman has run ads on Spanish media claiming to oppose Prop 187.

Talk about a 180 degree turn. During the primary, Whitman & Poizner claimed to be the Tancredo of Cali.

I think the CA GOPs problems stem more from MIGRATION rather than immigration. The political dynamics seemed to shift (1) as more people migrated here after the Depression and WWII–perhaps people with more liberal, progressive views, and (2) as the population shifted from a rural, agrarian base to an urban base. My family migrated here in the 50s. Many of them ended up in union jobs and developed more progressive, even socialist, attitudes. As a Republican in Alameda County, I’m a dying breed… isolated and outnumbered. However, I can still go out to the Central Valley and other rural areas and find more conservative folks.

My parents came to CA from New Mexico in 1948 and I was born here later. I’m about to retire now, and will be leaving for New Mexico. (Yes, I know it has issues but Santa Fe is beautiful).

Prop 187 would have barred illegals from any state-funded welfare, food stamps, Medicaid and other social services. There were some issues over confilct with federal law, and I believe it also prohibited illegals from enrolling in state universities and colleges.

When Gray Davis was elected governor, he refused to appeal the lower court’s decision to strike 187 down. There was a good chance it would have been upheld, at least in part, by an appeal.

Actually, on just about every ballot initiative here now, there is legal language that says if any part of the initiative is thrown out by the courts, the remaining part is still valid.

Another myth that persists is how well Bush did among Hispanic voters in 2000 and 2004. While he fared better than most Republicans have, his margins were epic losses of those demographics. Yet today, there are Beltway Republican types who would have you believe Bush won those voters.

Bread and butter issues are what animate Hispanic voters, as is the case with most others. If the Republican Party can make that case, it will win that bloc. To rely on Open Borders and amnesty programs is folly, and is an area where Rove proved to be clueless. As Trende notes in the article Eric cited, support for the Arizona law is one point higher among Hispanic voters in Colorado than among white non-Hispanic voters. This issue doesn’t decide who gets the Hispanic vote, and never has. The Democrats use it to curry favor with left-wing interest groups like La Raza and only for that purpose.

It is time for the GOP Establishment to get out of the echo chamber and listen to people on the ground and outside of the Beltway.

I think Obama mopped himself into a corner.
If the Federal Government loses.. will they not be liable for damages?
First, the court costs…
But then, I can see Arizona taking matter up and instituting an entire border security program including, Forces, buses, holding facilities, court costs and re-repatriating the Mexican Nationals…essentially a blank check that Arizona could present in court to the Federal Government which has admitted it cannot handle it’s responsibility and obligation to Arizona…and the States.
Everybody could climb aboard this bandwagon, and a great time could be had by all.
Further, by proxy, I see the potential of the Rights of the States, the Guarantees of the Federal Government being enforced in court leading also to the overreach of the Federal Government…
I see no good way out for the Federal Government. This play doesn’t swing enough political capital to justify the risk.
If they continue to a bloody finish as a loser it could be the biggest can of worms they have ever opened.
I expect either a watered down position to buffer the image of retreat, a dismissal, or a protracted battle because an outright loss would be a nightmare.
Am I right? I see a train wreck on the way here, if the Federal Government loses, I can’t see the end to it. Therefore, they cannot suffer a loss, so must resort to some other method of retreat.
I honestly do not believe they can win.

Erick,

It isn’t a myth. Proposition 187 put California Republican statewide candidates in a million vote hole for almost a geeneration. I have personal knowledge here. My father – Galen W. (Joe) Holsinger was the California Democratic Party operative who was in charge of exploiting the damage Proposition 187 did to the California Repubilcan Party.

He gloated at me during and after the 1994 election about it. He spent the Christmas 1994 season in Washington D.C. plotting with Leon Panetta about it. I think Panetta was then Clinton’s White House chief of staff. My recollection is that Pop actually resided with Panetta during his Xmas 1994 stay in D.C. because they were old friends.

The purpose of the visit was to coordinate a significant increase in Federal government spending on expediting, in California, the glacially slow naturaliziation process as those were mostly Hispanic in California. New citizens are pretty hepped up about finally becoming citizens, and the proportion who vote is far higher than for most Americans.

The Democractic Naitonal Committee and other national Democratic organizations simultaneously funnelled a lot of money to California for the purpose of convincing those new citizens to register as Democrats. California Democratic organizations did the same. And their nominally non-partisan charitable organizations were setting up massive , nominally non-partisan, voter registration campaigns.

My father’s job in D.C. was to coordinate all the out-side California party spending on this voter registration campaign with the expedited federal government naturalization process Panetta was setting up. The basic idea was to have the new citizens be offered a chance to register to vote immediately after taking their oath as citizens. That required careful coordination, and this was my father’s job in working with Leon Panetta.

And it worked. He showed me the various Democratic studies down afterwards showing that the Democratic’s planned-in-advance exploitation of Proposition 187 was far mroe successful than they had hoped.

Erick, with respect, the facts are very much against you on this. I’m a Republican and could only grind my teeth watching it happen. My father had a wonderful time explaining it all to me at the time and gloating about it.

deano64,

Given that I stated the first time that Pop showed me private California Democratic Party studies done years later which showed that their program for exploting Proposition 187 was far more successful than they hoped at the time, it looks mightly like your mind is made up and you don’t want to be confused by facts. Prove me wrong if you can.

One of the advantages to having a politician father is exposure to some very capable politicians and campaign managers. I was taught to count votes by Congressman Phil Burton, who was so smart he could gerrymander the entire state legislature in his head. I managed my first campaign as a college freshman (my guy carried the county I ran by his second biggest margin in the state). My real political mentor, though, was GOP pro Sandy Weiner, as I became a Republican after college.

Which is why it was so painful listening to my father describe, in loving detail, just what an opportunity Governor Pete Wilson was giving him during the 1994 campaign, and to Pop later telling me just how he was doing it. I was pretty numb by the time he showed me the post-1998 election analyses explaining how successful he, Panetta and other Democrats had been in minting all those new Hispanic voters who voted overwhelmingly Democratic.

Also note that Proposition 187 was only a potential disaster for trhe California GOP as Hispanics in California then had a track record of not voting. The Hispanic vote as an signifcant statewide voting block was pretty much a myth prior to Proposition 187. Hispanic voters were significant voting blocks only in slme local Caliifornia elections.

What turned Proposition 187 into a real disaster for the GOP was a great deal of hard work by Democratic pros plus generous voter registration funding from Democratic donors and, of course, Leon Panetta’s funnneling of taxpayer funding to the federal naturalization bureaucracy in California. The latter is normal – the Democrats won the Presidency in 1992 and President Clinton did what any Democratic President would do.

Pete Wilson gave the Democrats their opportunity. It was up to the Democrats to make something with it, and they did through good organization and lots of hard work. Even then there was a possibility it wouldn’t work given the past low voter turnout by Caliifornia Hispanic voters. Why that changed with Proposition 187 can be argued, but it really is a fact that it did change.

And the Democrats deserve significant credit both for taking the risk that California Hspanics would be a blah factor statewide, and for pulling out all the stops trying to change things. It worked, and it worked because they did such a good job at it. When Confederate general George Pickett was asked, years later, why he thought Robert E. Lee had “lost at Gettysburg, Pickett replied, “I always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.”

This was my Democratic pol father’s last hurrah in politics.

their 36% of the country that believe in amnesty and we’ll keep our 64% of Americans who believe in border security.

The Sean Trende referenced in Erick’s post (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/07/08/the_politics_of_arizonas_immigration_law_106221.html) already addresses many of the issues and questions raised in the comments. READ IT!!!

Not one illegal invader had their rights violated as in the excuse for the denial of the will of the people after the passage of Proposition 187.

Every California voter did have their rights violated by the underhanded subversion of the lawful vote.

It is plain to see we live under the rule of a dictatorship!