The kickoff event for George W. Bush campaign's at the 2000 Republican
convention was a throbbing musical extravaganza whose Spanish-language
theme -- Es Un Nuevo Dia (It's a New Day) -- trumpeted
a message that GOP leaders believed vital to their success at
a time of huge demographic change.
With a population that surged nearly 60 percent during the 1990s,
fed mostly by immigrants from Mexico, the 35 million Hispanics
in the United States were a principal target of Bush's message
that his "compassionate conservatism" was transforming his party
and making it a comfortable fit for immigrants.
The producer of the show, which brought mariachis, salsa queen
Celia Cruz and Cuban-born pop star Jon Secada to the steps of
the Philadelphia Art Museum, was the unassuming 49-year-old Panamanian
immigrant Raul Romero '75, '77M.S.
Romero makes his professional home in Houston and his political
home in the Republican Party. He was one of the Bush campaign's
"Pioneers," a group whose members -- including former Dallas Cowboys
quarterback Roger Staubach and Enron's Ken Lay -- raised at least
$100,000 for the campaign. Now Romero is making a name nationally
as the Bush administration's point man for "Hispanic outreach,"
a high-stakes, high-energy bid to woo Hispanics away from their
traditional home in the Democratic Party. In 2000, the effort
was good enough to win Bush 35 percent of the nationwide Hispanic
vote. Working without an official title and off the party payroll,
Romero maintains steady contact with fellow Texan Karl Rove, the
White House political adviser whose job it is to get Bush re-elected
in 2004.
Rove's number crunching has indicated that, with the steady
increase of Hispanic voters, 35 percent won't be good enough next
time around. The word from the White House is that the nation's
changing demographics mean Bush will need 40 percent of the Hispanic
vote to be re-elected.
That means Bush needs Romero.
Romero has kept his regular job as president and CEO of S&B
Infrastructure, a Houston-based engineering and construction company
that designs and builds everything from highways and bridges to
airports and wastewater facilities. But as a bachelor, he is mobile
enough to have bought a second home in Washington, D.C.'s Virginia
suburbs. And he has moved into an office on Pennsylvania Avenue,
one block from the White House.
Romero's constant business travels allow him to scour the country
for Hispanic talent to be brought into the Bush administration.
U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin, Surgeon General Richard Carmona
and Small Business Administration head Hector V. Barreto are some
of his finds.
"In the Hispanic community, he is known as the kingmaker," says
Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, who studies Hispanic politics as director
of the Mexico project at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington.
Romero chafes at the designation. "If we are making role models
that are good for the Hispanic community, then so be it," he says.
"But that doesn't mean I'm making kings. I'm just trying to make
sure we have the talent."
While Bill Clinton appointed more Hispanics to top posts than
any previous president, Romero takes pride that Bush is appointing
even more. "The prior administration never got over 7 percent
of Hispanics" in positions that require Senate approval, he says.
"We are close to 10 percent."
Democrat leaders scoff at the GOP's efforts to woo Hispanics,
claiming that the politics of wages, working conditions and health
care make them natural Democrats. Bush prefers to think that their
work ethic and Catholic values should make them lean to the Republicans
-- as long as the Republicans are inclined to welcome them.
Larry Gonzalez, director of the Washington office of the National
Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, makes it
clear how far the GOP has to go. He reports that the 1,520 Hispanic
Democrats elected to office across the country outnumber Republicans
13 to 1.
Romero has become a political arm of one. He became a Bush partisan
in 1993, when Bush was preparing to run for Texas governor and
visited Romero's offices at S&B Infrastructure. He asked Romero
to organize a meeting with Hispanic businessmen.
"I told him I had a big debt of gratitude to his dad," Romero
says, recalling the first President Bush's 1989 decision to send
in U.S. troops to topple outlaw Panamanian strongman General Manuel
Noriega.
"My family had to go into exile in Costa Rica during the Noriega
years, and because of his dad I had my country back," he says.
Romero pitch to Hispanics that the Republicans are now the party
of George W. Bush -- is an effort to reverse the anti-GOP antagonism
that took on a militant cast after former California Governor
Pete Wilson's mid-1990s crusade against illegal immigration. While
Wilson said services to illegals, such as education and health
care, were busting the state's budget, Hispanics complained that
they were being scapegoated for the state's problems.
Romero says Bush's Texas background has given him an affinity
for Hispanics akin to Arkansas-bred Bill Clinton's ease with blacks.
"They say Clinton was the first black president," Romero says.
"I'd say Bush is the first Hispanic president."
* * *
Jerry Kammer is a reporter in the Washington, D.C., bureau
of Copley News Service.
March 2003
