In this week's issue of New York magazine, Jennifer Senior delves into 2016 presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's plans to win over Hispanic voters.
When describing Bush's passion for immigration and love of Hispanic culture, Senior writes that "as strange as it is to say, Jeb may be the true black sheep of the family, not W." According to one Miami Democrat and former Congressman, Joe Garcia, Bush's father described his mixed-race grandchildren as "the little brown ones." But Senior also notes that if Jeb Bush hadn't lost his first gubernatorial race in 1994, he may have been the GOP's presidential nominee in 2000, not his brother.
Senior goes on to describe how, despite his own ethnicity, Bush could still win Hispanic voters away from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), another presidential hopeful:
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Rubio, for better or for worse, is still affiliated with the anti-immigrant tea party. Plenty of non-Cuban Latinos remember his comment from 2009 — "Nothing against immigrants, but my parents were exiles" — and hold it against him, because it implied that those who came here seeking economic opportunity deserved less. (It has since come out that Rubio's parents came here for economic opportunity themselves, rather than fleeing from Castro.) Ironically, it also turns out to be important that Jeb is not Latino... A gringo agitating on behalf of immigration rights — what could be more powerful than that? [New York]
Senior's article also includes details about Bush's tenure as the governor of Florida, a position he held from 1999 to 2007. Read the full story over at New York magazine.
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