http://www.capitolweekly.net/news/artic ... cle_id=826

Anti-immigrant ad targets Nunez
By Malcolm Maclachlan

E-mail article
(published June 30th, 2006)
A new anti-illegal-immigration ad running on Sacramento TV stations shows an image of Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez addressing a crowd while an announcer declares that "some propose raising immigration by over 100 million."

The 30-second spot, financed by a group called Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), goes on to warn of "crime, crowded schools and bankrupt hospitals," with the words superimposed over images of Latino immigration protesters. The ad serves largely as bait to bring viewers to a CAPS Web site that has audio and video links to what appear to be ethnic slurs made in the mid-1990s by some of California's most powerful Latino politicians. CAPS, a Santa Barbara-based group, opposes illegal immigration and says it has a membership of 15,000.

In the video on its Web site, visitors can listen to a recording of a voice they say is Núñez saying, "These rednecks … will think twice before they push forward anti-immigrant legislation against our community. You can be as revolutionary as you want, Chicano nationalist, you can believe in the concept of Aztlan."

A spokesman for Núñez denied that the voice was the Speaker's, and otherwise refused comment.

The clip, entitled "The Nation of Aztlan," goes on play recordings of Assemblyman Joe Baca, D-Rialto, urging Latinos to "increase our numbers" in order to win a "civil war." Art Torres, now chairman of the California Democratic Party, tells a crowd about explaining to white Senate colleagues that he had voted for affirmative-action programs "because you're going to need them." Another clip features Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa calling for Latino voters to get rid of politicians who don't support immigrant rights. Jose Angel Gutierrez, a University of Texas, Arlington, professor, speaks of "an aging white America" that is "dying" and says "it's just a matter of time."

These recordings are played over images of this spring's immigrant-rights protests in Los Angeles. But most of the comments were made during the debate over the Proposition 187, the anti-illegal-immigration ballot initiative. Núñez was political director of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor at the time of his alleged comments. Villaraigosa was speaker of the California Assembly, while Torres was about to take over the California Democratic Party.

CAPS President Diana Hull described the Democrats' comments as "racist." The reason for playing them, she said, is that "people have been intimidated" into not speaking out on immigration by charges of racism.

Assemblyman Ray Haynes, R-Murrieta, said that he tried repeatedly to get the press to cover these comments in the mid 1990s. At the time, he was a state senator and, along with Sen. Dick Mountjoy, was one of the architects of Proposition 187. At the time, he said, the media was happy to report "any racist comment made by the leader of a three-person anti-immigrant group and call them a leader of the Prop. 187 movement."

"I personally think these were racist comments," Haynes said of the statements by Núñez and others. He added, "Some of my Democratic counterparts figured they could say whatever they wanted and their comments would never appear on the news. Thus far, the media have proven them correct."

Haynes said that he has had little contact with CAPS, beyond meeting Hull and some other members at the group at a conference in Washington last year.
Hull insists the quotes are accurate.

"They said things [to Latino audiences] that I don't think they would have said to other audiences," Hull said. She also criticized what she said is the media's tendency to ignore the large-scale problems caused by massive immigration.

"Their idea of a good immigration story is to find some very sympathetic person who has been hurt by some restriction," Hull said.

Malcolm Maclachlan is a Capitol Weekly staff reporter.