Susana Martinez the GOP's Mexican Connection


by Tony Lee
58 comments

05/18/2011

President Obama went to El Paso, Tex., last Tuesday to give a speech on immigration reform, urging those in the audience to support the DREAM (Development, Relief and Eduction for Alien Minors) Act, which would, among other things, allow illegal immigrants to get instate tuition rates at many universities and offer them a path to citizenship. The real point of the speech, however, was political, as Obama and Democrats assume that Hispanics in places such as El Paso will vote for and become Democrats for generations.

While Obama was giving his speech, though, approximately 325 miles to the north in Santa Fe, N.M., an El Paso native of Mexican descent was in her fifth month as the nation’s first Hispanic female governor, and New Mexico’s first female governor.

And, as a conservative Republican, Susana Martinez is living proof that assumptions about how members of certain groups, particularly Mexicans, will align politically are fraught with peril.

Martinez, who beat Democrat Diane Denish in 2010, has the opportunity to be the most consequential Republican elected during the last two election cycles.

Conservative commentator Michael Medved recently wrote that “the very survival of the party depends on further efforts to undermine Democratic efforts to portray the GOP as a bigoted, whites-only political movement.â€