Thread: Griego: Hispanic Republican keeps stirring the pot

Griego: Hispanic Republican keeps stirring the pot


email | bioMay 10, 2007
A recent squall has developed within a small circle of Hispanic Republicans, a subset of which has been consumed by a single question: Why won't Gil Cisneros just keep quiet?
The question is not phrased in this blunt way. It would not do to accuse a man of lack of tact in his communications with elected Republicans by employing poor manners oneself. Especially not with a man of Cisneros' stature - founder and president of the Chamber of the Americas, newly elected chairman of the state chapter of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, possessor of a resume in which both Presidents Reagan and Bush the First make an appearance. No, the question comes in the form of suggestions: You should tone it down. We need to be team players.

The rumbling began within the past few weeks, coming from within a group of 300 people who receive Cisneros' frequent e-mail dispatches. By last week, it had grown loud enough that a Democratic friend of Cisneros' asked, half-jokingly: "Why are you trying to commit suicide, Gil?"

Cisneros has blasted Republican politicians in Georgia and Utah with "a bad Republican is a bad Republican!" A fool, he pronounced a Utah county convention delegate who called illegal immigration a stealth weapon by which Satan plans to destroy the free world. Of course, no one sane would have defended that particular position, so Cisneros did not run into any flak until he disagreed with one of Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo's supporters who argued that the congressman was not anti-immigrant, but anti-illegal-immigrant. Cisneros raised more eyebrows when he criticized Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, a Republican, for greeting the news of the possible opening of an immigration office in Greeley with: "The cavalry is coming!"

"If immigration is the cavalry then who are the immigrants?" Cisneros asked, adding - in his own fit of hyperbole - that the district attorney was insinuating "immigrants should be displaced and (sent) to reservations."

This week, he sent a tsk-tsk note to Rep. David Balmer, a Centennial Republican, who begged off Cisneros' distribution list saying he can't keep up with all his e-mail.

"The decision is yours," Cisneros wrote, asking Balmer to reconsider. "But as the saying goes, 'Don't come to us on Election Day and eat our tamales and want us to vote for you.' "

"Eat our tamales?" I ask Cisneros when I reach him by phone. He laughs.

"I know I'm being criticized, but what am I going to do? Run?" he says after we meet. "I'm 63 years old. I still have a few years left. I want to change some things and I'm not going to apologize for being a Mexican."

I don't share all of Cisneros' politics. Nor do I care whether Hispanics register Democrat or Republican, I just wish they would register. But, I rarely pass protesters waving signs on a corner without wondering what last straw drove each of them to the street.

"I can't tell you that it was one thing," Cisneros tells me. He comes from a long line of New Mexicans and is the son of a mother who was Catholic and Democrat and a father who was Protestant and Republican. Cisneros grew up in Denver, raised by his aunt, a socially conservative Democrat. He was a Democrat himself until the early '80s, when conversations with Mexican businessmen who touted the free market persuaded him to switch parties. "I'm convinced that more than half of Hispanics are Republicans," he says. "They just don't know it."

What drives him to his computer these days is the fear that overheated rhetoric on illegal immigration by Republican politicians is driving Hispanics away from the party. Democrat Hispanics already outnumber Republican Hispanics by about 2-to-1, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. "Every time a Republican says something that is not just anti-illegal-immigration - there is room for us to disagree on solutions there - but anti-Hispanic, it sets us back 10 years. It's basically stupidity with these guys."


In recent days, Cisneros has been receiving his fair share of "attaboys," and several Republican legislators have asked to meet for advice. Weld County DA Buck also called. After a cordial conversation, Buck wrote an e-mail of his own - which Cisneros, of course, distributed - explaining that the cavalry comment was meant to express relief that the county's fight against crime would be getting reinforcement.

"I think it was a misunderstanding," Buck told me. "I would have preferred that he speak to me privately first, but as an elected official I wouldn't get very far if I had a thin skin. I think he's trying to do the right thing to increase sensitivity among elected Republicans and the Hispanic community."

Cisneros says he's in a position now where he can do some good, a Republican who can hold fellow Republicans accountable, a Hispanic who can bring other Hispanics to the party, a man who's had enough.

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/n ... 18,00.html

BUSH ALREADY RUINED THE REPUBLICAN PARTY...ONE MORE IDIOT EATING HIS OWN TAMALES WILL BE POSITIVE AND HELPFUL...

mR. Cisneros says he's in a position now where he can do some good, a Republican who can hold fellow Republicans accountable, a Hispanic who can bring other Hispanics to the party, a man who's had enough.


NO... MR. Cisneros ...WE'VE HAD ENOUGH.....

Cisneros says he's in a position now where he can do some good, a Republican who can hold fellow Republicans accountable, a Hispanic who can bring other Hispanics to the party, a man who's had enough.

Ever think of being an AMERICAN doing the right thing for the right reason???
At your age, one would expect you to know better.

How novel an idea, cisneros! Give it a try cause you get a big fat ZERO & a listing in my personal book of anti-American asses.

I want to change some things and I'm not going to apologize for being a Mexican."

Mr. Cisneros, my forebears came from Europe but I'm an AMERICAN! If you're a mexican, then go the hell back there.

Mr. Cisneros, my forebears came from Europe but I'm an AMERICAN! If you're a mexican, then go the hell back there.
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My feelings EXACTLY!