They want more GOP candidates like Marco Rubio, Brian Sandoval and Susana Martinez.
The Republican State Leadership Committee, a group chaired by veteran GOP strategist Ed Gillespie, is planning a concerted effort to recruit more Hispanics to run for office on the GOP ticket at the state level. With the Hispanic population continuing to boom, Gillespie said Republicans need to move fast to attract those voters to the party.
“The fact that is that five cycles is not very far off,” Gillespie said Monday in a conference call with reporters. “If we don’t adapt now to changes that are taking place in the country, we will face a very different electorate in a few cycles than we do today.”
A memo provided to The Daily Caller about the Future Majority Project describes its purpose this way: “Republicans should not only be planning for elections in 2011, 2012 and 2013, but for elections well beyond. Elections held in just 10 to 15 short years will feature an electorate that looks substantially different from that of today and is vastly different from the electorate that decided a major US election as recently as 2000.”
The document states that if the Republican presidential nominee in 2020 — at the current rate of demographic changes — wins the same percentage of the Hispanic vote that GOP nominee John McCain received in 2008, that candidate would lose by a 14-point margin, doubling McCain’s seven-point loss.
Gillespie’s group has set a goal of recruiting 100 Hispanic candidates to run for state legislative seats and providing them with campaign resources. They also hope to recruit state attorney general and secretary of state candidates.
The group’s president, Chris Jankowski, estimated that the effort would cost at least $3 million.
Gillespie said the Future Majority Project will also focus on attracting female and youth voters.
Its advisory board includes Hector Barreto, the president of the Latino Coalition, and Rosario Marin, the former U.S. treasurer.
“It is important for Latinos to see themselves reflected in their leaders,” Marin said.