Hispanics Aren't Buying Cruz's 'Hispanicness'

You'll probably hear a lot about Monday's Monmouth University survey. It puts Ted Cruz ahead of the GOP field in the Hawkeye State for the first time. But pay no attention. Outside of Iowa, it's virtually meaningless.

The poll Republicans should be looking at with great trepidation is the national MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll, also released Monday. This one looks beyond Iowa, beyond the Republican Party, factoring in the hugely important, elephant-in-the-room Hispanic vote nationwide.

And here's the rub: As well as Cruz performs among the Christian evangelical and tea party base in Iowa, among Hispanic voters nationwide he withers like a cob in a corn field.

Hispanic voters plain don't take to hawkish-talking Ted Cruz, in spite of the fact he has a Cuban-born father.

In the MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll, Hillary Clinton leads the Republican presidential field among Hispanics, with Ben Carson and Marco Rubio running closest to her.

Clinton's biggest lead is against Donald Trump -- but you already figured that, right? She's ahead of him by 11 points among all voters, 52 percent to 41 percent. But among Hispanic/Latino voters, she's up a whopping 69 percent to 27 percent.

What you might not have guessed is how far ahead of Cruz Clinton is: 7 points nationally -- 51 percent to 44 percent. But among Hispanics, she leads Cruz  by 27 points, 61 percent to 34 percent. That's a ton, folks.

Clinton beats Rubio, too -- by three points among all voters, 48 percent to 45 percent, and 19 points among Latinos, 57 percent to 38 percent. But it's a difference the senator from Florida who still lives within Miami's Cuban exile community -- who targets Hispanic voters in an outreach campaign -- has a chance of making up.  

When Marco Rubio talks about his life as the son of Cuban immigrants, he has a story of family struggle and immigrant pride that resonates. 

Cruz, on the other hand, is about as much like a first-generation American as chalk is like cheese.

You might say his dad arrived in the United States well-heeled. He left Cuba in 1957 to attend the University of Texas at Austin, met and married an Irish-Italian girl from Delaware. There is no financial hardship cited anywhere in the Cruz family records since they've been in America. 

In fact, Cruz's parents were working in the oil business as owners of a seismic-data processing firm for oil drilling when he was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada Dec. 22, 1970. His parents paid for him to attend evangelical Christian schools in and around Austin, Texas. Later he was an Ivy Leaguer, an alum of Princeton University, and after that Harvard Law School. 

In fairness to Cruz, the Texas senator does have something of an Hispanic outreach program. He has a website in Spanish, has produced ads in Spanish and employs his father, Rafael, to address Spanish-speaking audiences on his behalf.

But make no mistake, his inability to speak the language, to speak directly to the estimated 35 million U.S. Hispanics who speak primarily Spanish is a major disadvantage in this race. It is unlikely to surface now, while the campaign remains in the traditional early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which have largely white Republican electorates.

After that, though, comes Nevada. That's the real beginning, when it hits the fan.

Rubio's pollster, Whit Ayres, estimates the party will need to pull in at least 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2016 to win because the share of America's white electorate is declining.

"At times, Senator Cruz finds it difficult to identify or engage with his Latino heritage," said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, a key conservative group. "He does not elevate or magnify his Latino voice in the same way Marco Rubio does."

And Javier Palomarez, CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, an organization of Hispanic business leaders, said this during a James Oliphant Reuters interview in June to explain the difference between the two candidates: "Rubio speaks the language. Both are sons of immigrants, but one has held onto the culture and language."

Republicans simply can't afford to cede the fastest growing voting bloc in America to the Democratic candidate.

"Every 30 seconds, a Latino citizen turns 18 and becomes eligible to vote," said Gabriel Sanchez, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico, speaking in Washington, D.C. in October. "That's 66,000 each month. That's a powerful number."

Ted Cruz might as well lap up his advantage now, rising and golden as he is in the nation's bread basket. After February comes the rude awakening.

Concludes the MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll story, "To put these Latino poll numbers into perspective, Barack Obama defeated John McCain among Latinos by 36 points in 2008, 67 percent to 31 percent. And he beat Mitt Romney by 44 points in 2012, 71 percent to 27 percent."

Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith