Abstract

Race for Latino California

This article presents information on U.S. politics. California Representative Loretta Sanchez owes her success at least in part to two unlikely confederates; Governor Pete Wilson and Bob Dornan himself. The former turned Prop 187 into a political lifeboat when he was trailing badly in the polls in 1994, a strategy that assured his re-election but is now proving somewhat problematic for the state Republican Party. As one Latino academic summarized the governor's political legacy, "Pete Wilson will be known in the future as the godfather of Latino California." Dornan, the famously belligerent poster boy for angry white males everywhere, succumbed to his own vitriol in his previous challenge to Sanchez, which galvanized a coalition of Latino, gay, labor and other activists who've been on the receiving end of the far right's revanchist policies.