Commentary:
By Raoul Lowery Contreras
A Chinese proverb comes to mind with what happened in California the first Sunday of March.
From the worst political depression in American/Californian political history, the California Republican Party (CAGOP) has started a “Journey of a thousand miles” with a “first step.” Plus, after 150+ years of existence, CAGOP has elected a woman as Party Vice-Chairperson.
Party tradition: She will assume the Chairmanship in two or four years, which would make her the first ever woman chairman of the California Republican Party.
A cabal of deeply racist Republicans took over CAGOP in 1993-94 with the connivance of Yale-educated Governor Pete Wilson in his come-from-behind bid for 1994 reelection. The California GOP rescued a failed racist state initiative which came to be known as Proposition 187.Wilson ordered the Party to spend $300,000 on signature gatherers to find enough voter signatures to place the proposition on the ballot so he could run on the issue of illegal aliens.
The basic premise of “187” was to illegally punish in-country illegally-present people and their American citizen children without “due process.” Wilson was reelected: he didn’t win many Mexican American votes like when he defeated Dianne Feinstein for governor in 1990. And, everyone knows that pre-Wilson California GOP Hispanic-support ranged in the 40-45% range; it has dropped into the 20s.
The fact is that that the succession of CAGOP chairmen that followed the Wilson years has been minor league in stature at best (the exception, one of my lawyers, Orange County’s, Mike Schroeder). At worst, however, several of them have been racist to the core who purposefully drove Mexican Americans (soon-to-be majority of California) from the Party and welcomed the most radical California racists into it and its leadership.
The California GOP hit rock bottom under former San Diego GOP Chairman Ron Nehring who hired an illegal alien from Canada to work for his San Diego GOP. When he became State GOP Chairman Nehring applied for a work visa for the Canadian; it was approved. Unfortunately for him, the Canadian was also hired part-time by Nehring’s handpicked San Diego successor, a Swedish Immigrant with little knowledge of U.S. law. That was also illegal.
While San Diego’s Chairman, Nehring fostered a huge fraud on the Party by sponsoring a phony “Dr.” Madelline Cosman who railed against illegal aliens from Mexico because they were disease ridden and were responsible for a huge spike in leprosy. None of this was true and her “facts” were destroyed on “60 Minutes.” She was not a medical doctor at all, though Nehring never told anyone that her doctorate was in literature.
Then Nehring, under orders from his Washington boss — Grover Norquist — hired an illegal alien from Australia that had spent time in jail for violating a deportation order and had attempted two “Green Card” fraudulent marriages to get legal.
He hired Australian Kambrowski to be the CAGOP’s Chief Operating Officer.
When these illegal hirings were exposed by the San Francisco Chronicle and this writer, Republican Party big money donors evaporated. Nehring left office with an empty treasury, no organization and was helpless in the 2010 statewide elections. Nehring’s legacy: Not a single Republican won statewide office for, perhaps, the first time since 1856; GOP registration sunk below 30%. Nehring was followed by a Northern California lawyer who was also a disaster. The Party was again helpless in the 2012 election.
By a vote of 990 to 110, CAGOP Spring Convention delegates elected former Assemblyman and State Senator Jim Brulte Chairman. He is a nuts and bolts type leader who can rebuild the Party. His attitude is best reflected by his head shaking when CAGOP voted to endorse an effort to eliminate those little boxes on mortgage, college and job applications about race/ethnicity that are vital to prove racial disparities or equal treatment in California. He has engineered GOP majorities in the State Legislature in the 90s.
Accompanying Brulte’s victory is the election of a woman to be Vice-Chairman of CAGOP (880 votes to 227). A lawyer, an experienced politico who currently is Chairman of the San Francisco GOP and has run for the state legislature twice in San Francisco districts where Republican registration was less than 10%, she is also an immigrant born in India who came to the United States as a child.
She is the perfect role model for immigrants, especially those looking for a political party. She supports Comprehensive Immigration Reform that includes legalization of people here illegally, supports special attention to children who were brought here by parents and work permits in industries where skilled or unskilled immigrants, legal and illegal, are vital.
Her name: Harmeet Kaur Dhillon. Voters in California will get to know that name well in the next six years before she is elected the first woman governor of California in 2018.
Contreras’ books are available at amazon.com