Immigration Politics at Century’s End

Abstract

The general election of 1994 offered the Republican Party two competing strategies for the future—the Wilson model and the Bush model, in shorthand. Under the Wilson model, the party would shore up its base among conservative white voters and hope to attract more moderate white voters by taking a hardline on issues such as immigration, welfare, crime, and affirmative action. Doing so, the thinking went, would alienate many nonwhite voters and poor Americans, but not as many as would be attracted by such an uncompromising stance. By driving a wedge into the Democratic coalition, the GOP would splinter off core groups of white voters, appropriate them for itself, and become the majority party in the process. As we saw in the earlier chapters, Wilson used this strategy to good effect in his dramatic come-from-behind gubernatorial victory over Democrat Kathleen Brown in California in 1994. After trailing badly in the opinion polls, and facing the worst recession in the Golden State for sixty years, Wilson’s unexpected triumph thrust him onto the national stage. Aided by his close association to Prop. 187, Wilson cultivated his image as a man who knew which way the political wind was blowing and who had the right strategy to win elections, even in the most difficult of circumstances.