GOP pushes forward with bilingual ban

Resolutions committee reverses earlier decision, gets behind "English for the Children" initiative.

ANAHEIM—Activists in the California Republican Party, against the wishes of their chairman, are pushing forward with plans to ban bilingual education statewide.

During a morning meeting at its fall convention Saturday, the party’s resolutions committee voted overwhelmingly to reverse a decision made a day earlier and endorse the “English for the Children” initiative.

“The chairman got rolled,” one Republican said.

A day earlier, a committee that considers initiative endorsements voted to shelve the bilingual issue until next year.

“This second group just ignored the recommendation of the first group,” said Michael Der Manouel Jr. of Fresno, regional vice chairman of the state GOP. “The weird thing is, the chairman appoints both groups.”

Chairman Michael Schroeder has said he is troubled by elements of the initiative, and supported the delay.

Elected officials and party strategists fear the debate, unless carefully handled, will hurt their ability to woo minority voters.

Today, the full convention will vote on the issue.

Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley millionaire who ran for governor in 1994, is leading the signature drive to get the measure on the 1998 ballot. Many GOP elected officials, while favoring a change in how bilingual education is taught, say the initiative is harsh and inappropriate.

Moderate approach favored

Most say they preferred a more moderate, bipartisan version stalled by Democrats in the California Assembly.

“This initiative, from a policy perspective, is poorly drafted,” said Assemblyman Rod Pacheco of Riverside. “I think it’s fundamentally against Republican principles, which are about local control and not state mandates. . . . Bilingual education needs major reforms. I don’t disagree with the goal, but in the way we reach it.”

Attorney General Dan Lungren, who is running for governor, said “bilingual education programs have, by and large, been a failure,” but the initiative seems to mandate a “cookie cutter” model that he doesn’t like either.

Ron Markarian of Fresno said he hasn’t studied the initiative, but his ancestors came to America and learned English without programs designed to ease the transition and it worked for them. “Bilingual education seems like an excess expenditure to me.”

Paul Fickas, chairman of the Sacramento chapter of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, said advocates of the English-only initiative are treading on dangerous ground.

“You can’t have a group of light-skinned guys, grumpy old men, forcing any kind of issue into the face of the Hispanic community and expect us to embrace it,” he said. “The underlying message is good, but we have to be be extremely careful to deliver it to the Hispanic community with the total, total, total support of Hispanic leaders. We don’t have that yet.”

Other issues percolating on day two of the convention included concerns as to how the Republican party can recruit Hispanics and female candidates.

Hispanics want to be part of the big-tent party, Fickas said. But there is concern the GOP will try to propose ideas, such as the initiative, and have Hispanic activists rubber-stamp them instead of helping to craft them.

Much of the day focused on diversity. At a breakfast highlighting the issue, a party activist took to the stage to passionately urge Republicans to actively recruit women or face the reality that their future is doomed.

“It is a competitive nightmare,” said Beth Rogers, president of The Seneca Network, Inc., a GOP group designed to help get money to female candidates.

The gender gap is real, and it’s crippling the party, she said.

“You cannot have one party that is half men and half women and one party that is all men and ever see a majority. Period. It will not happen,” Rogers said. “Republican women elected Bill Clinton; across the board, every ethnic group, every age group and every income group. We have the same demographics in California. It’s a straight-forward problem.”

Numbers down

California Republicans have no women in statewide or federal offices, and the four in the Legislature about about to see their numbers dwindle, she said. Statistic after statistic, Rogers painted an embarrassing political situation for the party.

The party chairman said the concerns voiced by Rogers are valid.

“But I don’t believe the problem exists nearly to the extent that she does,” Schroeder said. “It’s a fallacy to view women as a monolithic group that all think alike. That is just simply not the fact. Republicans have done well with most groups of women. We won soccer moms and we won married women. The group that we didn’t receive very much support from in the ’96 elections was single women, particularly ages 25-45.”

Infobox — In the Valley

In Fresno County, 27.2 percent of students are limited in their use of English. In Madera County, it’s 27.8 percent; in Merced County, 33.2 percent; and 23.7 percent in Tulare County.



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