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“We are in trouble,” says Artemio “Temo” Muniz, chairman of the Texas chapter of the Federation of Hispanic Republicans. Muniz is the evidence for both sides of the immigration debate: He is the son of an illegal alien, a goat-herder from near San Luis Potosi and a beneficiary of the 1986 Reagan amnesty. He probably took a job or two that a native-born American might otherwise have taken, but he also created a lot of them, having started a mattress-manufacturing company that is now one of the largest home-furnishings businesses in the region, employing about 90 people. Muniz works for the family business and has just finished law school. When I ask about the lack of Hispanic participants in the convention, he says my observations are accurate. “The chairman says he wants a convention that looks like Texas, but we have a long way to go to get there.” (The Texas GOP leadership is not exactly covered up with Hispanic officers.) There are a number of problems facing Republicans looking to court Hispanic voters, starting with the fact that the target demographic is about 70 percent Mexican American while the Hispanic-outreach consultants are about 100 percent Cuban American. South Texas isn’t South Florida, but then South Florida isn’t South Florida anymore, either: Republicans lost the Cuban-American vote in the 2012 presidential race for the first time.
