By Danny Vargas
Like so many others, I enjoyed seeing old friends and making new ones at this weekend’s Republican Party of Virginia Advance. But as I made my way around, talking to my fellow Republicans about the future of our party and our solutions to the challenges facing Virginia, I realized that we have a lot of work ahead of us.
Virginia is changing—both demographically and economically. For the first time ever, more residents were born out of state than in. Minorities make up nearly 30 percent of the state’s population – a figure that’s growing rapidly. Virginia is projected to be “minority-majority†by 2030 and by 2040 Hispanics will be 18.6% of our population. However, today only a miniscule number of minorities hold elective office or positions of authority in our government entities at the state and local levels.
At the same time, increasing numbers of our fellow Virginians are feeling the effects of an economy that hasn’t grown much in years. Virginia children and teens living in poverty rose to 15.7% in 2013 from 13.8% in 2008. A quarter of Virginia’s working families fall below 200% of the federal poverty rate. Unless you’ve been there, it is hard to describe the panic, anxiety and distress that working families feel when they don’t know if they will be able to pay their bills or where the next meal will come from, let alone pay for their kids’ education.
Millions of our neighbors feel left out or left behind and are looking for leaders who will focus on the issues that matter to them. In the 2012 presidential election, 21% of voters said the most important quality in the presidential candidate was that “He cares about people like me†– Obama won that group with 81%.
This is a long-winded way of saying that our party has failed to keep pace with the changes around us. And the results speak for themselves. We haven’t won a statewide election since 2009. If our party hopes to win in 2016, 2017 and beyond, we must engage minority and economically challenged communities in a substantive, ongoing way in order to hear their concerns, describe our vision of a more prosperous future and emphasize our shared values. We must focus on results-oriented solutions that improve people’s lives. The question is how?
There is no shortage of theories and no silver bullets. But from the perspective of a Hispanic who was raised in poverty by a single mother in the streets of Brooklyn, there are some basic essential steps we can take.
It starts with showing up and not just during election season. Right now, the truth is that Republicans just don’t go into the communities that are in most need of solutions that are pragmatic, job-focused, and family-oriented—in other words, the types of solutions we advocate. We should not be afraid to visit African American churches, Hispanic bodegas, Asian neighborhoods or lower income communities. We must participate, listen to, and engage with these communities 12 months out of the year and not just as part of a campaign “coalitions†effort. Fortunately, Ed Gillespie broke down barriers during his 2014 campaign. In 2015, House Republicans ran the most diverse slate of candidates in recent memory and I was proud to be part of that group. We have to build on this progress in 2017.
We also need to learn to talk about the issues in practical terms. These communities care about the same issues as everyone else, but they also expect candidates for office to talk about solutions to kitchen table issues that impact their daily lives. Although I am a former chamber of commerce chairman, I know that it’s not enough to engage corporations, industry leaders, and special interest groups about high-level, often esoteric policy prescriptions. We must describe to voters how our approaches will result in more jobs and higher take home pay, less traffic, safer neighborhoods, and better education for our kids so they have even greater opportunities to succeed. And as former chairman of the Virginia Board of Workforce Development, I know how important a quality education and meaningful workforce training are to ensuring access to a good paying job.
And most importantly, we need to demonstrate that we have genuine compassion, love, respect and understanding. While these communities are critical to our party’s political success, that cannot be our motivation for engaging with them. We should offer our ideas and solutions because we sincerely care about our fellow citizens. We need to talk about the struggles of the working poor, and how our ideas can lift people out of poverty. Sadly, the truth is right now, most minorities and many struggling families don’t think that Republicans care, let alone have the ability to understand. We have spent considerable energy speaking to people’s fears, angers, and desperations; but we do better when we speak to their hopes, dreams and aspirations.
Our party would also be fooling itself if we continue to pretend that our problem is one of messaging alone. In recent years, we’ve simply failed to live up to Reagan’s standard. We haven’t turned our principles into commonsense solutions that resonate with the public. We have allowed the left and their ideas dominate the public discourse. We have rightly held our ground, but in the battle of ideas we should be on offense, not defense.
There is a lot to do between now and 2017. In the meantime, we need to focus on re-electing our Congressional Delegation and electing a Republican president in 2016.
But as an Air Force veteran and businessman, I’ve come to learn that important conversations cannot wait. The conversation about our party’s future cannot wait.
I have been a Republican my entire adult life and was proud to run for office as such. As I consider my options to contribute in the future, either as a community leader or candidate for office, including Lt. Governor in 2017, I know it’s time for us to turn the page. It’s time to restore our party to its founding principles and its ideas, so we can restore our Commonwealth’s future.
Should I run, my campaign would be about ideas and solutions that would yield tangible results. It would be about taking those ideas and solutions to the communities that need them the most. And it would be about broadening our party’s appeal at a critical juncture for its future. We need to take our message to communities that don’t give us a second glance right now. We need to frame that message around outcomes that matter to real people. And we need to demonstrate that we are compassionate and ready to help provide every citizen with a brighter future.
Raul “Danny†Vargas is a noted business and community leader, accomplished media commentator, and national political analyst. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Danny is also the Founder and President of VARCom Solutions, a nationally-recognized, award-winning marketing communications, technology and management consulting firm. He is a regular media commentator in both English and Spanish, appearing on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Univision, Telemundo, PBS and many more. He has been dispatched by the U.S. State Department to various countries to appear in the media and in forums discussing the U.S. political process.
14 comments
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Danny your thoughtful comments were on target. However, considering Virginia’s presidential candidate front runners for the ’16 GOP nomination its problematic whether lessons can or are desired learning. We been around for sometime trying to encourage RPV to revamp its governing board allowing for more minority representation which would be a great start. However, after more than twenty years bringing this matter to the party’s attention its doubtful any action in this regard will ever be forthcoming before complete collapse of any possibility the Republican Party wins statewide elections again.
Danny is absolutely right–it does start with showing up, and not just during elections. Republicans need to GENUINELY care about ALL people and make connections with them on a regular basis. Contrary to what I have read in other comments, there is no mention of immigrants in this piece; nor is Danny only addressing different ethnic groups. He is making the case for the folks who have been left behind and left out of our economy–for whatever reason. The Republican Party is imploding, and unless we listen to Danny Vargas, and others like him, we will shatter. A house divided cannot stand, and so it will be for our Party.
The American working and middle class were the very heart of the Republican party throughout the Reagan decade continuing even for some time beyond therefore I find little logic in your maintaining Republicans have “failed to keep pace with the changes” rather then the reality of Republican leadership having made a conscious decision in the 1990s to coalesce the party’s apparatus around increasingly large government initiatives and major corporate directives. What resulted was the detachment from its associations with this traditional base and casting itself adrift from the American working and middle class voter while maintaining it’s viability via large donor and statist based financial arrangements that have proved beneficial for all parties involved until the cracks began developing of late. By having knowingly removed this mooring link to the traditional American voter base almost 35 years ago while building a profitable but fragile house of cards on the American mega-population business and media centers on the east and west coasts the party has seriously enriched the majority of it’s elected officials and leadership at the cost of blindly walking itself into the desert with little expectation of hope or compassion from it’s heretofore compliant base. How we are beginning to see individuals (such as yourself) call for the party to re-introduce itself to it’s traditional middle and working class constituents (many of which have collectively turned their backs on the party over years of neglect) emphasizing a refocus on this Republican asset in it’s time of need. But your message is NOT quite one of re-establishing the Republican working and middle class American voter base is it. No, it resonates more along the lines of modern Democratic progressive ethnic-identity politics with it’s ethnic community block voting percentages to be accommodated for the parties future success. There aren’t working class neighborhoods with shared issues and concerns but African American, Hispanic and Asian neighborhoods that we MUST participate in, listen to and engage with within the context of their “minority-majority†status. You may think you understand Reaganism and therefore can use his name to bolster your positions, as many do, but in reality this type of ethnic-identity politics that you drag into your argument is absolutely the antithesis of his thinking and how he governed. The first thing any real conservative must understand within their very bones is the distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. I have a very strong belief you lack the understanding of the difference. Regardless, I am in full agreement with you that the Republican Party’s survival stands solely with reincorporating a working and middle class platform, translated into real policy solutions, back into it’s basic governance model, but I believe we view that from a very different perspective. I cannot foresee how our or any Republic can thrive and prosper on the political foundations of multiculturalism.
Damn that’s absolutely spot-on!
Sounds good Danny. Just how do you propose to accomplish those objectives? Continue on with the same type of government we currently have? The Party has been working diligently in trying to remove a large part of it’s constituents. If you believe the Party will gain without them you’re dreaming.
I don’t know how much the good ole Chamber of Commerce is aware of the pending monetary melt down, the cultural divisiveness. lawlessness on the streets, the 95 million people not working, the involvement around the world, to name a few problems. I think you are probably thinking of all this expansion you want to cater to. There will be no assemilarion of our current immigrants for the next 500 years. Check the history of large numbers of immigrants populating another country. Think of the American Indian, and those immigrating from Africa, to name a few. Both were over 400 years ago and have not truly assemilared to this day. Keep your head in the sand, ignorance is bliss.
I applaud the inspiring words of Mr. Vargas. Like him, I grew up in New York City, in a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood in lower Manhattan. So, I will only speak to what I observed in my own upbringing and environment from the 1960s and 1970s.
Immigrants have always faced challenges – particularly Ellis Island immigrants arriving in the 19th century. Back then, the various nationalities went through the process of “sink-or-swim” Americanization, without the largesse and corrupting influences of the federal welfare state. Many returned to the home country. The streets were not paved with gold after all.
When large numbers of Puerto Ricans began arriving in the 1950s, New York State and the federal government were well on their way to implementing programs which no matter how nobly intentioned resulted in destroying family structures and subsidizing out of wedlock children. This is not true, of course, for all, but the illegitimacy rate of Puerto Ricans born in the US soon went over 50% and the evidence was overwhelmingly negative.
While the lower East Side had never a fashionable place to live, normally within one or two generations immigrants moved on to greener pastures. Yet, I saw many Puerto Rican girls give birth to children without fathers and were soon trapped on the welfare plantation, and warehoused in newly built housing projects which quickly morphed into mini-ghettos. Many of the young boys I had played stickball with in my youth became addicted to drugs, and AIDS ravaged the population. My own brother in-law, was addicted to heroine, and died of AIDS at age 32.
Admittedly, I tend to be a hot-headed fire brand, and thus have no time for platitudes which resonate with no one – particularly me. We have lost much of the Hispanic vote in part because the Democratic Party has unfairly portrayed the GOP as a bastion of angry racists. We need to fight fire with fire and charge the Democrats with designing a hideous welfare system which traps people, demoralizes them, warehouses them, and condemns their children to markedly inferior schools. I know. I went to a failing middle school, which was closed ten years ago.
We must strongly advocate school choice, school vouchers for children, tuition tax credits, and vocational and technical training and re-training for those who have graduated from failing high schools. And yes, we must advocate a living wage for adult workers over age 25. When the Ellis Island generation arrived, an unskilled laborer made enough money to house and feed a family. Try doing that on minimum wage today. But we must also cut off the supply off cheap immigrant labor, so that Hispanic Americans no longer have to compete with those who can outbid them for entry level work.
I think these measures, if advocated by good and sincere men and women within the Republican Party, can begin to show the Spanish-speaking community that we care and that we value their contributions.
I both love and hate this article. So, you must be doing something right, or something wrong, because both is an option we tend not to tolerate in Virginia.
Well said, Danny.
I would also add that we need to unify our EXISTING membership by ceasing the gratuitous use of intra-party labels (establishment, RINO’s, Tea Party, grassroots, conservative, sell-out). These description are not only wildly misleading, they divide us at a time when we must pull together to win back our country.
Yes… don’t call Paul Ryan a RINO, Sell out, or Cuckservative… even though he just handed Obama a budget deal of wild spending, funding everything the Democrats want and who voted for his budget deal en masse…
Sure looks easy when you are comfortably sitting in the stands. Should I add “armchair quarterback” to my list of forbidden labels?
How about we call him anything but Speaker of the House? Or does the house think we want to continue the Boehner legacy?
This kind of crap from the GOP is why our top nominees are not like-minded wastrels.
Establishment — AKA ruling elite — fits that part of the GOP that puts preserving power and control above all else.
RINO — AKA Fairweather Republicans — people that are Republicans when convenient, things don’t go their way, will pick up marbles and go home.
Tea Party — AKA just here to attack you and pick your nominees — don’t want to be in the party, but I’m devoting my life to screwing it up.
Conservative — AKA heart and soul of the GOP — doing the work of the GOP because either no one else is or they’re doing it wrong.
Sell-out — some of our electeds who only compromise by surrender.
Don’t forget populist, country-club, elite, badguy-ite, Bircher, Tri-lat, etc.
We in the GOP love our labels — But we especially enjoy that gut-wrenching feeling where the SOB that we carved with dagger eyes in the primary, is now working the next precinct over for our shared nominee.
These terms are not misleading, neither are they permanent nor universal.
The terms don’t separate us, they remind us of where we want the party to go and where to avoid — we can do that only from within the party.
There is no Tea Party … there never was. The movement (the name of which has been expropriated by all manner of national sounding entities) is simply a huge number of people who believe in fiscal responsibility, Constitutionally limited government, and individual accountability. Sounds like the Republican Creed doesn’t it. I attended many of the meetings in my community, and was elated to find so many people who gave a damn about their country. Most all of them vote Republican, and many are very active in the Republican party. The suggestion that people of the Tea Party persuasion are not solid Republicans is ridiculous.