If New York City’s mayoral race is any indication, the Republican’s supposed rebranding effort to strengthen the GOP’s appeal to minority voters is a monumental failure. The latest Marist Poll of the New York City mayor’s race shows Democrat Bill de Blasio with a commanding 67-23 lead over hapless GOP candidate Joe Lhota. With minority voters the gap is especially wide. De Blasio enjoys a crushing 76-14 advantage among Latino voters, and an even more punishing 89-4 margin with black voters. In a city as diverse as New York City those numbers are politically fatal for Joe Lhota. The Republicans have burned so many bridges with minority voters that they are no longer even marginally competitive in racially diverse urban cities like New York City.
To put the current numbers in perspective, sixteen years ago Republican Rudy Giuliani won the mayor’s race with 55 percent of the vote. Although he lost among Latinos and African-Americans, exit polls indicated that he captured a competitive 43 percent of the Latino vote, and a respectable 20 percent of the black vote. Today’s Republican candidate is spiraling towards zero percent with both constituencies.
The reason for the GOP’s epic collapse with blacks and Latinos is both local and national. On the national stage, xenophobic anti-immigrant rhetoric and economic policies that undermine working families has soiled the GOP’s brand with many minority voters. Locally, Michael Bloomberg’s racially discriminatory stop and frisk regime has soured the Republican brand as well. Although Bloomberg is now nominally an Independent he ran as a Republican when he was first elected Mayor of the city. The bottom line is that the Republican Party commands almost no support from minority voters in New York City any more. With such an abysmal showing with non-white voters, Joe Lhota has no prayer of being elected. Bill de Blasio is headed to a demoralizing landslide, and after the votes are tallied Republicans will need to do some earnest soul searching, because as it stands right now, with non-white voters, they are spiraling towards zero.
Edited/Published by: SB
