December 15, 2009 09:31 PM UTC

GOP Parades Villafuerte's Scalp While Latinos Line Up Behind Ritter

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• by: Colorado Pols

There’s no question that the Colorado GOP scored a victory yesterday with the withdrawal of U.S. Attorney nominee Stephanie Villafuerte from consideration. Villafuerte’s withdrawal validates a story that GOP chairman Dick Wadhams had patiently worked for months, in the end drawing on his considerable national connections to enlist the aid of Sen. Jeff Sessions in blocking Villafuerte’s confirmation.

All of this should have been avoided, but that’s one side of the story. For the other, we turn to a release yesterday evening from Governor Bill Ritter’s campaign:

Prominent Colorado Latino leaders will gather Tuesday to endorse Governor Bill Ritter, citing his commitment to Colorado’s diverse communities, to reforming Colorado’s education systems, and to creating jobs and strengthening the economy…

Who: Over 40 prominent Latino community leaders including, Colorado State Senators Abel Tapia and Paula Sandoval, former State Senators Polly Baca and Paul Sandoval, former House Speaker Ruben Valdez, DNC Member Mannie Rodriguez, former Colorado Latino Forum Chair Joe Salazar, and many others.

Do you remember what we said when it became clear a few weeks ago that Tom Tancredo was being used to mollify the hard right in favor of Scott McInnis? We predicted that Tancredo would be helpful for consolidating the Republican base (not so much as it turned out), though at the expense of the fastest-growing bloc of voters in the country–namely Hispanics, who at one point this year the GOP was at least pretending to court.

Do you remember what we said earlier this year when Tancredo was part of the GOP assault on now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an assault led in the Senate by the very same Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III of Alabama? We said that Republicans can’t afford to alienate Hispanics to appease the comparatively small right wing of their party.

Republicans didn’t listen either of those times, either. Jeff Sessions, who embarrassed himself during the Sotomayor hearings by seeking personal revenge over his own rejection by the Senate for a federal judgeship during the Reagan administration–after an avalanche of racist disclosures of his own, mind you, including calling a white attorney a ‘disgrace to his race’ and remarking that he ‘used to think they [the KKK] were OK’–obviously isn’t concerned about angering minorities. The same can be said for Dick Wadhams, the man whose job it was to defend ‘Macaca.’ It’s pretty undeniable that when Wadhams puts Tom Tancredo on a “GOP Unity” stage, or calls in Jeff Sessions on somebody named ‘Villafuerte,’ the Latino vote is not what he’s aiming for.

With all of this in mind, and given the original facts of the matter–a last-ditch, unsuccessful attempt by the Bob Beauprez campaign to ‘Willie Horton’ then-candidate Ritter with privileged law enforcement information–we don’t find the victory for Republicans to be nearly as clear-cut. Unfortunately, the defense we see so readily here was never picked up by Ritter’s surrogates, who seemed undecided between going to bat for Villafuerte as Democrats did for Sotomayor and letting her twist–ultimately choosing the latter. As we’ve said, if that was how it was going to play out, she should probably never have been nominated to begin with.

But Republicans could yet pay a price for Villafuerte’s scalp, with a segment of voters most agree they cannot afford to keep alienating.