Whitman tries to lure Latino voters from Brown

It will be difficult for Republicans to win statewide office in California without some support from Latino voters, who make up 18 percent of the electorate. Many of them were so outraged by former Gov. Pete Wilson's anti-illegal immigration push 16 years ago that they haven't voted GOP since.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman began trying to woo back Latinos on Thursday - and distance herself from Wilson's legacy - by running ads on Spanish-language networks during the widely seen broadcast of the Mexico-France World Cup soccer match.

In one of the ads, titled "Una Candidata diferente," the narrator says, "She respects our community. She is the Republican who opposes the Arizona law and opposed Proposition 187," the immigration proposition that Wilson supported in 1994.

The 30-second ads, which are airing on Univision, Telemundo and Telefutura, are the most visible example of the Whitman campaign's attempts not to cede Latino voters to Democrat Jerry Brown.

This week, Univision's highly rated Los Angeles station, KMEX, began airing the first of a two-part sit-down with Whitman that is the only on-camera interview she has done in her Atherton home.

And for months, Spanish-speaking Whitman operatives have courted Spanish-language media outlets, appearing on talk shows and news programs to pitch their candidate.

Extensive effort

Brown's skeletal campaign, by contrast, has no paid Spanish-speaking staffers doing outreach, relying instead on volunteers. His campaign has no Spanish-language advertising.

While Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former President George W. Bush advertised on Univision during their campaigns, Wednesday's ads are believed to be one of the most extensive GOP efforts in California history to tap into the Spanish-language TV market. Univision drew 5.3 million viewers nationally for the opening World Cup match pitting South Africa against Mexico, twice as many viewers as ESPN, which is also showing the Cup.

Whitman's ads will run at least through the World Cup's final match on July 11, and more media outreach is expected to follow. The billionaire former eBay CEO has poured $91 million of her own money into her campaign, much of it in support of TV and radio ads that began last fall and overwhelmed her GOP primary challenger, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

"Republicans don't do a good job of talking to Latino voters - and if they do, they do it in the last two months of the campaign," said Hector Barajas, who is at the forefront of Whitman's campaign outreach. He fulfilled a similar role for Schwarzenegger's campaign.

"In the past, we'd concede the Latino vote. But that playbook is being thrown out with this campaign," Barajas said.

In a five-minute online ad - in Spanish and English - that premiered Thursday, Whitman offers a similar sort of mea culpa and a naked plea for support.

"Traditionally, political candidates from both parties have waited until late in the election to talk to Latinos," Whitman said in English with Spanish subtitles.

"But I want to run a different type of campaign. I'm engaging the Latino community early, because I understand and value the contributions you make to our state. My door is open. I really can't do this job without your support," Whitman said, looking directly into the camera in front of an unadorned blue background.

David Tabb, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University who studies the Latino electorate and the media, estimates that 60 percent of likely Latino voters will support Brown, so Whitman needs to "neutralize her anti-Latino image," particularly with independent Latinos.

She probably will find a sizable chunk of independent Latino voters not only watching World Cup matches on Univision, the largest Spanish-language network, Tabb said, but listening to Spanish-language talk radio stations, particularly in Southern California.

"In a close election with low turnout, that could be a critical component," Tabb said, adding that the outreach "among independent, likely voters, could neutralize" Wilson's legacy among Latinos a bit.

Changing narrative

Her Web ad, Tabb said, is aimed more at political junkies and the media. "There, she's attempting to change the narrative that she's anti-immigration," he said.

In an effort to appeal to conservative voters during the primary campaign against Poizner, analysts say Whitman took more conservative stands on issues like immigration, but in the general election campaign she must appeal to California's more moderate general electorate.

In particular during the primary campaign, she opposed allowing all illegal immigrants to attend state-funded community colleges or universities. And Whitman opponents point out that Wilson remains her campaign's chairman.

Whitman was supporting comprehensive immigration reform earlier in the campaign until Poizner's primary attacks forced her to say she was "100 percent against amnesty" for illegal immigrants. She said that no reforms should be considered until the federal government adequately secures the U.S. border and employers have a reliable system for verifying an immigrant's status.

"Whitman is mistaken if she believes a Spanish-language advertising buy is going to gloss over the fact that together with her mentor, Pete Wilson, and her rival, Steve Poizner, she engaged in the greatest Republican Party anti-immigrant hate-fest this side of the California-Arizona border," said Tenoch Flores, communications director for the California Democratic Party.

Brown supporters say his relationship with the Latino community in California is long - he was one of the first white politicians to embrace farmworkers organizer Cesar Chavez - and deep.

He's been endorsed by the United Farm Workers union, and other unions with many Latino members are supporting his campaign or spending millions to oppose Whitman's.

E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle