Rio Grande Ofelia
 | |
| Era | The Nineties |
|---|---|
| Age | 40-55 |
| Home | McAllen, TX |
| Demographic | Tejana, multi-generational, school administration |
| Lean | Swing voter |
| Race | hispanic |
| Successor | Mesa Ruben |
A school administrator in McAllen whose family has lived in the Rio Grande Valley since before Texas became a state. She inherited a Democratic vote, has begun to question it, and is the first of a line continued by Mesa Ruben and Phoenix Pablo.
Who they stand for
Hispanic voters gave Bill Clinton nearly three-quarters of their votes in 1996. The Tejanos of South Texas were the oldest and steadiest part of that vote, and had supported the Democratic Party since the Viva Kennedy clubs of 1960. Ofelia weighs heaviest in New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, California and Colorado, the states where Mexican-American families predate the border drawn in 1848.
The decade changed the Rio Grande Valley in several ways. NAFTA brought maquiladora factories to Reynosa and Mexican shoppers to McAllen's malls. The 1995 peso crash then emptied those malls. Operation Rio Grande, launched in 1997, put Border Patrol agents along the river that runs through her home region. In California, Proposition 187 pushed Latino voters towards the Democrats. In Texas, Governor George W. Bush did not join that fight, and he won a share of the Hispanic vote that no Texas Republican had won before him. This was the opening that Ofelia's line of personas follows. She differs from Mesa Ruben, the persona who follows her. Enforcement never targets her directly, so her vote turns on abortion and on being treated with respect instead.
Playing to them
She responds well to a president who treats her family as native Texans, not as newcomers. She wants the border policed effectively, not just for show. She takes the drug trade through the Valley seriously, and she wants a president who can be openly Catholic without apologising for it. Governor Ann Richards won her support. George W. Bush also won her support, because he campaigned in Spanish without condescension, and this showed other Republicans how to reach her. She does not forgive being treated as a recent immigrant, nativist language of the kind used by Pat Buchanan that groups her together with people crossing the river illegally, or a Democrat who assumes her vote is already secured.
A president who wins her support by defending abortion rights loses the support of Scarsdale Ellen, Madison Steph and Dunwoody Amanda. Heavier enforcement along the river pleases her, but it frightens Central Valley Ramón, a first-generation farm worker who is the person such enforcement actually reaches. This division, between voters who favour tougher enforcement and voters who fear it, ran through the whole Hispanic vote of the decade. A Proposition 187 stance that wins the support of Anaheim Darlene loses Ofelia's support outright.
Where they live
The five states where Rio Grande Ofelia makes up the largest share of the electorate in the nineties:
- New Mexico
- Texas
- Arizona
- California
- Colorado
Lineage
Rio Grande Ofelia → Mesa Ruben → Phoenix Pablo
The Mexican-American swing voter whose family has been in the Southwest for generations. None of the three has a fixed ideology. Their vote depends on whether Republicans are attacking immigrants in a way that includes them. Ofelia inherited a Democratic vote and is drifting Republican over abortion and because the Democrats take her for granted. Ruben is pushed back toward the Democrats by Sheriff Arpaio's sweeps and the Minutemen, because that enforcement targets people who look like him. Pablo owns a business and nobody questions his status, so he votes on taxes and abortion again. Across thirty years the drift is rightward, interrupted by the one decade in which Republican immigration enforcement was aimed at him.