Jeb Bush can’t take Hispanic vote for granted

(PHOTO: CHARLES TRAINOR JR/MIAMI HERALD STAFF)

Jeb Bush, who speaks fluent Spanish and has a Mexican-born wife, is the Republican hopeful who would do best among Hispanic voters in the 2016 presidential elections. But his party — and he himself — have veered so far to the right on immigration and social issues that even he will have a big Latino problem.

Most pollsters agree that Republicans will need between 40 percent and 44 percent of the Hispanic vote to win in 2016, much more than they received in recent elections. The most recent Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, lost the 2012 election to a large extent because he only got 27 percent of the Latino vote.

There is little question that Jeb would be the best equipped to win Latino votes among the current Republican hopefuls: he is the only one who speaks Spanish at home, has lived in Mexico and Venezuela, majored in Latin American studies at the University of Texas, and has had close Cuban-American friends and business associates since he moved to Miami in 1980.

It was no coincidence that, during his presidential announcement on Monday, the crowd chanted “Viva Jeb!” Congresswoman Ileana Ross Lehtinen, R-Miami, said: “Jeb is Cuban. He’s Nicaraguan. He’s Venezuelan.”

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