Rob Stutzman: Meg Whitman Paid a High Price for Latino Distrust of GOP

Meg Whitman’s former lead spokesman is starting to speak up about the candidate’s losing race for governor. And he’s shouting about the need for Republicans to stop the demagoguery over illegal immigration.

Senior advisor Rob Stutzman isn’t exactly spilling his guts about the former EBay chief’s spectacular thumping. The billionaire lost to low-budget Jerry Brown by 54% to 41%, despite spending a record $160 million-plus, roughly $142 million of it her own money.

But the veteran Republican strategist is blaming the mini-landslide size of Whitman’s loss on some ugly dust-ups over illegal immigration that alienated Latinos from the GOP.

On Nov. 2, a record 22% of the California electorate was Latino. They voted heavily for Democrat Brown — somewhere between 64% and 80%, depending on which poll you believe.

Whatever the real figure, it should scare the GOP because Latinos are by far California’s fastest-growing voter group.

“Republicans need to understand that they live in suburbs with second-generation Mexican American neighbors whose parents came here and worked in agriculture and the service industries and are very proud” of their families’ success, Stutzman says.

“They sit around at cocktail parties and they listen on talk shows and hear their parents referred to as ‘illegals.’ And we wonder why these people don’t want to register as Republicans.”

Stutzman, 42, is no RINO — what right-wing ideologues deride as a Republican in Name Only — even if he did serve as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first communications director. His party credentials include communications jobs with former Atty. Gen. Dan Lundgren and state Senate Republicans. He also ran a successful 2000 initiative campaign to ban same-sex marriage.

Read it all.

The Truth is Meg Whitman’s campaign was one of the worst run I have ever seen. What a waste of money and people’s resources. Stutzman and Mike Murphy milked Meg Whitman for whatever they could get out of her and helped lead the California GOP to disaster in November.

The California Latino demographics have been something, he has just now discovered?

Ridiculous……