Maid dispute could hurt Whitman's Latino strategy
By SAMANTHA YOUNG (AP) – 1 hour ago
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The airwaves in California have been dominated by images of a teary immigrant housekeeper claiming she was mistreated by her billionaire employer and turned away when she asked for citizenship help.
It's far from the message Republican Meg Whitman wants to send to the state's crucial Latino voting bloc as she runs for governor.
Whitman is accused of knowingly having the illegal immigrant housekeeper from Mexico on her payroll for several years in a revelation that has throttled her campaign just as she prepares for a Spanish-language debate Saturday against Democratic opponent Jerry Brown. She needs Latino voters to win in Democratic-leaning California.
Whitman has sought to cast the story in a positive way — careful not to demonize the housekeeper while calling her an extended member of the family. Whitman noted how she and her husband paid her the usual $23-an-hour fee even when they were away on vacation and said the woman is being manipulated by Democratic operatives connected to the campaign of Brown.
Even so, the image of a tough-on-immigration gubernatorial candidate getting ensnared in a messy controversy over the legality of her household help is not helpful to a Republican trying to attract the Hispanic vote.
The narrative of a Hispanic maid feeling she was mistreated by her wealthy employer is a personal one for many in the Hispanic community, and such a scenario playing out in a campaign could hurt Whitman, some experts say.
"The message she sent is a distant, patronizing figure who is willing to use immigrants but doesn't understand their plight," said Louis DeSipio, chairman of Chicano-Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. "To the extent Meg Whitman did reach out to Latinos, she's probably lost that initiative."
Whitman addressed the controversy head-on during a news conference Thursday in Santa Monica and will get another chance Saturday when she and Brown meet in their second debate in Fresno. This one is sponsored by Univision and is targeted toward a Hispanic audience.
At the same time, the controversy also could risk Whitman's support among two other key voting blocs: independent voters, who comprise about 20 percent of the electorate, and conservatives, who might question why Whitman didn't report her housekeeper to federal immigration authorities when she acknowledged being in the country illegally in June 2009.
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I'm sure this won't hurt her candidicy at all.
