The Republican Party has scarcely begun to repair a wound that threatens to confine it to minority status: its 2006 collapse among Hispanic voters.

Driven by some Republicans’ sharp attacks on illegal immigration and — as many Hispanics perceived it, immigrants in general — Latino voters fled the GOP en masse in the midterm elections, then turned on John McCain, as well.

He got 31 percent of the Latino vote to the 44 percent that George W. Bush took in 2004, according to exit polls. And it was enough to put much of the West and Southwest out of reach for the Republican Party, to give Florida to the Democrats and to hand Barack Obama the presidency.

Now, as Obama moves to solidify his advantage, Republican leaders are sounding the alarm on what could be the party’s most pressing national challenge.

“It’s absolutely urgent. The demographics are there in black and white,” said former Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas), a casualty of the Hispanic swing to the Democratic Party. “If we don’t figure out a way to open our party up to more Hispanic voters, nothing else we do will matter. Mathematically, we can’t get there from here.”

The math is, in fact, simple. Hispanic voters represented 7.4 percent of the electorate in 2008, up from 6 percent in 2004 and 5.4 percent in 2000. And growing Latino populations in the Midwest and the Carolinas stand to give Democrats an edge in a growing number of swing states.

There are stirrings of a Republican response. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has spoken with Hispanic leaders about creating a new organization to back Latino candidates. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has made minority outreach a priority at the RNC. And some Republicans see an opening if Obama continues to defer action on overhauling immigration.

But so far, there are few visible attempts to reverse the trend.

“They’re making no overt efforts to appeal to Hispanics again,” said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, whose new book cites the defection of Hispanics from the Republicans as a central cause of Obama’s victory. “They all know it’s a problem. They aren’t talking about it, because they fear the anti-immigration wing of their party.”

“They’re afraid to even mention the word ‘Hispanic,’” he said.

The Republican Party’s difficulty in clawing back to parity with Hispanic voters is illustrated most clearly in Florida, the heartland of Hispanic Republicanism, where its core is an aging, dwindling Cuban émigré base.

There, the GOP’s brightest Hispanic star, Sen. Mel Martinez, is retiring after taking a beating from fellow Republicans during the bitter immigration battles of 2005 and 2006. And moderate Republicans are celebrating the potential of their party’s handpicked successor, Gov. Charlie Crist, to broaden Republicans’ appeal beyond its conservative base.

But choosing Crist has meant shoving aside former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, the party’s brightest young Hispanic star, and Rubio’s backers have cast the decision as another blow to the GOP’s relationship with Hispanics.

“On one hand, they talk about needing to rebuild bridges with the Hispanic community. But the only thing I’ve seen from them is that the Senate leadership is basically trying to kick Marco Rubio out of the Senate race in Florida. That, to me, sent a very wrong message to Hispanics,” said Ana Navarro, a prominent Miami Republican fundraiser who backs Rubio.

“The only potential new Republican candidate for federal office that we have that is Hispanic and young, they turn their backs on,” she said.

“This is one primary race that we don’t need,” said Danny Vargas, chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly.

A spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Brian Walsh, said that candidate recruitment for 2010 is still under way and noted that Martinez himself had endorsed Crist, in part for his moderate stance on immigration.

But Graham, who said he sympathized with the Senate Republican leadership’s decision to back a candidate with a good chance of winning, also raised concerns about the Florida decision.

“The key for our party is to have Hispanic candidates to carry our banner,” Graham said. “I don’t blame them for trying to make sure we don’t lose another seat in Florida. But at the same time, clearly Mr. Rubio is the type of person who would lead our party in Florida and the country to a new level.”

Graham said he’s considering forming a political action committee, or some other entity, aimed at recruiting strong Hispanic Republican candidates.

“If we can find electable Hispanic candidates, I want to do what I can to create a support system for them, financially and otherwise,” he said.

Steele also has emphasized broadening the Republican Party, elevating the RNC’s “coalitions” division internally.

“We are really trying to do a better job at meeting people in their lives where they are,” said RNC coalitions director Angela Sailor, who noted the Virginia governor’s race will be an early test of the outreach program. “We know we’ve got some mixed messages going on.”

The message, Hispanic Republicans say, is key, and the party faces several challenges.

First, it needs to do away with what polls suggest many Hispanics perceive as raw ethnic animus. A post-election survey of Latino voters by the National Association of Latino Elected Officials found that a mere 8 percent believe that the Republican Party has more concern for the Latino community than do the Democrats.

“You had some very high-profile Republicans that were almost anti-Hispanic, not anti-illegal-immigration,” said Frank Guerra, a Republican media consultant in Texas who worked for the campaigns of George W. Bush. “Republicans need to be much more welcoming, less incendiary and much more thoughtful.”

Beyond that, there’s some debate in Hispanic political circles about whether Hispanics can be won over again on an appeal to more conservative cultural and economic values — part of the Bush campaigns’ successful push — or whether the GOP needs a new message for that group, as well.

“The clear way to come back is the way we always have: We reach out, and we are there in the community,” said Lionel Sosa, a veteran Republican ad man. “We take the vote seriously. We make it a top priority. We know that our Republican, conservative values are in line with the Latino conservative values and that we are all about opportunity, about family and about making sure that the American free enterprise system opens up to take in all the Latino talent.”

Others are demanding a change.

“We can’t keep running ads of white-haired guys eating a taco next to a piñata,” said Florida fundraiser Navarro. “We need ads that have substance.”

Navarro pointed to immigration as a central issue on which Republicans must change their tone and could steal a step from Obama, who has not clearly signaled whether he’ll fulfill a campaign promise to press for immigration reform in his first year.

“It’s symbolic: Do you like us, or do you not?” Navarro said. “It presents a remarkable opportunity for Republicans to call Obama’s bluff and say, ‘OK, what do you have to offer on immigration?’”

Alex Castellanos, who was a consultant to Bush and to Mitt Romney, pointed to another potential wedge.

“We have a hell of an issue on equal opportunity in education and school choice with Hispanic voters, with black voters, with suburban voters, with soccer moms,” he said. “There are two beautiful kids in Washington whose parents chose the best school for them. Michelle and Barack Obama did the right thing — shouldn’t you have equal opportunity to choose the best school for your kids, too?”

The central source of alarm among Hispanic Republicans, however, is the lack of any coherent appeal to Latinos as the midterm, then presidential, elections approach.

“Things have got to be starting now; those conversations have got to be taking place right now,” Guerra said. “They can’t just swoop in and say a few magic words and put a few ads on the air.”

“This is a very dangerous period for the Republican Party because this population is growing so fast, it’s on such a trajectory,” he said. “So if they lose the next cycle, I don’t know how they turn it around in the cycle after that.”

TEMPE, Arizona – To get an idea of just how much effort the Obama administration is putting into retaining the support of the Hispanic community, click on the homepage of Eduardo Sotelo. 

Don’t know who that is?

Top Obama aides do, and they’ve already had the president speak twice to the nationally syndicated radio talk show powerhouse better known as “Piolin.”

Last week, they brought the Southern California-based talker into the Oval Office for a sit-down that went largely unnoticed – except, that is, to the millions of listeners in the 52 markets where Piolin is heard.

“We need to be able to communicate through radio and obviously you’ve got the biggest listenership so we’ve got to make sure you’re involved,” Obama said in the interview.

It was just one example of a relentless courtship of the nation’s largest minority group and a pivotal voting bloc that numerous aides say has become a near-obsession of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

After initially facing questions about whether he could win the Hispanic vote, Obama won it by 36 percentage points against a pro-reform Republican – and his staff is determined to do it again in 2012.

Obama officials are focused on the fast-growing interior West and especially this state, which they believe the president lost only because it is John McCain’s home. With states such as Arizona adding congressional districts after the 2010 census – and thus electoral votes – turning the West into a Democratic bulwark could ensure a lock on the presidency, Obama’s strategists believe.

And they're backing it up with personal attention from Obama, who made his second trek to Arizona in barely four months in office. The president addressed Arizona State University graduates in a mostly full football stadium Wednesday, winning cheers from a crowd of about 60,000 when he went off-script at one point to pay homage to Latino icon Cesar Chavez in his commencement speech.

Yet even as the Obama charm offensive continues, the administration is faced with twin political challenges that ultimately may threaten any good will they’ve won from Hispanics – how he handles immigration reform and his first Supreme Court nomination. Hispanic leaders say their voters are watching.

“He will ultimately be judged by the Hispanic community on what he does for the weakest and most vulnerable,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the veteran Chicago Democrat, referring to the issue on which he’s become a national leader, comprehensive immigration reform.

Gutierrez said he and fellow Hispanic officials appreciate the wooing and White House invites, but want action on the issue of providing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. And he doesn’t mince words about what he sees as White House foot-dragging on the issue, which proved difficult to tackle even in better economic times.

“If Rahm thinks he can get away with not doing anything on immigration and still have the support of Latino voters, it won’t get done,” said Gutierrez, who has had a long and at times contentious relationship with his fellow Chicago pol.

But Emanuel aside, Gutierrez said he believes Obama is “reluctant” on the issue and that little progress has been made since the president had the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to the White House in March.

Obama pledged at his 100 Days press conference to work with Gutierrez and another member on immigration reform, but Gutierrez quipped: “That’s why you shouldn’t have term limits.”

“Because if you don’t have term limits, and you’ve been here for nine terms, you don’t get all lit up because the president mentioned your name at a press conference,” he said. “You look for what substantially has changed given his comment.”

Janet Murguia, president of La Raza, said she has been invited to the White House for a series of conferences and meetings this year but was still waiting for a clearer sign on Obama’s intentions on immigration.

“There’s going to be growing frustration if we don’t see some tangible and real signals that this is going to be carried out in earnest this fall,” Murguia said, suggesting that Obama needed to give a speech or somehow make clear this summer that he wanted Congress to act.

Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, also lavished praise on the White House effort to be inclusive but was equally candid: “I think they genuinely want to do [immigration reform] but they genuinely want to do other things a lot more.”

Obama himself conceded to Piolin on the radio last week that “we’ve been delayed a little because of the economic crisis” in addressing immigration. He said it was his “hope is that we can get something moving this year.”

That is, of course, different than getting an actual bill signed into law this year.

A senior administration official recognized that Gutierrez is “pushing very hard” on the issue and acknowledged its significance to the Latino community.

“The immigration issue tends to suck up all the oxygen,” said the official. “But our other major priorities, especially the economy but also health care, are also Latino issues.”

And while getting an immigration bill done isn’t the only thing weighing heavily on the minds of Hispanics, it’s not just the economy and health care. The community is making no secret of their strong desire to see the first Hispanic justice appointed to the Supreme Court, and the Hispanic Caucus has sent Obama a letter urging him to do just that.

Rep. Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat and member of the House leadership, said picking an Hispanic to replace David Souter would spark an “off-the-charts” reaction among Hispanics.

And if the president passed over the community?

“Then people would say the game is still played by the same people,” said Becerra, who himself nearly joined Obama’s Cabinet. “The game has not been changed. People would have every right to say that the doors of opportunity haven’t been completely opened.”

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz), who made a point to note his support for Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, said “it would just build up [anticipation] for the next appointment.”

“The urgency would be greater than it is now,” Grijalva said.

Murguia said plainly that it would be “a real opportunity for him to solidify his support with the Latino community.”

White House officials are reluctant to discuss the high court pick, but they note that this isn’t likely to be the president’s only appointment. Press secretary Robert Gibbs said this week that lobbying wouldn’t be helpful.

While anxious on immigration and the court pick, Obama’s Hispanic allies in Congress and advocacy groups generally offer praise on what they see as an unprecedented effort to include them – and not just on traditional Latino or minority issues.

It’s a point of pride for the White House.

“We’re not just doing this on the obvious conversations, but in every major policy conversation,” said a senior administration official.

Hispanics, the official noted, were at the table for meetings on the budget, the stimulus, health care and for a fiscal summit. And a major education speech was delivered before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Another top White House aide pointed out that when the president travels, they don’t just include Hispanic leaders in the intimate meetings set up before and after events in the usual places like California but in rust belt states like Ohio and Indiana, too.

Obama aides have put special emphasis on catering to the Spanish-language media.

They held a town hall meeting on the H1N1 virus earlier this month entirely in Spanish (except for the president).

When they announced their easing of the sanctions on Cuba last month, it was done by in Spanish and English by a bilingual NSC official.

All the daily press releases and advisories also go out in Spanish.

Obama has been interviewed on a variety of Hispanic radio and TV programs, including Univision, Telemundo and CNN En Espanol. Aides also note that the president has twice used his prime-time press conferences to call on Spanish-media representatives.

More quietly, aides such as Emanuel, energy and climate czar Carol Browner, domestic policy chief Melody Barnes and cabinet secretaries have also conducted briefings. And on the day of the State of the Union speech, newscasters from the Spanish-language TV stations got their own preview from Vice President Joe Biden.

“For many it’s the news of choice,” said Becerra of the Spanish-language channels.

When Piolin asked Obama if he had the votes in Congress on immigration reform, the president was candid.

“Probably not yet,” he said

But when it comes time to rally support for the bill, Obama said he would need the talk show host’s help.
“You can count on me,” Piolin assured.