GOP exec quits over e-mail on ‘invasion’

J. Patrick Coolican and Timothy Pratt

Sunday, Oct. 8, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.

A Nevada Republican Party official resigned Thursday amid a Hispanic Republican backlash on the heels of an embarrassing e-mail sent out by the party.

The state party sent out a flier Wednesday advertising a rally by the local chapter of the Minutemen, a stridently anti-illegal immigrant group that patrols the border without sanction from the government.

The party's executive director, Chris Gulugian-Taylor, resigned Thursday, after a report in the Sun about the e-mail.

Party operatives feared the flier would alienate Hispanic voters and the business community that employs them in large numbers. The flier was titled, "Help Stop the Illegal Invasion," and accused companies such as Wells Fargo of being complicit with illegal immigration .

Party Chairman Paul Adams acted quickly, accepting Gulugian-Taylor's resignation and naming Yale Cunningham executive director.

For some leaders in the Hispanic Republican community, however, the incident continued to reverberate .

Luis Valera, who ran for the Assembly in 2002 and tried organizing Hispanic Republicans earlier this year, said he was "deeply offended and angered" by the e-mail, and wasn't satisfied with Gulugian-Taylor's resignation .

"A formal apology needs to be made to Hispanics, period, (since) this offended everyone," he said.

Valera said the move seemed to follow a pattern that began earlier this year when the state party passed a platform plank that favored denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrant parents.

He said he's focusing his support less on the party and more on individual candidates.

"As long as the party leadership feels this way, out of sheer self-respect, I have to distance myself," Valera said, adding that he and other Hispanic Republicans are re-evaluating their relationship to the party.

Toward the end of a Thursday night event at a Las Vegas restaurant called Spirit of Cuba, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., told about 30 Hispanics, mostly Republicans, that his party "meets the values of the Hispanic community" but conceded the party has been deficient in communicating its message to them.

In an interview after the event, Ensign distanced himself from the Minutemen and encouraged voters to look at individual candidates.

Maggie Arias-Petrel said she was outraged by the incident and was "waiting for community leaders to give us guidance."

Harley Shaiken, chairman of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said the e-mail "underscores the adage, 'You can't have your cake and eat it too.' "

"On the one hand, the Minutemen may appeal to an important part of the core base," he said, referring to working-class Republican whites. "On the other hand, it underscores that the Hispanic voter is important to the long-term viability of the Republican Party in Nevada."