Senator Mel Martinez Named to Head Republican Party

November 14, 2006

Cuban-born US Senator Mel Martinez will take over the Republican Party, a Senate spokesman said, a week after polls showed Hispanics overwhelmingly voted for Democrats in an election that ended the Republican majority in Congress.

"Mel Martinez will be the new head of the Republican Party," Noe Garcia, spokesman for outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, told AFP.

The Cuban-born senator for Florida, who just turned 60, will take over when Ken Mehlman, the current chairman of the Republican National Committee, completes his two-year term in January.

Martinez was co-chairman of the 2000 election campaign in Florida that gave George W. Bush the presidency after a long vote recount battle with Democratic rival Al Gore went all the way to the US Supreme Court.

Martinez's appointment as head of the RNC could play a role in the 2008 presidential elections, especially among Florida's influential Cuban-American community.

News of his appointment came after the Republicans suffered a major loss of Hispanic voter support, which analysts attributed largely to the party's anti-immigrant rhetoric.

In past elections, Bush, who was governor of the heavily Hispanic state of Texas before entering the White House, was seen as helping draw growing numbers of Hispanics to his party.

But on November 7, 73 percent of Hispanic voters cast ballots for Democratic congressional candidates, and only 26 percent voted Republican -- far below the 40 percent Hispanic support Bush received in the 2004 presidential election, according to a CNN exit poll.

Hispanics generally blamed the Republicans for Congress' failure to help legalize millions of illegal migrants living in the country, said Roberto de Posada, head of the Latino Coalition research group.

"The impact was not just what they said but how they said it," said de Posada, who said Hispanic voters read this as a message they were unwelcome among Republicans.

Republicans evidently hope Martinez will help convince the largest US minority that is not so.

Martinez, who likes to point out he is "the only immigrant in the US Senate," favors a migration reform that while sealing the borders would allow undocumented immigrants to legalize their status and work in the United States.

Bush once described him as "the embodiment of the American dream."

Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Party, said the Republicans ignored the call for change that voters made on November 7 by electing a Democratic congress.

"Instead of hearing that message, Republicans stayed the course by selecting a loyal Bush Republican to lead their party," said Finney.

Born in Cuba in 1946, Martinez moved to the United States at the age of 15 as part of the Roman Catholic Church's "Operation Peter Pan," which helped more than 14,000 children leave the communist-run Caribbean island nation.

He lived in foster homes for four years before his family was able to leave Cuba and join him in Florida.

He studied law and started his political career in 1998, when he was elected mayor of Florida's Orange county.

After co-chairing Bush's 2000 election campaign in Florida, Martinez was named housing secretary.

Following a tough electoral campaign, in which he was accused of mudslinging, he became the first Cuban-American member of the US Senate in 2004.