Following former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's announcement that he is exploring a 2016 presidential run, Hispanic media outlets have celebrated his Mexican-American family and fluency in Spanish, portraying them as appealing to Latino voters. This focus on biographical details has come at the expense of reporting on Bush's positions on health care and climate change -- issues on which his positions are at odds with the interests of most Latinos.
For instance, Jorge Ramos, host of Univision's Al Punto, helped feed the narrative of Bush as a "Hispanic candidate" (Spanish-language video clip) during a January 18 conversation with Carlos Gutierrez, who was commerce secretary under George W. Bush. Throughout the discussion, Ramos left Bush's policy stances unquestioned, relying on Gutierrez's glowing review of Bush's personal leadership qualities. At one point, Ramos suggested that Bush could be grouped with other potential Republican presidential candidates who are Latino.
Other Spanish-language outlets like the newspaper El País have also credited Bush's Mexican wife and children with making him a “Hispanic candidate,” calling these personal factors an “advantage” to win the Latino vote. Briefly glossing over his “moderate” foreign policy stances -- a popular trope in English-language media -- El País highlighted Bush's Mexican wife yet again to address Bush's claims that he is not like his brother George W. Bush. MundoFox, a Spanish-language cable channel that is partly owned by Fox News' parent company, has celebrated Bush's ability to speak Spanish fluently as well as his Mexican wife to position him as a GOP front-runner several times since Bush's announcement in December.
When Hispanic media outlets do cover Bush's policy positions, they rarely go beyond the single issue of immigration. And while it is encouraging to see positive coverage of Bush's multicultural family and bilingualism, a review of Al Punto episodes and close monitoring of El País' and MundoFox's websites following Bush's announcement reveal that they have not covered his conservative stances on climate change and health care reform.
On climate change, Bush has admitted denialism, claiming that “the science has been politicized.” As The Guardian's Suzanne Goldberg wrote, Bush is in “lock-step with the other climate deniers in the Republican party.”
According to recent polling from The New York Times, Stanford University, and the nonpartisan environmental group Resources for the Future, 63 percent of Hispanics, compared to 49 percent of whites, agreed that the “federal government should act broadly to address global warming.” Furthermore, 54 percent of Hispanics said that global warming is “extremely or very important to them personally, compared with 37 percent of whites.” The Times quoted Latino Decisions researcher Gabriel Sanchez pointing out that “Hispanics often live in areas where they are directly exposed to pollution, such as neighborhoods near highways and power plants.” Sanchez also said that Latinos are key advocates in the fight for climate change awareness: “There's a stereotype that Latinos are not aware or concerned about these issues. ... But Latinos are actually among the most concerned about the environment, particularly global warming.” Experts agree that Hispanics are “particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts.”
Similarly, Bush has criticized the Affordable Care Act (ACA), calling it "flawed to its core" and a "job killer." However, the Los Angeles Times highlighted a September report from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund that found the ACA “has dramatically increased coverage among Latinos,” who are “a historically underinsured community.” As the Times reported, the report found, ¨Overall, the percentage of Latinos ages 19 to 64 lacking health coverage fell from 36% to 23% between summer 2013 and spring 2014.¨ And according to the New York Times blog The Upshot, the “biggest winners from the law include people between the ages of 18 and 34; blacks; Hispanics; and people who live in rural areas.” The Times also noted that parts of Nevada, New Mexico, and southern Texas -- all places with high percentages of Latinos -- are among the areas with the “largest increases in the health insurance rate.”