Throughout this horror-show of a presidential election, Latinos have delighted in laughing at the few pendejo Latinos willing to openly support Republican candidate Donald Trump. There was OC’s own Lupe Moreno, the most infamous self-hater since Booker T. Washington, and that crazy Colombian woman who expressed her love for Trump during a rally in Nevada last year. And those two gordos from Dallas that all of Chicanodom memed endlessly, too!
But those pendejos were just faces in the crowd, quick flashes to get blood boiling. Now, a truly influential Latina has emerged from Newport Beach (of course) to express her support of Trump—and she signifies everything wrong with the Orange County Republican Party, and why every step forward for them in the fight to get the ever-increasing Latino vote in OC inevitably turns into five Mexican hat dances back.
Teresa Hernandez sits on the board of directors for the Lincoln Club, the infamous GOP PAC that served as the party’s local, statewide, and national kingmaker for decades. Her sole role: Convince Mexicans that the days of poll guards, Proposition 187, and palling around with Barbara Coe are long-gone, and that the new GOP welcomes all Mexicans—even if you’re an illegal alien savage! American-born, she heads a Mexican restaurant in South El Monte—and we all know how dependent the restaurant industry is on immigrant Mexicans, legal and not. And Teresa is also married to José Hernández of Mariachi Sol de México, the house mariachi for the Balboa Bay Club set, the same mariachi that infamously invited (along with emcee Paul Rodriguez, another vendido) former California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman on stage during a Hispanic GOP fundraiser in Newport to down a tequila shot in the most notorious example of GOP Hispandering since Gaddi Vasquez.
Until this week, Hernandez earned her pesos. Back in 2011, she helped push the Lincoln Club to call for a conservative approach to immigration reform that didn’t call for mass deportations, sparking headlines across the country. Two years later, Hernandez and other high-ranking GOP officials went door-to-door in SanTana, trying to convince Latinos registered with the Democratic Party to vote Republican by using the one historical trait the GOP and Mexicans have always shared: gay-bashing.
“They have family values. They love a hand up, not a hand out. They’re a proud people. They’re entrepreneurs,” Hernandez told the Orange County Register of Latinos. “Look at the guy on the side of the street selling you flowers. He’s not asking for a handout. He’s selling.”
All that Aztlanista talk went away this week, when Hernandez was one of just two high-profile Orange County GOP Trump supporters Register reporter Martin Wisckol could find (the other? Former Villa Park councilwoman and eternal nutcase Deborah Pauley). “I also love him,” Hernandez said even as she admitted “he makes me cringe when he speaks…I want someone who is going to turn the tables over in Washington. I want someone who has backbone and won’t be bought and knows how to out-negotiate the lobbyists”—a hilarious final point, given the Lincoln Club has been lobbying since the days of Ronald Reagan as California governor.
Hernandez went on to say she is “willing to overlook all of The Donald’s flaws”—you know, the flaws like calling Mexicans rapists and drug smugglers, or kicking Mexican reporters out of press conferences, or monitoring mosques, or ridiculing the Vietnam War service of Arizona Senator John McCain. Yeah, Tere: supporting Trump will sure get OC Latinos to go GOP.
But, hey: Hernandez joins a long list of Great Brown Hopes that the OC GOP groomed to get them the Mexi vote and backfired spectacularly, from Vasquez to Lupe Moreno, Carlos Bustamante to the whole Hispanic 100 chingadera. Stay classy, OC!
