GOP is the party of hope for Hispanics

John Sanchez:

As lieutenant governor of New Mexico, I have had the privilege of living and serving in a state with over 50 percent minority residents. Now that I’m in the last few months of my second term, I want to share a little bit about my story and explain why many Hispanics should and will vote for Republicans in the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

I was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and was the youngest of eight children. We were raised by a single mother in absolute poverty.

When I got older, I realized I had been raised with solid conservative values. My mother was never political. However, she taught us the values of personal responsibility and hard work. She showed us that taking advantage of opportunity was the way out of poverty.

When I use the word “poverty,” what I mean is this: there was a time in our life when we didn’t have running water. I grew up using an outhouse. I know what it is like to have holes in my shoes.

However, it wasn’t poverty itself that shaped me – it was my mother telling me that although no one owed me anything, there was hope. In this amazing country of America, anything is possible.

My mother told all of us that if we worked hard, stayed in school and did the right thing we could live the American Dream. She was right.

I often tell the story of going through the trashcans behind the local supermarket with my brothers, trying to find cardboard from old boxes to replace the worn-out soles of our shoes. We hoped it wouldn’t rain that night, causing our shoes to fall apart on the way to school.

But the story didn’t end there. Because we lived the values passed to us by my mother, we achieved success.

I found myself 40 years later having dinner with the president of the United States. Sitting there with the most powerful man, in the most powerful city, in the most powerful nation in the world, I looked down at my new expensive dress shoes. I realized how far my mother’s values and her dream of America had taken me.

Like many Hispanic families, we wanted to secure a better life, so we started a business at Mom’s kitchen table. We founded what would become one of New Mexico’s most successful small businesses, twice being honored as the small business of the year. We did this by following the pro-business, empowerment principles that we learned at home and found in the Republican Party.

After realizing the truth of the American Dream, I was compelled to give back to my community through public service. My first election was to serve as a councilman of our small community, working hard to empower the business community.

Next, I was inspired to do what many thought was impossible: taking on the powerful speaker of the New Mexico state House. At that time, Raymond Sanchez was the longest-serving speaker of any assembly in the nation. In a heavily Hispanic district that was 2-1 registered in favor of the Democrats, I emerged the winner as the Republican candidate.

Having the same last name as the opposing candidate, all that separated us was the values that we fought for. I spoke about the hand up while he talked about the hand out. I discussed using welfare as a trampoline to propel you to a better life; he spoke of welfare as a hammock to lie in, keeping you safe until you die.

I went on to speak of how the empowerment of education leads to economic freedom. He believed people deserved increased dependency on government.
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Democrats have become the party of dependency and even with huge growth in jobs because of tax cuts they still think taxes should be raised and the money used to create even greater dependency on the government by the poor. This is economic backwardness.