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Pulido found out about the McCain meeting from a local newspaper, the Beacon News. She called the McCain campaign contact and let them know where she stood on the issue of illegal immigration, but said as a conservative and a Hispanic, she wanted to attend the meeting. She was curious as to what McCain was going to say.
"I have friends in Washington, DC, on this issue," she says. "We've had conversations on this issue." After comprehensive immigration reform was killed in the Senate and McCain changed his rhetoric on the subject on the campaign trail, Pulido says, "we were hopeful after John McCain started saying, 'I understand where the American people are coming from, there's gotta be enforcement first,' we thought great, he's had a change of heart."
So she went to the meeting, a room full of 150-200 people. "Sure enough," Pulido says, "his mantra at the meeting was comprehensive immigration reform.' And there were cheers and applause whenever he mentioned comprehensive immigration reform.""Then he said, 'I bet some of you don't know this -- did you know Spanish was spoken in Arizona before English?' And the crowd roared. I was appalled," Pulido said. "He was pandering to these people -- that's what they wanted to hear."
"He's one John McCain in front of white Republicans. And he's a different John McCain in front of Hispanics," Rosanna Pulido, a Latina who heads the Illinois Minuteman Project, told the AP. "He's having his private meetings to rally Hispanics and to tell them what they want to hear," she said. "I'm outraged that he would reach out to me as a Hispanic but not as a conservative."
memphismusic
Memphis, Tennessee, United States
VLOGZ
Inland Empire, California, United States
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Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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at 13:42 on June 20th, 2008
Blogger Ezra Klein reacts to Pulido's experience.