Latina Weapon

George Will endorses Rosario Marin to oppose California's Senator Barbara Boxer.

Marin is the 45-year-old former U.S. treasurer and mayor of Huntington Park, a 95 percent Latino town of 60,000 in southeast Los Angeles County.

Will's endorsement appears to rest entirely on Marin's "biography:"

Today, when biography serves as political philosophy, Marin's suits this nation within the nation. At 14 she emigrated from Mexico with her parents, a janitor and a seamstress, speaking no English. She graduated near the top of her high school class, worked her way through college and took her effervescence to Sacramento, where she worked for seven years for Gov. Pete Wilson. But in 1994 she opposed Proposition 187, the initiative -- anathema to immigrants -- that, had courts not eviscerated it after it passed, which would have denied public schooling and other services to illegal immigrants.

After her first child was born with Down syndrome, she counseled pregnant women facing difficult choices. She says the experience left her unwilling to foreclose for others the choice of abortion. But when she became pregnant a second time -- she and her husband now have three children -- she refused to have amniocentesis because, she says, no test result would have caused her to have an abortion. Her second pregnancy miscarried. The child had Turner syndrome, a serious chromosomal disorder.

I enjoy reading George Will, but this column disappoints. Marin may be a phenomenal candidate. Will should offer reasons for Californian's to support her other than the biographical fact that she is Latina.

Will informs us about Marin's political views on only a single issue; she opposed Proposition 187 would have denied public schooling and other services to illegal immigrants.

UPDATE: Steven Taylor, at PoliBlog, also highlights Tuesday's GOP senatorial primary in California. The campaign for Boxer's Senate seat will be one of November's premier contests. Pathetic Earthlings thinks that California Republicans are in such a bad way it doesn't matter who opposes Boxer.