Opinion: Immigration Debate Creates Strange Bedfellows

So in late August I’m driving over to the California coast — I’m working, but I must confess it’s nice to beat the San Joaquin Valley heat — and as usual I make a pit stop at Casa de Fruta in Hollister. Anyone who’s traveled through this area east of Salinas is familiar with Casa de Fruta, which over the past 60 years has grown from a fruit stand to what amounts to a small town. Joe C. Zanger, as a partner in the family business, has grown a lot of fruit to sell to the millions of weary travelers through the years. I pop into the office building there to see Joe and ask what’s up. We get to talking about labor which leads, as discussions in this election year are wont to do, to politics. That’s when Joe drops the bombshell: He’s working for Barack Obama.

Obama? A Democrat? Like most growers I know, Joe’s been a pretty solid GOP man through the years. In fact, he tells me that he registered as a Republican when he was 18, and has voted pretty much straight-ticket in the 33 years since. I’ve known him to be politically active, but always for Republican causes. Several years back he even served as county campaign chair for Bill Jones, when he ran for governor against Gray Davis. (Who was subsequently recalled and replaced by our current governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.) Even more puzzling, in light of Joe’s confession, is that he was active in supporting John McCain for president eight years ago.

So what happened? “I still like McCain, but it’s a younger man’s game, and regardless, Obama’s a better candidate for our times,” says Zanger. “Though had Obama not won the primary, I’d be behind McCain.”

Say It Ain’t So, Joe

But still, even though they say politics makes for strange bedfellows, a Democrat? “He (Obama) is not a partisan Democrat,” says Zanger. “I’m convinced of that.”

But then why, Joe? (Being a nonpartisan journalist, I refrain from blurting out, “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”)

Zanger says it all started when his wife gave him a copy of one of Obama’s books, The Audacity of Hope. Zanger says he’s sick of partisan politics, of each party playing “Gotcha,” and it struck him that maybe Obama might be onto something. A month after reading the book, in January of 2007, Zanger was in Washington, DC, for a meeting of the U.S. Trade Representative’s Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee, of which he was then a member. On a whim, Zanger ducked into Obama’s exploratory office — this was a month before the Illinois senator announced he was running — and told the staffers he was ready to volunteer. “That’s quite a leap for me,” says Zanger.

He’s now on Obama’s agricultural policy committee. Zanger was selected as one of about 15 members when the committee was first formed in April 2007, but now he says there are 10 times that many. “It’s been an interesting and rewarding year-and-a-half, sitting on that committee,” says Zanger. “There are a lot of Midwest people who I’ve been working with to get them to understand our needs as specialty crops growers. Overall, ag people have a whole lot in common, we just need to share with each other.”

I assumed that Zanger’s grower-friends and fellow Republicans in California would have given him some grief over his choice, but he says that while they were surprised, they weren’t at all upset. “They’re not signing on, necessarily,” he says with a chuckle. “But I’ve gotten more positive feedback than negative.”

That reaction speaks volumes, I tell Zanger, about how people feel about where this country is headed. He agreed, and then tried to sum up why he thinks Obama appeals to many voters, growers included. “Ag people are pragmatic, they have to be to stay in business,” he says. “And if you’re a realist, you know what’s happening now — the partisan politics — isn’t working.”