This piece is part of an Annenberg News 21 collaboration with The Guardian examining the Latino vote in the 2012 presidential election. 

Once a Republican citadel which welcomed presidential candidates from Goldwater to Bush, the Southern California city of Santa Ana is no longer a bastion of conservatism. Street vendors hawking soccer T-shirts in their native Spanish outside packed taquerias and panaderias show the diverse face of the city and the size of the challenge to California's declining Republican Party in the heart of its ideological cradle, Orange County.

Santa Ana is a flashpoint for America's changing demographics. The city's Republican party is locked in a struggle with the statewide California Republican group, over how it can win back a burgeoning Latino population that has turned the state bright blue.

The city has shifted from having been the domain of fiery Republican Congressman "B-1" Bob Dornan to being represented by Democrat Loretta Sanchez. Santa Ana is one of the few cities in the county where Democratic registration is much higher than that of the Republicans. In the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the city by a landslide—65 percent to 32 percent.

"The Latino vote is going to make a big difference," said Tamar Jacoby, a self-described conservative who is president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a federation of state-based pro-immigration business coalitions. "That's where the divide is in the Republican Party—people who get it and those for whom it doesn't matter."

Jacoby's organization, while non-partisan, has close ties to Republican forces favoring immigration reform and is among a small but growing group of conservatives who recognize that the party faces becoming irrelevant at state level. It can no longer elect a Republican to statewide office and it is on the verge of dropping below a one-third share of the state legislature. If the party wants to remain viable, it must recruit Latinos—and they are increasingly hostile to the party.

"Latinos don't agree with Democrats on many social issues, but they don't trust the Republican Party either," said California GOP political strategist Allan Hoffenblum. Hispanics fear, Hoffenblum said, that the GOP's hard-line immigration policy "singles them out" for harassment and discrimination.

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