Which potential candidates speak Spanish -- and will it matter?

Whether Spanish proficiency matters depends on where you are, says Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. “If you’re in Los Angeles County, where a substantial number of voters speak Spanish at home, a politician who can speak to them can campaign here in a way that other Republicans could not. That’s not to say Jeb Bush can carry Los Angeles County. If you’re a Republican you’re not going to carry the Hispanic vote, but if you’re Jeb Bush campaigning in Florida, you may pick up a few points, and that could make the difference.”

Any conversation about Spanish-speaking politicians leads back to Bush. His fluency “will help him communicate his policies on Telemundo and Univision,” says Sam Popkin, a political-science professor at the University of California San Diego. “There’s a divide in the Republican Party between keeping the country as what it was, and living with what it becomes.” Bush’s progressive stance on immigration is future-oriented, and could position the GOP to regain the 30 to 40 percent share of the Hispanic vote that George W. Bush received, and that Ronald Reagan got when he was governor of California in the ’70s.

Reagan used to say that Hispanics are conservatives, they just don’t know it yet—a view that Popkin echoes. “There’s a lot of middle-class, small-business-oriented Hispanics… But you can’t just eat a taco and give a speech in Spanish. It’s about your policies.”