“California is going to become a Hispanic state and if anyone doesn’t like it they should leave. They ought to go back to Europe.” — Mario Guerra Obledo, co-founder of MALDEF, on the Tom Likus radio show, 1998

With start-up financing from the Ford Foundation, Obledo co-founded the now largely corporate-funded Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1968. His angry promise cited above leaped to mind Friday when we learned that the innocuously named illegal alien lobby corporation “Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials” welcomed some interesting — and powerful — guests to a recent breakfast fundraiser gala in metro Atlanta.

Secretary of State Brian Kemp and Attorney General Sam Olens, Republicans both, participated in the 12th annual GALEO “Power Breakfast” moneymaker last Friday. State Rep B.J. Pak (R-Lilburn) was also there. State Senator Jack Hill (R- Reidsville) was listed on the program as a sponsor.

What do powerful Republican Georgia politicians helping finance the anti-enforcement GALEO have to do with the quote above from MALDEF’s Mario Obledo?

The executive director of GALEO is community organizer Jerry Gonzalez. Before he was awarded with the leadership of GALEO, he was a Democratic fundraiser and MALDEF lobbyist at the Georgia Capitol, where he is known for his vitriolic outbursts at Republican legislators. Gonzalez and his anti-borders corporation have actively fought every immigration enforcement bill under the Gold Dome, including HB 87 of 2011, and Gonzalez has brought the leader of the Socialist Workers party into Georgia to fight for driver’s licenses for illegal aliens.

As a certain indicator of growing political power in what this writer now sadly refers to as “Georgiafornia,” Gonzalez crowed for weeks that Republican Governor Nathan Deal would assist with the GALEO funding campaign by attending Friday’s event and would offer some “welcoming remarks.” Alas, political insiders report that Deal cancelled at the last minute.

The pre-printed GALEO event program with Deal’s name and a “thank you” list of the Georgia corporations that sponsor GALEO can be seen on the Dustin Inman Society Facebook page. Western Union, Georgia Power, Coca Cola and Cox Communications are just a few of the non-politician Gonzalez financiers.

Gonzalez boasts on the GALEO website that All-American luminary Jane Fonda was a “founding friend.” With their tacit endorsement, it looks like Deal, Olens, Kemp and Pak have joined “Hanoi Jane” in supporting the GALEO/Gonzalez agenda.

An abbreviated list of Gonzalez’s accomplishments on behalf of the open-borders goals include fearlessly marching in the streets of Atlanta demanding an end to enforcement of American immigration laws and denigrating Cobb County Police and Cobb Sheriff Neil Warren for supposedly creating “an environment of fear through active racial profiling and intimidation targeting the Latino community within Cobb County” - for simply doing their jobs.

In 2007, federal authorities approved the Cobb sheriff’s office use of the life-saving federal 287(g) program that expanded the authority to locate and hold illegal aliens who had been captured for other crimes. “This has set us back tremendously” a seething Gonzalez said then.

Donations to GALEO, including from politicians, help with its malicious opposition to voter ID as “anti-Hispanic” and Gonzalez makes it clear that making English our official language would be an “insult to our culture.”

I watched in person several years ago as Gonzalez marched in protest of then-CNN newsman Lou Dobbs with a large group of fellow travelers carrying signs calling Dobbs a “racist” and other placards reading “THIS IS OUR CONTINENT - GO BACK TO EUROPE!” I asked some of the group with Gonzalez to where my black friends who opposed illegal immigration should return.

“Africa” was the quick and defiant reply.

Genuinely conservative state Rep Katie Dempsey (R-Rome) must be quite curious about Gonzalez’s newly revealed GOP supporters. Four years ago, the Rome News-Tribune reported that a very angry Jerry Gonzalez shadowed the diminutive legislator around a Rome event focused on E-Verify until “Gonzalez, who began yelling at Dempsey when the meeting ended,” was escorted by local police from the property.

GALEO has staged multiple fundraisers each year since its creation in 2003. From the event program, about $40,000 would be a very close estimation of the amount of operating funds the aforementioned Republican officials helped GALEO raise last week.

Gonzalez has every right to be rolling in laughter at his success with GOP politicians — yet they will no doubt cling to claims they are “conservatives.”

I wonder any of this will come up at the Republican state convention this weekend?

D.A. King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society. He is not a member of any political party. Facebook - The Dustin Inman Society

Read more: Cherokee Tribune - Georgia GOP officials made nice at illegal alien fundraiser