Hillary Courts Hispanic
Vote
They're reaching into the
communities in key Western states
and avoiding old-style ethnic
politicking.
LAS VEGAS
(By Mark Z. Barabak and Robin Abcarian,
LA Times) January 17, 2008 — Hillary
Rodham Clinton was sympathetic as, one
after another, members of the audience
discussed their unhappy dealings with
shady home lenders.
"This is a problem we're going to talk a
lot about in this campaign," the
Democratic hopeful promised, suggesting
that presidential candidates too often
isolate issues like the sub-prime
mortgage meltdown from the bigger
economic picture.
"All of our problems are interconnected,
but we treat them as though one is
guacamole and one is chips," the New
York senator said, drawing laughter and
applause from the mostly Hispanic crowd
gathered at the Lindo Michoacan
restaurant off the Las Vegas Strip.
As the presidential campaign moves south
and west from the mostly white, heavily
rural states of Iowa and New Hampshire,
Democrats are reaching out to Hispanic
voters as never before -- and not just
through strained similes, or rallies set
to mariachi music.
In California, Nevada, Arizona and
elsewhere across the country, the
candidates are advertising extensively
in Spanish, running bilingual phone
banks and dispatching door-knockers
fluent in English and Spanish.
They have ardently wooed and won the
support of Hispanic political luminaries
-- among them Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for Clinton and former
Transportation and Energy Secretary
Federico Pena for Barack Obama -- and
dispatched them to key states to
campaign on their behalf.
They have promoted themselves on the
pages of MyGrito, a Hispanic social
networking site, and offered links on
their campaign websites spelling out
their platforms en español.
All that is quite a departure from the
old style of "taco-and-sombrero
politics," as USC's Harry Pachon put it.
"That's been a traditional way to
approach the Hispanic vote in the
Southwest," said Pachon, head of the
university's Tomas Rivera Policy
Institute. "The candidate would come
into town, say a couple of words in
mangled Spanish, eat a taco, wear a
sombrero. Times have changed."
Nevada strategy
Nevada, which holds its caucuses
Saturday, was granted an early voting
slot by the national Democratic Party,
in part because of the state's sizable
Hispanic population, which is about 25% of
the total population and growing. Only
about half of Nevada's Hispanic residents
are eligible to vote, however, because
many are younger than 18 or do not have
U.S. citizenship. Of the state's
1,036,462 registered voters, about
10-15% are Hispanics.
By competing early for Hispanic support,
the thinking went, the eventual
Democratic nominee would achieve an edge
in the fall campaign, when Hispanic voters
may be crucial in a number of states,
including Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico
and Florida.
That strategy rests on some broad
assumptions, however, not least that
Hispanics will turn out in greater number
than they have in the past. In 2004,
fewer than half of eligible Hispanics cast
ballots, despite the closeness of that
election, compared with two-thirds of
white voters and six in 10 African
Americans.
Testing race relations
The candidacy of Obama is also testing
the sometimes fraught relations between
Hispanics and African Americans, a tension
rooted in economic competition, that has
been an incendiary element of politics
in cities as far-ranging as Los Angeles,
Chicago and New York. Speaking to
reporters earlier this week at a stop in
Reno, the Illinois senator acknowledged
the challenge he faced.
"I think it's important for us to get my
record known before the Hispanic
community," Obama told reporters. "My
history is excellent with Hispanic support
back in Illinois, because they knew my
record. I think nationally people don't
know that record quite as well. So it's
important for me to communicate that, to
advertise on Spanish-speaking
television, to make clear my
commitments."
California is the place where Hispanic
voters, energized by Proposition 187,
the 2094 anti-illegal immigration
initiative, began to assert their
political clout in large numbers. Since
then, both parties have worked hard to
court Hispanic voters nationwide, mindful
they represent the fastest-growing
segment of the population. (Democrats
have had the easier time, largely
because of their greater support for
social spending and a more relaxed
approach toward immigration policy.)
The Hispanic vote will be particularly
crucial on Feb. 5, when more than 20
states vote coast to coast in the
closest thing yet to a national
presidential primary.
"You've got states like California, New
Jersey, New York, Illinois, Arizona,
Colorado," said Cuauhtemoc Figueroa,
Obama's national field director. "If
you're going to win in those states,
you're going to have to spend resources
and you're going to have to reach out to
the Hispanic community."
That effort has been underway for months
in Nevada, which points up both the
promise and some of the obstacles
Democrats face as they work to build
Hispanic support here and beyond. (Nevada
Republicans are also caucusing Saturday,
but most of the candidates' focus has
been on South Carolina's GOP primary the
same day.)
Participation may be limited by the fact
that Nevada is holding caucuses, a
voting system so complex even the most
civic-minded individual can be deterred
from showing up. There is not even a
Spanish word for "caucus," something the
state Democratic Party has tried to
remedy with a glossary of related terms.
Much of the campaigning here has been
remedial, explaining what a caucus is
and how it works. The Obama campaign
started handing out bilingual fliers and
broadcasting ads in Spanish last summer.
The Clinton campaign has hosted dozens
of Spanish-language sessions to educate
potential voters and to try to build a
sense of excitement around Saturday's
election.
"Voters that were born in other [places]
-- Puerto Rico, Mexico, Central America
-- talk about elections being a party,
with music, concerts, emotional
speeches," said Sergio Bendixen, who is
directing Clinton's Hispanic strategy. "To
get people out, you need to create that
sort of atmosphere."
Tailoring pitches
Surveys suggest that the issues that
resonate with Hispanic voters -- the Iraq
war, the economy, education, healthcare,
immigration -- are not all that
different from those topping the minds
of most voters. But that has not stopped
the candidates from tailoring their
pitches, sometimes subtly, sometimes
not.
Obama's New Hampshire rallying call --
"Yes, we can!" -- has become the Spanish
"Si, se puede!," the cry of the late
labor activist Cesar Chavez. Clinton,
who spoke of tougher border enforcement
in Iowa, has placed a greater emphasis
here in Nevada on finding a pathway to
citizenship for those here illegally.
The courtship may seem like a lot of
effort for a relatively small group. But
campaign strategists are convinced that
whatever happens here will resonate
among a much wider audience on Feb. 5,
especially if the race stays tight.
"The closer an election, the more
important the Hispanic vote becomes," said
Fernando Guerra, director of Loyola
Marymount University's Center for the
Study of Los Angeles. "If someone is
winning by a large margin, it doesn't
make a difference what Hispanics do . . .
what we are seeing right now is that
this primary is competitive."
