Guest Column
Where Do Latinos Go Now?
- By Marcelo Ballve
- New America Media,
- News Analysis
- May 16, 2008
No one has bragging rights over the Latino vote, not
yet. And after the massive immigrant rights marches of 2006, the old token
"tamale politics" won't work — if they ever did.
With Sen. Barack Obama emerging as the probable opponent to Republican Sen.
John McCain, the Latino media and blogosphere have been abuzz with
speculation on how the two might fare head-to-head.
Obama did poorly among Latinos against Sen. Hillary Clinton (On Super
Tuesday, Latinos voted for Clinton by a 2-to-1 margin). The conventional
wisdom has been that he is woefully vulnerable in this demographic. But
McCain is not necessarily ideally positioned, according to Los Angeles
political columnist Pilar Marrero.
"Both candidates come to the competition with certain disadvantages…. No one
can say they have this vote in their pocket," she writes in La Opinión, the
nation's largest Spanish-language newspaper.
Latinos are certainly attracted to McCain's "independence, his convictions,
his courage and his moderate stance on issues," writes Ruben Navarrette Jr.,
a syndicated columnist with the San Diego Union-Tribune. Not to mention "his
heroic suffering as a prisoner of war."
It remains to be seen, though, how McCain comes down on the immigration
question, which he has waffled on since co-sponsoring failed immigration
reform legislation in 2006. In the primaries, desperate to avoid being
outflanked to the right, he reneged on his once-clear support for
comprehensive reform. Speaking in Arizona on May 5 (the "Cinco de Mayo"
festivities), McCain tried out what seems to be a new angle: blue-collar
Latinos, he said, are harmed by the inflow of undocumented immigrants, and
should be sympathetic toward securing the border before demanding an
integral solution.
Marrero of La Opinión concludes: If this divide-and-conquer approach is
McCain's Latino strategy, "I wish him luck."
For his part, although buoyed by the endorsement of New Mexico's Latino
governor Bill Richardson, Obama has been fighting a perception he did too
little, too late in reaching out to Latino voters.
On the Hispanic Trending blog, which carried an
online interview with Obama, among the first questions was: "Why did
your campaign take so long to proactively reach out to Hispanics?" Obama
skirted the question, providing a laundry list of his Latino outreach
efforts. But the point was made.
In Obama's own bailiwick of South Chicago, blogger and journalist Gregory
Tejeda spelled out this
frustration. Obama’s “focus on gaining African-American votes and that
of the youth of America have created the perception amongst Hispanic people
that Obama doesn’t care about their situation."
Obama can point to some victories: he won the Latino vote in the Iowa,
Virginia and Illinois primaries. The Mexican-American vote has proven most
difficult for him, even in his home state of Illinois, but there is still no
clear evidence that this trend wouldn't shift in a general election. Gallup
polling published May 1 showed Obama with a 57 percent to 33 percent
advantage over McCain among Latinos, suggesting that with Clinton out of the
way, Obama would recoup at least some Mexican-American votes.
He should hope he does, because Mexican Americans are crucial in three
battleground states that President George W. Bush carried by a margin of 5
percent or or less in 2004: New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. Latinos could
potentially swing all of these states, as well as Florida, where the
right-leaning Cuban American vote has been diversified by second- and
third-generation voters and new arrivals from Puerto Rico and Central
America.
Latino voters will only make up an estimated 9 percent of the total
electorate in November, but their importance, like that of independents,
lies in their ability to change their minds. While falling short of a true
swing vote, it is a fast-shifting electorate. In 2004, Bush, positioned as a
wartime president, won 40 percent of the Latino vote. By 2006, after the
failure of immigration reform torpedoed by Republicans' anti-immigrant wing,
things had changed. Only 30 percent of Latinos voted for Republican
candidates in 2006.
The difference between the results, only two years apart, shows how much is
at stake in 2008. What's certain is that Latinos will be building blocks in
any victory, so it's important for candidates not to be tempted to use
immigration as a wedge issue, argues Janet Murguía of advocacy organization
National Council of La Raza. Although Latinos overall are more concerned
about the economy and the war, their sensitivities on immigration are raw,
especially since hate crimes and apparently punitive federal raids against
immigrants are on the rise. After the mass marches of 2006, the safeguarding
of immigrants – undocumented or not – became a civil rights issue in these
communities.
Another post-2006 lesson: The old token campaign gestures won't work. It's
not enough to eat some ethnic food, mumble words in bad Spanish, and pose
for photos with Latino community leaders.
“I think the time has passed for tamale politics,” Eliseo Medina, executive
vice president of the Service Employees International Union, was quoted as
saying in
Congressional Quarterly. “People have become much more attuned to what
candidates do, not just what they say,” he added.
That's certainly the case with California superdelegate Steven Ybarra, who
on May 9 went public with an unconventional ultimatum: he would choose
between Obama and Clinton – depending on who gave him $20 million to
register Latinos, a voter drive he said could mean the difference between
victory and defeat and also make up for years of under-funded
similar efforts. Underlying Ybarra's demand was his frustration – common
among Latinos – that there's little substance in efforts to court them.
"I am going to ask the candidate where is our place at the table," he wrote
in March on Latino political Web site
Hispanicvista.com. "Because we are tired of just cooking, cleaning up,
and getting blamed when the party goes bad."
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed by HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com) without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)