September 10, 2007

The Fight for Latino Loyalties

The Democrats' Sunday night Univision debate was just the first step in a drive to reverse George Bush's gains among Hispanic voters. On to 'Latino Tuesday.'

Sept. 10, 2007 - The Democratic presidential candidates came like courtiers to the University of Miami, determined to woo the rapidly growing Latino electorate by participating in the Univision network’s debate on Sunday night, the first ever conducted in both Spanish and English. They offered paeans to Hispanic accomplishments, touted pro-immigrant policies and deployed legions of surrogates afterward to vouch for their Latino cred. As Sergio Bendixen, a Hispanic pollster hired by Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, put it before the start of the debate, “The campaign for the Hispanic vote begins [now].”

It’s a vote that’s been slowly gaining clout with each new electoral cycle. According to figures compiled by the New Democrat Network, the number of Latino registered voters is projected to reach 14 million by 2008, nearly double the figure in 2000. Changes in the primary schedule will only boost Latinos’ political punch. They represent a sizable chunk of the electorate in Nevada, whose caucus has been moved up the calendar to January 19, second only to Iowa’s. And they’re concentrated in delegate-rich states like California and New York that will vote on February 5—a date New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez dubs “Latino Tuesday.” Democrats enter this campaign season in a stronger position than Republicans, whose recent harsh—some say xenophobic—rhetoric on immigration has alienated many Hispanics. It doesn’t help that the Republican presidential field, with the exception of Sen. John McCain, declined Univision’s offer of a similar debate. (The network says it’s trying to schedule a date with the campaigns.) Hoping to solidify their gains, Democrats are adding Hispanic staffers and beefing up their outreach.

At Sunday night’s forum the Democratic candidates embraced Latinos with fervor. They all reiterated their support for comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for the nation’s 12 million or so undocumented immigrants. They dropped the names of high-profile Hispanic backers: Menendez for Clinton, Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez for Sen. Barack Obama. And they sought to strike emotional chords. Former senator John Edwards lauded the hard work of immigrants who now make up half the population of his hometown in North Carolina. Obama spoke of the common struggle in the 1960s of Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. And Clinton responded to a question on health care with the tale of a Latino NYPD detective whose insurance company refused to pay for his two-year-old daughter’s operation.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico seemed most intent on affirming a connection. Surely aware that surveys show many Latinos don’t know his ethnicity, he seized on the first question to remind viewers that he’s the first major Hispanic candidate to run for president. He then lambasted Univision—which ruled that candidates could respond only in English—for denying the audience a chance “to hear one of their own speak Spanish.” Richardson tried to score points by repeatedly praising Hispanic patriotism and military service, which he said was often ignored by the media in favor of “dehumanizing” images of illegal immigrants “swimming across a river.” And he criticized the construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border with one of the night’s memorable laugh lines: “If you’re going to build a 12-foot wall, you know what’s going to happen? A lot of 13-foot ladders.”

The debate moderators also prodded the candidates on foreign policy toward Latin America. That drew out one of the more significant differences among the Democrats: what to do about Cuban President Fidel Castro, an issue that could play a role in how Florida’s Hispanic vote comes down. While Clinton favors more of a status quo approach to the island, Richardson raised the possibility of lifting the embargo if Castro were to release political prisoners. Sen. Christopher Dodd went further, calling for removing the embargo and lifting restrictions on travel and remittances to the island by Cuban-Americans. “Fifty years of this policy of the embargo has basically left the same man in power, the same repressive politics, an economy that’s been failing the country,” he said. Though that position won’t earn him support among Miami’s hard-line Cuban-American exiles, Dodd’s responses on foreign policy generally were the most warmly received by the audience. “We’re spending $1.6 billion for all of Latin America in terms of aid and assistance, a fraction of what we’re spending in Iraq,” he said. “We need to engage with the hopes and aspirations of the people in this part of the world.”

At the New Democrat Network’s debate after-party at the Biltmore Hotel, Latino politicos sounded exultant about the results. The winner, many argued, was the Democratic Party as a whole, which showcased its candidates before a TV audience that sometimes exceeds that of the English-language networks. The GOP candidates, by contrast, not only declined Univision’s invitation to debate but also turned down invitations to appear before two other important gatherings of Hispanic leaders in recent months: the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) annual conference in Miami Beach, and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) in Orlando. In all three cases, GOP candidates cited scheduling conflicts. But they might want to rearrange their calendars—or risk reversing President George W. Bush’s gains among Latino voters. The GOP already lost ground in the 2006 midterm elections, when only 30 percent of Hispanics chose a Republican candidate, compared to the roughly 40 percent who voted for Bush in 2004.

As the primary contests approach, most of the Democrats are focusing their Hispanic outreach on Nevada. (They’d be concentrating on Florida, too, if it weren’t for the current fight between the state’s Democrats and the national party over the primary schedule. In the wake of a new state law that moved Florida’s primary to Jan. 29—a violation of party rules—the Democratic National Committee has decided not to count the state’s delegates at its convention.) The candidates are eagerly pursuing Nevada Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen, a recently elected Latino with close ties to the community. Obama and Richardson have already run Spanish-language radio ads in the state. And Clinton’s campaign put together one of its first “Hispanic leadership councils” there to help organize fund raising and volunteer work.

In the fight for Latino loyalties, Clinton is currently in the strongest position among the Democrats. A recent poll shows her garnering about 60 percent of the Hispanic vote nationally, with her competitors trailing far behind. That’s largely a result of name recognition, though, and the contest will likely tighten as voters learn more about the other candidates. Still, Clinton has amassed a roster of top-notch Hispanic advisers—including campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and pollster Bendixen—and endorsements from Latino luminaries like Sen. Menendez and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. “The campaign has made clear that it’s not going to make the mistake that John Kerry made” in devoting insufficient attention and resources to the Latino electorate, says Raul Yzaguirre, the campaign’s chair of Hispanic outreach and former head of NCLR. Like the presidential campaign generally, the fight for Hispanic votes has gotten heated earlier than ever.