Why Did John McCain Lose the Latino Vote?

The massive movement of Latino voters to Obama has baffled some pundits and intrigued others. John McCain is arguably the most pro-immigrant Republican in the Senate and he took sometimes heroic stands in opposition to his own party's evolving anti-immigrantism. He was a frequent guest at Latino banquets and won awards from many major immigrant organizations.

Meanwhile, Barak Obama was clearly not the choice of Latinos during the primary season. I remember Obama's first test with this key demographic during the Nevada caucus. CNN televised a live caucus at a casino in which Hillary supporters were told to stand to the left and Obama backers took up the right. Almost all the Hillary fans were Latino. In primary after primary, Hillary considerably out-polled Obama among Latinos. Some commentators suggested that Hispanics had an antagonism towards African-Americans which precluded their support for a Black man.

So what happened to dash McCain's hopes of besting the 40% of the Latino vote that George Bush achieved?

Here are my ideas:

1. Some McCainiacs were sure that Latinos would not vote for a Black man. Liberals hoped that the same group would turn out for Obama as a ceiling-breaker, opening doors for non-White candidates. Both missed the way Latinos looked at Obama's ethnicity. Many Latinos did not see the election of Obama as an advance for all non-Whites. But they did come to identify with him as the son of someone who came from someplace else. Latinos have to often juggle the issue of having their hearts in two worlds. Obama's backstory, which seemed rootless to many conservatives, actually was similar to the lives of millions of Latinos, immigrant and native born. The Obamiad itself reminded them of their own stories.

2. The primaries were vicious and drawn out and Latinos did back Hil 60% to 40% but not for reasons of race. Bill clinton is incorrectly remembered by Latinos as "good on immigration" and correctly remembered as supporting democratization and development in Latin America. He was also extremely open to the Hispanic community. Hil got a lot of Bill's reflected glory in this community as well as credit from Latinas for her ground-breaking advocacy for women.

Latinos were not, bye and large, voting against Obama. They were supporting a family they viewed as their champions for more than a decade.

As the primaries went on, unlike many White Clintonians, Latinos did not become angry at Obama. They still voted against him, but they also got comfortable with the idea of him as president in a way they couldn't have had he wrapped the thing up in March. At the same time, the long primary season increased interest in voting tremendously in the Latino community as folks were convinced that their individual votes could really help determine who the next president was.

3. McCain's pro-immigrant stand hurt him with his base, but why didn't it help him with Latinos? How could a stand-up guy like hime do so much worse than Bush? Here, we have to look far beyond the four corners of this campaign.

In 2005 the Republican Party decided for tactical political reasons that anti-immigrantism was the only red meat that would sustain the party core through the 2006 election. Nasty ads like this one from failed Congressional candidate Vern Robinson proliferated. Republicans in the House passed legisaltion that would have tossed people like me in jail for providing help to immigrants regardless of their legal status. The Republicans said they were not anti-Latino, just anti-illegal, but they peopled their ads with pictures of brown men who could have been of any legal status but who were clearly Latino. And this assault on the Latino community and questioning of Latino loyalties and legality continued right up to March of this year. Then, just because McCain was the Republican nominee, Latinos were supposed to forget their wounds and vote for Juan. And, remember, by this time McCain himself was a diminished figure. He had once stood strong for the rights of immigrants, now, at the insistance of winger primary voters, he said he wouldn't even vote for the pro-immigrant bill he himself had authored.

Some commentators say that Latinos have proven ungrateful for McCain's leadership on immigration, but in reality, Latino voters have just watched this thing unfold a lot more closely than their Anglo counterparts. In the end, Latino voter liked 2007 John McCain who was the architect of comprehensive immigration reform. They were put off by 2008 John McCain who offered platitudes about Latinos being "children of God". Sorry John, Latinos already knew that without you saying it.

4. Bill Ayers and the whole culture wars thing just doesn't cut it with Latinos. Latinos are a younger demographic. Most of them came of age after the 1960s were over. A lot of them immigrated here in the last couple of decades. To them, The Weathermen are a meteorlogical association.

5. Whacky ministers like Rev. Wright don't scare them. Lots are evangelicals and they are pretty used to firebreathing preachers. Catholic Latinos are likely to brush off Wright as a "Black thing".

6. But the Number One reason Latinos turned their back on McCain is George Bush. Like everyone else, Latinos are worried about the economy and they view the war as a failure. They blame Bush for the messes. And they have a special grievance. They are particularly upset that Bush has launched huge immigration raids in their neigborhoods and at their workplaces this year. They wonder if John McCain, surrounded by Bush cronies, will just continue the perceived war against Brown people. With McCain indelibly branded as Bush's successor, the turn toward Obama is eminently understandible.

By Patrick Young
Long Island Wins

Obama won big among Hispanics -- with GOP's help

One of the big surprises of Tuesday's elections: Florida's Hispanic population voted heavily for Democratic candidate Barack Obama after decades of allegiance to Republican presidential candidates.
If the exit polls are correct, Obama won 57 percent of Florida's Hispanic vote, while Republican John McCain won 42 percent. It was the first time that a majority of Florida Hispanics voted for a Democratic president since the Hispanic vote started to be counted in the 1980s, pollsters say.

''It's spectacular,'' Democratic pollster Sergio Bendixen told me late Tuesday. ``It's the result of a structural change in the makeup of the Hispanic vote in the state, which is no longer as dominated by the Cuban-American vote as it used to be.''

This time, recent waves of immigrants from Puerto Rico, South America, Central America and the Dominican Republic made up more than half of the state's Hispanic vote.

WEAK NUMBERS

While a majority of Cuban Americans were expected to vote for McCain, their numbers were not enough to swing Florida's Hispanic vote to the Republican candidate, he said.

At the national level, more Hispanics seemed to have voted for Obama than for other recent Democratic candidates: The 67 percent of Hispanics who voted for Obama nationwide surpassed the 56 percent of Latinos who had voted for Kerry in 2004, and the 62 percent of Hispanics who voted for Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

As far as pollsters recall, Obama got the second largest Hispanic vote nationwide since 1996, when President Bill Clinton received 72 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Frank Sharry, head of America's Voice, an immigration reform advocacy group, says the immigration issue hurt McCain badly among Hispanics at the national level.

''McCain's record on immigration makes him a hero for Latino immigrants, but the Republican Party is a threat to Latino immigrants,'' Sharry told me Tuesday night. 'And the `R' next to McCain's name was like an anchor that sunk his chances of winning the presidency.''

My opinion: Hispanics voted Democratic primarily because they are among the hardest hit by the economy and by the Iraq War.

But, as we have reported repeatedly in this column over the past two years, Latinos have good grounds for resenting the Republican Party's growing anti-immigrant stance. Many Republicans in Congress -- not McCain -- in some cases have bordered on racism.

McCain has a history of goodwill toward Hispanics and had sponsored a comprehensive immigration bill that advocated both securing the border and giving an earned path to legalization to undocumented immigrants.

GOP'S ROLE

But as the election neared, he shifted toward a let's-first-secure-the-border rhetoric to woo his party's hard-line anti-immigration vote, and the Republican Party's campaign platform pretty much advocated the unconditional deportation of millions of undocumented workers.

CLEVER TV AD

In the end, Obama won over many Hispanics by linking McCain to President Bush's economic policies -- 80 percent of Latinos disapprove of Bush, according to exit polls -- and by airing a clever television ad in the final week of the campaign in which he spoke to Latinos in Spanish -- or, rather, recited his lines in Spanish considering that he doesn't speak the language -- and likened his own life story to that of millions of Hispanic Americans.

And McCain gave him some extra help by failing to speak out forcibly against the most visceral anti-immigration advocates in his own party.

BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
Miami Herald

Spanish Political Ads' Multiple Translations

Outreach Can Send a Mixed Message

How fitting that the most Latinized presidential campaign season in history enters its final week with the Democratic candidate looking deep into our eyes and carefully pronouncing 65 words in Spanish.

"Compartimos un sueño. . . . Este es el sueño Americano."

Just two questions about Barack Obama's new television ad: What is he saying, and to whom is he saying it?

The translation is easy enough: We share a dream. . . . This is the American dream.

But what is he saying, and who gets it? Also, what was the point of buying 30 minutes on Univision last night to run a translated version of his "American Stories" infomercial that simultaneously aired on several English-language networks?

The same can be asked of Republican candidate John McCain, who has aired several commercials with his spoken English translated into Spanish.

Is this just a little bit of linguistic showing off? Most Latino registered voters don't need to be addressed in Spanish. Those born in the United States tend to speak English fluently, and those naturalized as citizens had to pass an English test. The Pew Hispanic Center reports that 84 percent of Latino voters speak English very well or pretty well.

Also: Nearly a quarter of Latino registered voters speak little or no Spanish at all. Won't Obama's and McCain's messages in Spanish be lost on them?

Maybe not. The politics of language and the language of politics are full of bank shots, meta-messages. Sometimes the language is more meaningful than the words. The language is the music, never mind the lyrics.

"It allows that one-on-one cultural touch between the Latino community and a presidential candidate who simply cannot go shake everybody's hand," says Lorena Chambers, a Latina Democratic political consultant with Chambers Lopez & Gaitán.

"When you do something in Spanish, you're trying to communicate a bigger message than the message you're ostensibly sending," says Antonio Tijerino, president of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. "It resonates. The bigger message is, 'We care about Latinos.' "

But a candidate has to be careful. Latinos, like anybody else, don't like being talked down to. Fluent Hispanic English speakers are proud of their language mastery. They're galled by the charge hurled by some in the immigration debate that Latinos can't or won't learn English.

"They don't like to have people assume they speak Spanish, not English," says Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

But making that assumption is a social misstep between individuals -- like goofily breaking into Spanish every time you meet a Latino. That may not be a concern in mass advertising, Wilkes says. "The ad is addressed to everybody. . . . Why watch Univision if you don't want to see ads in Spanish?"

Complicating matters, in a single Latino family there may be, across generations, diversity in language, citizenship, even immigration status. Family members will put political information in English and Spanish to different uses. Tijerino says he gets most news and advertising from English-language sources, while still glancing at Spanish-language sources. His father and uncles speak English and are registered voters -- but their primary sources are in Spanish, secondary in English.

We've reached this point after a primary and general election cycle where Spanish has played a bigger role than ever, and the politics of language has seemed ready to explode at any moment.

You can date the new Latinized age -- with all its irony and paradox -- to the spring of 2007, when Newt Gingrich, not a candidate himself, apologized for saying that anything but English is "the language of living in a ghetto." To do penance, he went on YouTube -- and spoke for several minutes in grammatically flawless Spanish, which he studies assiduously.

There arose the first major Latino presidential primary contender and fluent Spanish speaker, Bill Richardson -- who never found a way to let Latino voters know he was Latino without coming off as too Latino. Another contender, Christopher Dodd, gave discourses in his decent Peace Corps Spanish, while Mitt Romney tried some phrases on the trail in Miami that backfired when he inadvertently quoted Fidel Castro's favorite battle cry.

Meanwhile, on the Hill, the Senate was debating whether English should be the "national" or "official" language.

Politicians have wanted to have it both ways ever since Jackie Kennedy delivered a campaign commercial in Spanish on behalf of her husband in 1960. They have wanted to reach Latinos by any means necessary -- but they have not wanted to show weakness in their allegiance to English and "American" culture.

Thus, when Obama does speak of his plan to give illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, he always makes clear it will include a requirement that they learn English.

But this week, he is speaking Spanish. Mano a mano, McCain hasn't matched Obama's linguistic feat. But his campaign reacted to the Spanish ad with a statement -- in English and Spanish -- from Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who said in part: "This election is about more than beautiful words."

Obama's campaign overstated the case when it claimed Obama is "the first presidential candidate" to deliver an ad in Spanish. John Kerry did it in 2004 in an ad created by Chambers's firm.

Spanish affords one subtlety lacking in English to communicate a candidate's personal style: Kerry used the formal "su voto" in asking for "your vote," while Obama has adopted the informal "tu voto" to make the same appeal.

Speaking Spanish is good as far as it goes, say members of the target audience. But there's more to Latinos than the language of the old countries.

"Thinking you're going to reach the entire diverse Latino population by doing a Spanish-language advertisement is as naive as thinking that you're going to connect with all Latinos by saying 'Happy Cinco de Mayo' to Peruvians and Nicaraguans," Tijerino says. "But I do appreciate the effort by Senator Obama."

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer

Myth of the Latino Vote

Aside from passionate political discussions, populist promises and negative campaigns that flirt with libel, presidential elections also have the peculiarity of rediscovering forgotten groups of voters every four years.

Since the number of Hispanics began to increase rapidly in the 1980s, candidates to any elected government position, as well as the news media, started to speculate about the importance of the Latino vote and paid more attention to that electorate.

The myth that the Latino vote is decisive in presidential elections was born.

"(The Latino vote) is completely irrelevant," says Rodolfo de la Garza, a political science professor at Columbia University and vice president-research with the Los Angeles-based Tomas Rivera Policy Institute. "The myth was created by Latino leaders who wanted to convince politicians nationally about how important Latinos were.

"They believed that would make themselves and the Latino more important," he adds. "It was well-intentioned. It was also self-aggrandizing."

Although the Hispanic population has increased from 14 million in 1980 to more than 46 million in 2008, and has gained more political representation at the local and state levels, the Latino vote is still far from being decisive at the national level.

For de la Garza, a low voter turnout and the concentration of Latinos in states that are not competitive, such as California, Illinois, New York or Texas, cause the Latino vote to be less crucial than expected. While 58 percent of the nation's Latinos live in those four states, the Hispanic voter turnout stayed at 47 percent in 2000 and 2004, according to the Census Bureau.

Louis DeSipio, a political science professor at the University of California-Irvine, also considers the Latino vote irrelevant because, he claims, it will not determine victory in any major state or in the Electoral College.

"It reflects ignorance on the part of the media, because it lets them make a story where there isn't one," says DeSipio. "And it's reinforced by campaigns that very tactically want to tell the story about doing well with Latinos here and there."

Both de la Garza and DeSipio remember they began to see stories in the 1980s about how crucial the Latino vote would be. They think that the process of "mythification'' was produced and reinforced by different sectors: the news media, the two dominant political parties and some Latino leaders.

Some in academia, however, don't think it's a myth to say the Latino vote is decisive in presidential elections. Matt Barreto, political science professor at the University of Washington, acknowledges that the Latino electorate in states such as California, Texas or New York will not be decisive because the political inclination is already defined there, but points out that, in that context, the white or black vote will also be irrelevant in the majority of states.

"The states that do matter -- Florida, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada -- are on almost every list of battleground states, of the states that will cause the election to swing one way or the other, and they all have a very significant Latino population," says Barreto.

While the Latino population's increase has been significant in recent decades, Latinos are not sufficiently involved politically. The majority of them are young, less educated and have a smaller income, according to de la Garza. He says, however, there is another way of thinking about their importance:

"Latinos have changed the tone of American elections. They have created a more sophisticated electorate because they're perceived to be culturally and politically distinct, even if they're not. So it's deliberate and desirable for candidates to speak another language, for a candidate to be cognizant of another language.

"We change the context of the election, but not necessarily influence the outcome of the election," he concludes.

By: Alonso Yanez
Hispanic Link

Campaigns woo new Hispanic citizens as key bloc

MIAMI (AP) — On a muggy afternoon, more than 3,000 immigrants, most of them Hispanic, wave flags, cheer and weep as they swear to protect and defend the United States of America as its newest citizens.

Moments later, dozens of volunteers from the Democratic and Republican parties swoop down on the new citizens as they file out of their citizenship ceremony in a Miami auditorium, competing to sign them up to vote. It's a scene that is being played out nationwide.

Supporters of Barack Obama and John McCain are fighting for every voter this campaign, and naturalized citizens of Hispanic descent are a growing target. In 2004, there were 4 million foreign-born Hispanics citizens of voting age. Today, that number is more than 5 million, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by the nonprofit Pew Hispanic Center.

These new voters are especially important in swing states like Florida and New Mexico, said Jeffrey Passel, the center's senior demographer. "In places where the election is very close, they make all the difference in the world," Passel said.

Voter registration data, polls and Associated Press interviews with new citizens in a half-dozen key states suggest Obama has the most to gain by reaching out to these new citizens.

Cuban-born Victor Castillo, 27, who took the citizenship oath along with his mother at the recent Miami ceremony, fought past a frenzy of party volunteers to register to vote with nonpartisan county poll workers, but said he was leaning toward Obama. "Who's more willing to work with the middle class, not just the upper class? I believe Obama will be better for that," Castillo said, adding that he disliked McCain's negative campaigning. "He's trying to bring Obama down. Why don't you do something yourself, show your ability?"

Obama campaign spokesman Federico de Jesus said the Democratic presidential candidate is devoting more money to bilingual advertising than any previous campaign, and spending roughly $20 million on Hispanic outreach, including voter registration efforts. "In the states where the difference is 1 or 2 percentage points, the ground operation is going to make the difference," he said.

Ana Navarro, McCain's adviser on Hispanic affairs, said Republicans aren't investing the same amount of money as Democrats on registering new citizens. She also allows that the party lost support among new Hispanic citizens because of some Republican lawmakers' remarks during the recent congressional debate over proposed immigration reforms.

But the McCain campaign is using Spanish-language ads to convince Hispanics that he was on their side of that fight and that he has had a lifelong interest in Latin America, Navarro said.
"On the other side, you've got a man who's never so much as set foot in Tijuana," she said.
Overall, the Hispanic vote seems to be coalescing behind the Democrats.

Hispanic registered voters supported Obama over McCain by a 66 percent to 23 percent margin in a nationwide survey conducted by the Pew center in June and July. The survey found that Latino voters have moved sharply into the Democratic camp in the past two years, reversing gains made by the GOP earlier in the decade.

In Florida, a state known for its conservative Cuban-American Republicans, this year marked the first time that more Hispanics are registered as Democrats than Republicans. At least part of that comes from new citizens. Still, recent polls show McCain ahead among Florida Hispanics overall, making support from new Hispanic citizens in the Sunshine State all the more crucial for Obama.

After the Miami citizenship ceremony, Panama native Graciela Hidalgo stood with her 11 year-old son Jesse waiting to sign up with the Democrats. Hildalgo, 46, has lived in the United States nearly half her life but waited to become a citizen, first because she had arrived illegally and later because she was too busy working and raising her son.

She said she was most worried about the economy, the Iraq war and, to a lesser extent, immigration. "I would have liked Hillary," Hidalgo said wistfully of Hillary Rodham Clinton, "but McCain for me is not an option. He's all war, war, and the Republicans haven't done much."

Those new Florida citizens interviewed who did support McCain tended to be older and to come from communist Cuba or socialist-leaning Nicaragua and Venezuela, where their experiences made them more sympathetic to the Republican candidate, a former Vietnam prisoner of war.

Jose Delgado, 74, a retired construction worker, arrived in the United States in 1986 from Camaguey, Cuba, after years of struggling under the government there. "McCain will be stronger on communism and in foreign affairs in general," Delgado said. "I'm not in agreement with many of Bush's policies, but (McCain) will bring change."

Strong sentiment for Obama emerged in interviews with new Latino citizens in other swing states with sizable Hispanic populations, although many also expressed admiration for McCain.
In Denver, Guatemalan native Eddie Samaoya, 73, who works as a press operator, says he and his six sons — all citizens_ often chat about politics. He believes both candidates could do a good job, but two issues are key: "McCain is capable, but Obama has a longer life ahead of him. And he can end the war," Samaoya said.

Mayra Crum, who came to the United States from Baja California, Mexico, registered as a Republican minutes after becoming a citizen at a Las Vegas ceremony and will vote for McCain. She thinks he can get the country out of Iraq and do more to help the "terrible" economy. "He (McCain) has plenty of experience. You know, I love when he speaks — he makes you feel confident, like you're going to put your country in good hands," said Crum, 46, who teaches citizenship courses.

Even swing states with small Hispanic populations, like Virginia, could feel the effect of new Latino voters. Hispanics make up only about 3 percent of Virginia voters, but in 2006, Democrat Jim Webb won his U.S. Senate seat by a margin of only about 10,000 votes.

Salvadoran native Arturo Munoz, 64, of Fairfax, Va., began educating other Hispanic immigrants about the issues after his hours were cut at an aircraft maintenance company in March. Munoz, who supports Obama, became a citizen in August after living seven years in the United States. "We can make the difference in these elections," said Munoz, through a translator. "If more Hispanics vote, the future president will have to address topics important to them."

By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ
The Associated Press

Florida Hispanics sticking with GOP

As Democrat Barack Obama headlines a rally Wednesday during his second campaign swing through Florida in as many weeks, he faces a challenge in the diverse battleground state: winning over Hispanics.

He's 10 percentage points behind Republican John McCain among Hispanics in Florida, according to a Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times/Bay News 9 poll released Sunday that showed a tight race overall. McCain is favored by Hispanics 51 to 41 percent in the survey. The poll's margin of error for the Hispanic voter numbers is 10.6 percentage points.

A Mason-Dixon poll released Tuesday showed McCain leading by 6 percentage points among Hispanics; that lead is within the margin of error.

The gaps exist despite a statewide surge in Democratic registration among Hispanics and Obama's promise to spend a record-setting $20 million on Hispanic outreach nationwide. Tuesday, the campaign released ads on Spanish-language television and radio in Florida that depict McCain as oblivious to the millions of Americans without health insurance or jobs.

McCain also released a Spanish-language ad last week hammering Obama for his willingness to meet with leaders such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

RELATED RACES

Obama's current drag among Hispanics could hurt the Democratic Party's chances of unseating three South Florida Cuban-American Republicans in Congress -- Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- said Roland Sanchez-Medina, vice president of the Cuban-American Bar Association.

''I don't think the Obama campaign is doing as good a job as they can in getting his message out to Hispanic voters,'' said Sanchez-Medina, who supports the Democratic nominee. ``I'd like to see the campaign dedicate a lot more time to Florida.''

Obama's camp pointed to a Sept. 10 poll by the New Democratic Network that found Hispanic voters in Florida evenly split between the nominees. According to the poll, Obama ran strong among Hispanics in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada -- other key swing states with large Spanish-speaking populations but few Republican-leaning Cuban Americans.

`FIGHT HARDER'

''The Hispanic vote is going to be competitive, and we are going to fight harder than any other Democrat has in Florida,'' said Miami consultant Freddy Balsera, who advises Obama on Hispanic outreach. ``It's going to be a very issues-based plan that draws the distinctions between Obama on healthcare, the economy and tax cuts for working-class families versus McCain.''

Since winning the Hispanic vote in 2006, Florida Democrats have been predicting a sea change in which older Cuban Americans will be outnumbered at the polls by younger Cuban Americans and newer arrivals from Latin America who are more concerned with healthcare than their homelands. Democrats also have been counting on a backlash among Hispanics to rhetoric from conservative Republicans over immigration.

But Republicans say Obama hurt his chances with some Hispanic voters by saying he would be willing to meet with antagonistic government leaders in Cuba and Venezuela. A new Spanish-language ad depicts Hugo Chávez ranting against ''filthy Yankees'' and asks: ``Did you see who Obama wants to talk with?''

The ad will be effective among Venezuelans, as well as in the Cuban and Colombian communities that share a hostility toward Chávez, said Republican state Rep. Juan Carlos Zapata, who is Colombian American.

''Obama is talking about talking to bad guys, and a lot of people are here in Florida because they left those bad guys, people like Chávez and Castro,'' Zapata said.

Obama's opposition to a free trade agreement with Colombia has also turned off some Hispanic voters who have been successful in international trade, Zapata said.

Interviews with voters and community leaders suggest Obama's challenge is less about foreign policy and more about who he's not. Many Hispanic voters felt more comfortable with Hillary Clinton -- a name brand in politics -- than the junior senator from Illinois.

''When Obama put Biden on the ticket and not Hillary, he definitely lost his calculator,'' said Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, who helped conduct the Miami Herald poll.

Mason-Dixon pollster Brad Coker said his survey found a clear divide in the Hispanic community, with overwhelming support for McCain among Cuban Americans and strong backing for Obama among other Hispanic voters. But the McCain supporters are more likely to go the polls because they've been in the United States longer, Coker said.

EXPERIENCE CONCERNS

One such voter is Ruben Maranges, 79, who was born in Cuba but has lived in New York and Miami for four decades. He said of Obama: ``I don't think he has the experience to lead this country. They need to understand the economy, foreign affairs.''

Rhadames Peguero, executive director of the Allapattah-based Dominican American National Foundation, pointed to another issue that may lurk behind Obama's failure to capture part of the Hispanic vote: racism. On a recent day at The Home Depot in Hialeah, where Peguero lives, he overhead a man say to his companion, ''No voy a votar por ese negro,'' -- ``I'm not voting for that black man.''

''It's not the majority, but there are some racist feelings in the community,'' Peguero said.

As the nation's economy spirals downward, Obama's poll numbers have been creeping up. His new Spanish-language television spot derides McCain for saying last week in Jacksonville that ''the fundamentals of our economy are strong.'' McCain later said he was talking about the resilience of the American workforce.

McCain and Obama also have dueling ads on immigration, even though they were on the same side of the landmark legislation that would have allowed illegal workers to earn citizenship.

McCain is running spots that accuse Obama of trying to destroy the legislation with ''poison pill'' amendments, though the GOP's conservative wing largely doomed the effort.

Obama is also airing a misleading ad that tries to link McCain to anti-immigrant remarks by talk host Rush Limbaugh.

BY BETH REINHARD, CASEY WOODS AND JOSE PAGLIERY
MIAMIHERALD

A unifying election?

If Barack Obama wants to win Central Florida and carry the state in November, he'll need the votes of Hispanics, who constitute 14 percent of the region's registered voters.

For that to happen, Obama must prove himself as the candidate who can transcend the everyday differences that separate blacks and Hispanics.

In Central Florida, the two minority groups have many issues in common -- discrimination, health care, public education -- but diverge when it comes to language, jobs and immigration.

To many blacks, such as 61-year-old Lamont Flournoy Sr., it comes down to a competition for jobs. Many businesses that once hired blacks now prefer Hispanics because they will perform the same work for less money, he said.

Other blacks pick up on racism from Hispanics who come from countries where discrimination against blacks is as bad, or worse, as in the United States, said University of Central Florida history Professor Vibert White. And even though blacks and Hispanics both experience prejudice from whites, some blacks say they perceive Hispanics as receiving better treatment because of their skin color,

"Hispanics see themselves as being white," said Chodry Andre, 31, a barber, who is black. "They go through some of what we go through, but not all of what we go through."

Hispanics contend that whatever differences they have with blacks, race is not the main issue. The bulk of Central Florida's Hispanic population has Caribbean roots, originating from racially mixed places such as Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where a significant portion of the population is of African descent.

Power shift

More of a problem than racism is a lack of familiarity between the two groups, a lack of common history and a shifting balance of power.

"Remember that African-Americans had been the largest minority in the United States for all of the country's history," said Ada V. Garcia, a Hispanic events organizer. "But they have seen that we are growing rapidly and that we are taking their place."

In Orlando, there have been several attempts to create coalitions between blacks and Hispanics. In 2001, after Hispanics surpassed blacks as the largest minority in Florida, the Orange branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People talked about recruiting Hispanics into the civil-rights organization. It never happened.

"I don't think there's been a great effort on the part of the African-American and Latino communities to join efforts," said Gerald Bell, former president of the Orange branch of the NAACP.

Several years ago, there were efforts to form an alliance between the state conference of the NAACP in Orlando and Latino Leadership, a Hispanic-advocacy group. But nothing came of it.

"It wasn't way up on the list of priorities," said Beverlye Colson Neal, executive director of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP.

Since then, the two communities have drifted further apart, said Latino Leadership President Marytza Sanz.

"Latinos and blacks coming together, I don't see that happening," Sanz said.

The division between the black and Hispanic communities became apparent in 2006 when, in one of the largest protest marches in Orlando's history, more than 20,000 Hispanics showed up in support of immigration reform. Although black leadership endorsed the march, black residents watched from the sidelines.

"The reason many blacks didn't join them is that before that, they [Hispanics] had ignored them," White said.

Lack of bad blood

Ignoring each other largely defines the history of relations between blacks and Hispanics in Orlando. The city has not experienced the clashes between the two minorities found in other cities. They haven't engaged in the bitter political battles between black and Hispanic candidates in Miami, Los Angeles and Houston. They haven't experienced the residential turf wars -- Hispanics moving into historically black neighborhoods -- found in other cities.

And that lack of bad blood might benefit Obama when Central Florida Hispanics go the polls in November.

"It is still possible that Mr. Obama is going to transcend the divisions that separate Latino and black Americans," White said. "He is a special type of African-American. He is looked upon as a benign individual who understands class, culture, heritage and race among various groups."

Arthur Watson, a 62-year-old Frito-Lay worker, thinks the economic hard times will win Obama the Hispanic vote. "The economy applies to people everywhere, no matter what the race. If you are a working person, the economy has you by the throat."

And there's another reason Hispanics will vote for Obama over John McCain, Watson contends: "Hispanics will vote for him out of party loyalty. They are loyal people."

In Obama's favor, Hispanics in Central Florida are predominantly Democratic. Of the 194,000 Hispanic registered voters in Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake and Volusia counties, 42 percent are Democrats; 20 percent, Republican.

Just as recent national polls have reflected, many Central Florida Hispanics are overcoming their initial skepticism to support Obama.

"For Latinos, he is a person of color who is talking about our issues, and it's important to put our support behind him without necessarily letting go of our concerns," said Evelyn Luciano-Carter, a consultant on diversity issues who is Puerto Rican and married to an African-American man.

For her husband, Mel Carter, a United Parcel Service account executive, Obama represents a chance to unite. "I think there is an opportunity to bridge these two cultures together."

Written By Jeff Kunerth and Victor Manuel Ramos
Sentinel Staff Writers

He's young, Hispanic, and bullish on GOP

Vergel Cruz doesn't believe in identity politics
ST. PAUL, MINN. — The night's partying had stretched past midnight at the honky-tonk-themed party that AT&T threw for Texas delegates in Minneapolis.

So Houston tutor Vergel Cruz was not surprised to see at Wednesday's delegation breakfast that some of his less nimble fellow GOP delegates had not yet two-stepped out of bed.

Republicans want more young Hispanics like him to fill its banquet chairs — and to vote conservative in the presidential election and the following years. In Houston and elsewhere, that growing category of voters is expected to swing many political contests.

But several polls show that the places at the table remain vacant. Barack Obama leads among Hispanics by a 2 to 1 ratio or higher over Cruz's choice, John McCain. Immigration policy debates and economic doldrums have lowered Hispanic appetites for the GOP message, according to those who analyze the polls.


Offering change
Cruz, 29, who studied economics and linguistics at Rice University, is tripping through the convention with undeterred verve and briskly spoken observations, however.

When not taking photos, tapping his Palm digital handheld device and checking his handwritten spreadsheet of convention activities, Cruz looks at how his party can offer change Hispanics can believe in.

"To bring up the Hispanic vote, McCain-Palin just need to talk about what's important to everyone," he says while eyeing GOP souvenirs at a gift shop later in the day. "A strong economy, education — returning to local school districts."

Firmly conservative since his teens, when he was class president at St. Pius X High School, Cruz says Democrats pander with tailored messages to ethnic voter blocs while Republicans offer a consistent message.

"I always say, Texan first, American first," he adds while purchasing McCain-Palin T-shirts and buttons. "Skin color and ethnicity comes later. When you divide your message up, I think it's less effective."

Cruz checks a button that says "Hispanics for McCain."

"I may get one. But that would totally contradict what I just told you. But I don't think outreach (to undecided Latino voters) is inconsistent."

He leaves the button behind. READ MORE

By ALAN BERNSTEIN
Houston Chronicle