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

Are Obama, McCain reaching Hispanic voters?

TAMPA — Juan Velazquez's words made Evelyn Hale cringe.

"I'm going for (John) McCain," said the empanada shop worker of Puerto Rican descent. "I see him more as a leader."

"Not to be racist,'' he added, "but if (Barack) Obama wins, black people are going to want back what was taken from them. . . . A lot of racial things are going to start to happen if Obama wins."

Hale, 28, left frustrated because she thinks Obama's message isn't reaching Hispanics and the Democrats aren't connecting with them as voters.

A Democrat who is half Colombian, Hale started the Hispanic Vision Forum this year with Republican co-founder Angelette Aviles, 32, who is of Puerto Rican descent. It is a nonpartisan effort that the women fund out of their own pockets to encourage Florida Hispanics to realize their political power and vote.

They also use polls, focus groups and articles about Hispanics posted on a blog and Web site to educate the presidential candidates about how to reach the diverse Hispanic community in Florida — from Cubans in Miami, to Puerto Ricans in Orlando to a blend of Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and South Americans in the Tampa area.

South Florida Cuban-Americans have historically leaned heavily toward Republicans, while Central Florida Hispanics lean Democratic. Still, the women acknowledge that Hispanics tend to vote for the person and the issues, not the party.

Hale and Aviles disagree on politics, but say both candidates have a long way to go to reach a population that could swing the presidential election.

For instance, the media and candidates have been focusing on immigration reform. But the forum's polls show that the economy is the top issue for Hispanic voters, with immigration reform ranking 10th on a list of priorities. Other polls reveal that education tops the list among Hispanic voters.

When asked about immigration in a forum focus group, more than 70 percent of Hispanic voters said that securing the border should be the top priority.

Hale says she's tried to get the word to Obama's campaign about the hesitancy that even some Democratic Hispanics have about him because of lingering tension between blacks and Hispanics involving, among other things, competition over jobs.

"What we're saying to them is that Obama is not flying, he's not connecting with (Hispanics)," she said following a voter registration project at the empanada store in Tampa.

Still, a recent AP-Yahoo News poll found Obama leading McCain 47 percent to 22 percent among Hispanic voters with 26 percent undecided.

Among Hispanics, Hillary Clinton beat Obama by large margins in the Democratic primary. Now, some of her Hispanic supporters are undecided about the general election.

Behind the counter at Amigos One Stop Grocery in Tampa, Mari Martinez said she backed Clinton in the primary. But now she doesn't know who to vote for in November. Revealing how much Hispanic votes can shift between parties, she'd also voted for Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

"Hillary, she went through a lot of stuff and supported her husband 100 percent," said Martinez, originally from Ecuador. "No matter if he was wrong, she protected her guy."

She doesn't know enough about Obama, she says, and doesn't like McCain because she thinks he's too old for the job.

McCain also has a lot of work to do connecting with Hispanics, said Aviles, who is also the area director of the McCain Hispanic Coalition and runs a communications consulting company.

But, she says, the real campaigning has only just started.

Both candidates recently spoke to large national Hispanic leadership groups.

Obama's campaign opened a state headquarters in Ybor City this week, and McCain has satellite offices in Tampa and Orlando.

The women say both candidates need to reach out to Florida's Hispanic communities with personal messages about family, education and the economy, important issues for them. They can't just translate speeches.

Voters want to hear more, too.

"I'm going to talk from a neutral position," said Noel Fernandez, co-owner of Florida Bakery, standing behind a counter of cookies and breads. "Obama will come with change. McCain is the same, the same. But still, I don't know."

The top issue for him is health care, he said. That's why he voted for Hillary Clinton. "She had a good medical plan a long time ago," he said.

Hale said she believes both candidates are trying harder with Hispanics. But sometimes the campaigns reach out to the same people. The Tampa Bay area and the I-4 corridor are a combination of new citizens and Hispanics with decades of roots.

"Tampa Bay has changed a lot in the last 10 years," said Hale, who also heads the Hispanic Alliance of Tampa Bay, which includes 40 organizations.

"If they really want to do a good job, either McCain or Obama, they need to focus and get people in there who truly understand the Hispanic culture," Hale said.

By Saundra Amrhein
St. Pete Times Staff Writer

State May Be Getting A Touch Blue

TAMPA - Is Florida turning blue? Or just slightly bluish? Or even just a less reddish shade of purple?

Florida Democrats contend voter registration figures and recent election results show signs of a shift in the politics of a state dominated for more than a decade by Republicans.

The signs aren't overwhelming - a small but significant uptick in numbers of Democratic voters; a partisan shift in Hispanic voter registration; urban counties including Pinellas turning somewhat more Democratic.

But in a state with a Republican governor and big GOP majorities in the state House, state Senate, elected Cabinet and congressional delegation, any success for Democrats stands out. Those signals are being heard more loudly after the 2006 election, when Democrats made electoral gains in Florida for the first time in more than a decade.

"There could be a strong tide," is the optimistic view of Mark Bubriski, a former spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party who is working for the Barack Obama campaign. "But it's the type of change that doesn't happen overnight."

Baloney, respond the Republicans.

Republicans dominate government in Florida even though they have long trailed Democrats in numbers of registered voters, said state party spokeswoman Erin VanSickle. She noted that Gov. Charlie Crist won in 2006 by 400,000 votes, even though Republicans had 400,000 fewer voters on the rolls than Democrats. "All that matters is what happens on Election Day, and we've shown time and again that Republicans turn out voters at the polls, even when we're down in registration numbers."

University of South Florida political scientist Susan MacManus, an expert on demographic trends in politics, thinks the changes are real - "an example of the cyclical nature of politics," she said. MacManus said the change in registration figures comes partly from younger voters, who are becoming more likely to register Democratic and less likely to register no-party or in minor parties.

"Some of it's driven by the excitement of the primary - the Obama-Hillary race has sped up that process," she said. MacManus said the changes aren't big enough to mean Democrats are sure to win Florida in 2008, "but at least show a party that's on the upswing, not the downswing."

Reagan, Retirees Drove GOP Gains

For Florida Democrats, any glimmer of hope would be welcome. For more than a decade, they've predicted and hoped for a resurgence in every Florida election, only to see Republicans make gains. At one time, Florida was part of the Democratic-dominated Solid South. As late as the mid-1960s, there were four registered Democrats in Florida for every Republican.

GOP-oriented Midwestern retirees and the popularity of Ronald Reagan erased that advantage in the 1970s and '80s. In 1994, Democrats slipped below 50 percent of registered Florida voters, although they remain Florida's largest party. Between 1994 and 1998, Republicans won their first state Legislature majorities in modern history, then their first majority in the state's elected Cabinet, along with the governor's mansion, taking control of state government. They used that power to redraw legislative and congressional district lines to their advantage. With the favorable districts, they reached majorities of about 2-1 in the Legislature and Florida's congressional delegation early in this decade.

For Democrats, it has been an era of unrelieved gloom. The party couldn't raise money or recruit candidates. In 2002, there were more Libertarians than Democrats on the ballot for state House seats. No Democratic presidential candidate has received Florida's electoral votes since 1996, and in three straight elections - 2000, 2002 and 2004 - only one Democrat, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, managed to win a statewide race.

That era is ending, Democrats say. In 2006, the party made its first electoral gains, small but significant, since 1994. For the first time since 1998, a Democratic candidate who didn't already hold a statewide office won one when Alex Sink of Tampa became state chief financial officer. Democrats also took seven previously Republican state House seats, then added two more in special elections afterward; and won two previously Republican congressional seats. They now hold 14 of the 26 state Senate seats, 43 of 120 state House seats, and nine of the 25 congressional seats. Bad as those numbers are for the Democrats, they are still an improvement.

Democrats Add Voters To Rolls

Meanwhile, voter figures have shown signs of Democratic movement since 2006. For more than a decade, both major parties have declined gradually but steadily in their share of the electorate, as more voters registered no-party or in minor parties. Since the 2006 general election, while Republicans continued that decline, Democrats registered an uptick, from 40.4 percent to 41.2 percent - the first time since at least 1994 that either party hasn't declined in its percentage of total registered voters. As of the end of May, the most recent figures available on the state Division of Elections' Web site, 41.2 percent of Florida voters are Democrats, 37.2 percent are Republicans and 21.6 percent are minor party or no-party.

Steve Schale, a former state Democratic Party strategist who now works for the Obama campaign in Florida, listed other signs:

•In the two years the state has been keeping separate figures on Hispanic voters, Democrats have come from behind to lead Republicans, with 35.5 percent of the state's 1.18 million Hispanic voters, to 35.2 percent. Hispanics are the nation's and Florida's fastest-growing ethnic group.

•The percentage of Democrats is increasing in most of the state's large, urban counties. Democrats recently surpassed Republicans for the first time in Pinellas County, the birthplace of Florida's Republican Party.

•Out of Florida's 120 state House districts, 77 have become more Democratic since 2002, Schale said.

This year, with an unpopular Republican president leaving office, "Our brand is looking better than theirs," he said.

Changes May Be Misleading, GOP Says

Again, Republicans questioned the significance of such figures. Small changes in voter figures can be misleading, they noted, because of purges, when county officials remove inactive voters from the rolls. Registration figures can also be questionable because of Florida's closed primaries, in which only voters registered in a party can participate. Voters often register in a party they don't agree with, simply to be able to vote in the primary.

That has long been the case in North Florida, for example, where Democrats dominate in registered voters, but almost never win statewide or presidential elections.

MacManus agreed that the changes are too small to allow predictions of Democratic wins in Florida in 2008, but she said they could have a long-term effect, particularly if the young people registering Democratic because of Obama see their candidate win. "The first time somebody votes, if their candidate does well, they're likely to stay with that party for a long time," she said.

By WILLIAM MARCH
The Tampa Tribune

Spanish-language media key to victory with Latinos

While the dust was still settling last week in the Democratic presidential race between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain was kicking up his general election advertising war — on Spanish-language radio.

Smart move.

Obama, the Democratic survivor, is still figuring out how to win over the huge Hispanic voting bloc that strongly favored Clinton in the primaries. But McCain already has begun his Hispanic media campaign — in Spanish and English — in the hopes of copying the successes that President Bush had with those voters.

Republican candidates spent more advertising dollars to woo Hispanic voters in recent presidential elections, and Bush won two terms in the White House with 40 percent of the Latino vote.

But with the Democratic Party finally realizing it cannot take Hispanics for granted, the McCain campaign is bracing for the toughest competition ever for Latino support.

After introducing its first Spanish television ad in April and then going back onto Spanish radio in New Mexico and Nevada last week, the McCain campaign has produced 10 other ads targeting Hispanics that will roll out when the time is right.

“We know that what’s going to be different is that we have a smarter opponent than ever before,” said Lionel Sosa, McCain’s top Hispanic media strategist, who has worked with Bush and other Republicans for decades. Obama’s campaign will be “bigger, stronger, smarter than ever before,” Sosa predicted.

There is another striking difference in this year’s Latino campaign.

In the 2000 and 2004 presidential contests, Bush was comfortable enough with Spanish to regularly use it in his campaigns against former Vice President Al Gore and Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, who did not speak the language. This year the situation is reversed, as Obama recently proved when he spoke directly into the television camera in a Spanish-language ad that aired during the Puerto Rico primary.

Obama’s Spanish ads are “quite good,” and Obama “apparently has learned Spanish well enough to do his own commercials,” Sosa said. “But it’s not who knows the language best. It’s who knows Latinos best, and there’s no doubt that McCain knows Latinos best.”

The candidates’ messages are more important than the language in which they are delivered. Still, the changing demographics of the U.S. Latino population have complicated how the candidates communicate with Hispanic communities.

In previous years, English-dominant second- and third-generation Latinos were the likely voters. Now, almost half of Hispanic voters are foreign-born. NDN, a progressive Democratic group, estimates that about eight out of 10 Hispanics speak Spanish at home.

There are other signs of the growing Hispanic market. There are now 872 Spanish-language radio stations in the U.S., up from 587 in 2000, according to Arbitron, which tracks radio listeners.

Arbitron also noted that the “key growing and emerging” Hispanic markets — in addition to those that are already well-established — are outside the Miami area and in South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana and Nevada.

Hispanics could determine the outcome of the McCain/Obama contest in New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Florida, states that Bush won by less than 5 percent of the vote in 2004.

English and Spanish radio is considered the best media source for Hispanics, but Spanish-language television news also is a powerful presence in the lives of Latinos.

The local television newscasts of the top-rated Univision Spanish-language network lead in 16 markets, including Las Vegas, Miami and Albuquerque, N.M., according to an NDN study.

“We are going to see the most money spent on Spanish-language media than we have ever seen before,” said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN. READ MORE

By: GEBE MARTINEZ - Politico.com

Differences between presidential candidates make it hard to predict Hispanic vote

After countless primaries and caucuses, political pundits have some clear indications on how some voters will cast their ballots in November's presidential election if Barack Obama is the Democratic Party candidate and John McCain the Republican.

It is a given that Sen. Obama will get more than 90 percent of the African-American vote. He will be the preferred candidate of the overwhelming majority of white, college-educated voters and those who earn over $100,000 a year. And he will have a hard time getting the vote of white, blue-collar Americans who earn less than $50,000 a year.

Sen. McCain will easily get the vote of those who consider national security the top issue in the campaign and those who don't believe the Illinois senator has enough experience to be commander-in-chief. He has a good chance of attracting many of the white blue-collar Americans who for one reason or another will not vote for Obama. And he will garner an unenthusiastic but nevertheless large number of conservative voters, who even if they don't trust him don't have anywhere else to go.

What so far baffles most pundits is who will get the Hispanic vote. If the Democratic Party candidate had been Sen. Hillary Clinton, she would have been a good bet to win the Hispanic vote by more than a 2-1 margin. There are doubts that Obama can match her numbers, particularly in inner cities where poor black people and poor Hispanics have to battle for the same jobs and often see gangs of each group fight for control of their neighborhood.

Thus in an Obama-McCain race, the Hispanic voter will be harder to determine. Other issues must be considered. Many questions for both parties and candidates remain unanswered, as both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have made so many deplorable choices that make it difficult to say who Hispanics will prefer in November.

Many Republicans in Congress have voiced loudly their opposition to any comprehensive immigration reform bill. Even Sen. McCain has shied away from his early leadership on this issue. He now wants the southern border secured first, before he will even consider any other immigration measures.

Hispanics, particularly Mexican-Americans and Central Americans, are likely to vote for the more immigration-friendly policy of the Democratic candidate. Yet, the question remains, will they remember that McCain has always been a champion of their cause?

These same groups will not be happy with recent Democratic Party decisions in Congress. They will resent all the verbal abuse Mexico took during the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries and the pledge by both Democratic Party candidates that they will force Mexico, Canada and Central America to renegotiate the free trade agreements already approved and that are in effect. In particular, the North American Free Trade Agreement was approved more than 15 years ago.

Nor will Colombian-Americans, who primarily live in South Florida and New York, applaud the decision by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to refuse even to consider a free trade agreement with Colombia, this country's best ally in the Western Hemisphere.

As if all of this were not enough, Democrats are refusing to fund a $500 million program to help Mexico fight an increasingly violent war on drugs. Democrats believe less than $200 million will suffice to help Mexico's President Felipe Calderón fight the drug cartels that bring their deadly cargo with impunity to the United States. The AFL-CIO is opposed to any assistance. They are concerned about human rights abuses.

Cuba is still the hot-button issue for many Cuban-Americans. And despite an increase in the registration of Hispanics as Democrats in Florida, the Cuban-American vote will go for McCain.

Of course, none of the above will make much difference if Hispanics vote on the state of the economy, the price of oil and food, or the war in Iraq. All these issues should make this an easy year for Democratic candidates, particularly the one running for president.

But, as with all other groups, segregated and analyzed under a microscope by political scientists, journalists and pundits, all of us have a particular issue that will make us vote one way or the other on Election Day. That is what makes the Hispanic vote so difficult to predict.

By: Guillermo I. Martínez (Columnist/Sun-Sentinel)

Media, Internet court young Latino swing vote

By: Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Take two twentysomething Latinos with a taste for politics, give them a crash course in news reporting, equip them with video cameras and press credentials, "embed" them at the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer and let 'er rip. That's the idea cooked up by the nonprofit Voto Latino and SíTV, the cable and Internet company geared to young English-speaking Latinos.

The collaboration, dubbed "Crash the Parties '08," has already drawn dozens of online applications from wannabe-embedded reporters. The two who are ultimately chosen will produce newscasts, video blogs and interviews with candidates and convention delegates for a growing audience of hip, bicultural Latinos who may not be all that plugged in yet to the political process.

"Young people aren't participating because they don't really know how the process works," said María Teresa Petersen, director of Voto Latino, a media-savvy, nonpartisan voter registration group. "What better way to engage than to have someone who looks like them and talks like them to break the process down?"

The project is part of a new surge of attention being paid to young Latinos, who are shaping up to be this election's "soccer moms," a decisive group of swing voters, as well as a coveted market demographic of "new media" consumers. Of the nation's 18 million eligible Latino voters, half are under 40, and tens of thousands more reach voting age every month, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington DC.  READ MORE