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 Americas & Beyond | June 2008 
Obama Moves to Solve His 'Latino Problem'
 Agence France-Presse
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| | A supporter for Barrak Obama rallying in Puerto Rico (AFP) | | |
Washington — Barack Obama's presidential campaign has recently increased its efforts to reach Latino voters by appointing two veteran operatives to key outreach positions.
During the Democratic Party primary, rival Hillary Clinton attracted more than two-thirds of the Latino, or Hispanic, vote, making it brutally clear that Obama has problems winning over the community.
After Obama's crushing defeat in the June 1 primary in Puerto Rico, Clinton's campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told reporters the results "shows that he (Obama) has a problem with the Latino community," the Politico website reported.
The Hispanic community - 45 million people, or 15 percent of the US population - is the largest racial minority group in the country. Many live in states expected to be hotly contested in the November 4 presidential election.
In a bid to reach Hispanic voters, Obama on Monday appointed Patti Solis Doyle, a Chicagoan of Mexican descent, to be chief of staff to his still-to-be-named vice presidential choice.
Solis managed Clinton's campaign until she was ousted in February amid a wave of acrimony following the New York senator's less-than-stellar showing on February 5, Super Tuesday primary night.
In a less visible but equally important move, Obama appointed Cuauthemoc Figueroa, a California-born former union organizer and the son of Mexican farmworkers, as the point man in his effort to attract Hispanic votes.
Obama's campaign "has been moving the pieces in a positive way over the last weeks" in an effort to attract Hispanic voters, said Sergio Bendixen, a former Clinton campaign adviser on Hispanic issues.
"In the primaries, Obama spent a lot of money campaigning for Hispanic votes, but he had little experience with the community," Bendixen told AFP.
"No offense, but his Latino outreach team was a bit limited. Now however the indications are that this is going to change," he said.
Millions of Hispanic voters live in the key battleground states of New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida, as well as Republican John McCain's home state of Arizona.
Whoever gains their support could carry the state, said Daniel Restrepo from the Center for American Progress, a think-tank with close ties to the Democrats.
"The Latino vote will be especially important, mainly in the southeastern states," said Restrepo.
Historically, the large Cuban-American community in Florida has voted for Republican candidates, while Hispanics in New York and California have voted Democrat. Hispanics in the southwest are mixed, with strong regional Democratic pockets.
In 2004 President George W. Bush obtained more than 40 percent of the Hispanic vote - a record for a Republican - and defeated Democrat John Kerry in four of the key southwestern states as well as in Florida.
Obama had to make a concerted move to attract Hispanic voters "even without his difficulties" during the primaries, Restrepo said.
"Creating a structure to search for the Latino vote is a key part of the campaign of any presidential candidate," said Restrepo.
Roberto de Posada, president of the pro-Republican Latino Coalition, recently described McCain as the Republican with the broadest support in the Hispanic community.
It was McCain, de Posada notes, who supported two immigration reform measures in Congress over the past two years. McCain's latest immigration reform bill, co-sponsored with Democrat Ted Kennedy, however failed due to strong opposition from conservative Republicans - which has tainted the party in the view of many Hispanic voters.
The measure would have provided ways for the 12 million undocumented migrants - overwhelmingly Hispanic - living in the United States to eventually become citizens.
In a Thursday interview with the Los Angeles-based Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion, McCain emphasized the importance of securing the US border with Mexico.
He also discussed his proposed guest worker program, which would temporarily import low-wage foreign workers, and emphasized that he would urge Congress to re-take immigration reform the day he took office as president.
Democrats have already launched a campaign accusing McCain of changing his position on immigration, accusing him of saying that he would now oppose the immigration bill that he once supported. |
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