Campaigning with a Spanish accent:
Courting the Latino vote

By Beth Nissen
CNN.com Senior Correspondent

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- The Democrats and the Republicans are both campaigning with a pronounced Hispanic accent.

Both political parties invited prominent and popular Latinos to speak and perform center stage at their conventions. Both sides are running Spanish-language campaign ads.

Both candidates speak in Spanish -- or try to -- at campaign appearances. Al Gore usually sticks to simple phrases such as "Si, se puede!" (basically, "Yes, we can!"). George W. Bush speaks at greater length, and even attempts interviews in Spanish.

"Oh my goodness, we've heard such horribly accented Spanish in the past six months, I can't tell you," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute and a leading researcher on Latino voters. "You kind of wince and you say, 'OK, let's get through the Spanish,' because you know the candidate is really trying to say something to Latinos."

What each candidate is trying to say translates as: Vote for me.

"Both Gore and Bush have just bent over backward to try to reach out, try to appeal, to Hispanics and Latinos nationally," said Michael Alvarez, a political science professor and researcher at the California Institute of Technology.

Why? "Simple demographics," said Pachon. "There's going to be more than five and a half million Latino voters voting in November."

That is only an estimated 5 to 7 percent of likely U.S. voters.

"It seems small," said Alvarez, "but Latinos and Hispanics are concentrated in some very important states: California, New York, Florida and Texas."

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Southwest Voter Research Institute Web site U.S. Census Bureau Web site Hispanic Voters: A New Force Web site The Tomas Rivera Policy Institute Web site

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Small percentages, big results

Ninety percent of U.S. Latinos live in 12 states, most of which are key states with large blocs of electoral votes - such as California, Texas and New York - or swing states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Some campaign analysts point out that the highest concentrations of Latinos are in states where the vote seems decided. Polls indicate that Gore should take California and New York, and that Bush is expected to carry Florida and Texas.

And nationally, past Latino voting patterns are clear. "With the exception of Florida, most Hispanic and Latino voters throughout the country are Democratic," said Alvarez. Three out of five U.S. Hispanic voters say they are Democrats.

Yet both parties' campaign strategists believe Latino party affiliations and voting patterns can be changed. "The reason Democrats and Republicans will concentrate on Latinos is that they are in some ways a swing vote," says Alvarez. "Both Bush and Gore can try to make some inroads into the other candidate's Latino base."

Politically changeable?

Few Latinos have a long personal history of voting for any one party. "A lot of Latinos are first-generation new citizens, or second-generation children of immigrants, who don't have those deep roots of partisan attachment," said Pachon.

Nor do the nation's regionally and ethnically diverse Latinos attach themselves to just one party on the issues. "The Hispanic vote is very hard to pigeonhole," said Pachon. "On certain issues, they're very conservative. On other issues, just the opposite - they're very liberal."

Many Latinos side with Democrats on issues such as guaranteed health care and education, but side with Republicans on welfare reform, crime and punishment, and abortion. (Three out of five U.S. Hispanics identify themselves as Catholic.)

Each candidate's Latino strategy is well-defined. Gore emphasizes his support for traditional Democratic programs to help poor, urban neighborhoods, where many Hispanics live, and to improve public schools, where most Hispanic children are enrolled.

Bush has a harder job. Since the 1990s, when Republicans supported several proposals seen as anti-immigrant, many Latinos, especially in California, have seen the party as anti-them.

Bush tries to reassure Latinos that he is, by marriage, one of them. "I am proud of the Hispanic blood in la familia Bush," is one of the candidate's campaign lines. Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, is married to a Mexican-American woman. Jeb's handsome son George P. Bush, who speaks fluent Spanish, often campaigns for and with his uncle.

The approach is working for Bush, says Fernando Lopez, general manager of KVEA-Channel 52 in Los Angeles, the flagship station of the Spanish-language television network Telemundo. "Bush has made some inroads in the Latino community," he said.

Bush's strong effort in the state "is probably not going to help him win in California, which at this point seems extremely unlikely," said Alvarez. "But it may force Gore to commit some more resources here to really try to solidify his California Latino base."

Campaigning for the future

By campaigning hard for the Latino vote this year, both parties are trying to solidify their national Hispanic base for the future - a base that is expanding rapidly, in number and geographic area, across the United States.

"Look at the Chicago area," said Pachon. "Cook County, Illinois, now has more Latinos than Arizona, New Mexico or Colorado."

Already, Latinos are the largest minority in 18 states, including not only expected states such as Arizona and New Mexico, but also states such as Washington, Iowa and Maine.

"One out of every nine Americans is now Latino," said Pachon. "In certain states, Latinos, in the next 20 years, will outnumber the traditional white non-Hispanic population."

And with each passing year, more of those Latinos will become eligible to vote. At present, one-third of the almost 32 million Latinos in the United States are under voting age; another third are not citizens.

"For every 100 Latinos you see walking down the street today, 34 of those 100 are under the age of 18, so they're not qualified to vote," said Pachon. "That leaves 66. Of those 66, in certain states, 33 aren't U.S. citizens yet, so that leaves 33 Latinos. Of those 33, something like 16 don't register to vote. That leaves 17. Of the 17 Latinos who are left, about 11 to 12 actually vote."

Both the Democrats and Republicans will work hard in the next several months - and over the next several years -- to identify eligible Latino voters, and register them on their rolls.

And candidates from both parties will continue to court Latinos in every way they know how: speaking to Latino social and political organizations, learning to say more than "Viva!" in Spanish, posing for photo ops with mariachi bands.

"I think a lot of Latinos feel that it's all a bit of tokenism," said Lopez. "But at the same time, the positive side is that they're starting to take us into consideration."

And showing their consideration: Part of the reason both Democrats and Republicans are reaching out to Latinos, say campaign analysts, is to show how inclusive, how tolerant, how culturally sensitive they are.

Wednesday, August 16, 2000

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