Hispanic voters are a growing force in America – are they strong enough to swing victory President Barack Obama’s way?
For the time being, the Republicans are being saved by the relative lack of engagement among Hispanic communities. Only half of eligible Latinos voted in the 2008 presidential election, compared to two-thirds of white and black voters
Marie Lopez Rogers works on the same scorched patch of Arizonan desert today as she did 55 years ago. But while her hands were torn to ribbons as an eight-year-old picking cotton with her Mexican immigrant grandparents, these days the worst she has to fear is a paper cut.
Mrs Lopez Rogers, 63, is now mayor and sits in an air-conditioned office at City Hall. “I feel I have lived the American dream,” she says, blinking away a tear. Millions hope to follow her. The population of the city she leads, Avondale, more than doubled in the last decade, much of the growth driven by the Hispanic families who during that time became its majority.
Here in Arizona’s searing West Valley, home to four of the country’s 10 fastest-growing cities, America’s future is on display. The US Census Bureau said last month that for the first time more ethnic minority babies were being born than white infants, with Latinos leading the charge. It was a milestone on the road to a nationwide non‑white majority, currently forecast for 2042.
With 50,000 of them turning 18 every month, the 21-million-and-rising Latinos eligible to vote are being eyed keenly by those pursuing power. Ballots from growing Hispanic populations, who tend to be younger and Democrat-leaning, could dictate whether Barack Obama, who led among them by 26 points in 2008, can edge victories this year in crucial battleground states such as Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Virginia – and therefore hold on to the White House. “Latinos will be a deciding factor in this election,” an Obama campaign source agrees.
Over the past fortnight the President has struck a sharp one-two punch in the fight for their vote. On Monday he emerged largely victorious from an attempt to quash Arizona’s draconian anti-illegal immigrant law at the US Supreme Court. This came after his surprise order this month that law-abiding young illegal migrants must no longer be deported and may obtain work permits.
It is the latest in a series of political gambles aimed at minorities, following his endorsement of gay marriage. While Mr Obama insists it is merely “the right thing to do”, it also highlights his acute need to hold together the coalition of ethnic minorities, young voters and women that swept him to power in 2008, and the lack of leeway he enjoys in addressing the central issue of the campaign: America’s unemployment crisis and faltering economic recovery.
His strategists are counting on increased turnout among the centre-Left outweighing the potential backlash. “Sure, there is a risk,” says Jamal Simmons, a Democratic consultant, “but many of the people who don’t like it were never going to back him.” Polls repeatedly show that Arizona’s SB1070 law – which gave state police wide-ranging powers against suspected illegal immigrants – is actually supported by a majority of Americans.
Yet both of Mr Obama’s recent moves are highly popular in the Latino communities they most affect. “It’s exciting, and will reignite enthusiasm among his base,” says Juan Escalante, a spokesman for Dream Activist, a Florida-based pressure group.
Meanwhile, this question of what to do about the country’s roughly 11 million “undocumented” immigrants, an estimated 360,000 of whom are in Arizona, has hamstrung appeals to Hispanic voters by the Republican Party. Its older, whiter core vote – whose influence is gradually fading – favours a zero-tolerance approach more akin to that of their former presidential hopeful Herman Cain, who once proposed an electrified border fence surrounded by alligators. On his path to the party’s presidential nomination, Mitt Romney capitalised on an atmosphere that saw Rick Perry, the Republican Texas governor and no lily-livered liberal, booed for saying in a primary debate that those opposing state-subsidised education for the children of illegal migrants did not “have a heart”. But the ultra-tough line on immigration that served him well with the party activists now threatens to do Mr Romney serious harm among a rapidly changing nation.
“Mitt Romney has dug himself into a great big hole with Latinos on immigration,” Ana Navarro, an adviser to John McCain on Hispanic issues in 2008, said this week.
Romney pledged to veto the Dream Act, a comprehensive plan to offer citizenship for young illegal migrants, which inspired Mr Obama’s work permit scheme and is supported by 86 per cent of Latinos. In trying to please all sides over the Arizona immigrant law, his campaign has attempted a balancing act that on Monday saw a spokesman forced to avoid answering whether Mr Romney actually supported the law, or just Arizona’s right to enforce it, an excruciating 21 times.
Polls suggest the Republicans’ Latino deficit may have grown to as much as 43 points. During a talk with top donors in April, unaware that reporters could hear him, Mr Romney conceded that failing to improve this “spells doom for us”. Susana Martinez, the Republican Governor of New Mexico, has said she is in “no doubt” that many fellow Latinos have been “alienated” by the party’s strident rhetoric.
Amid the shifting demographics, it is a problem that threatens to put the Republicans out of power for a generation. Ed Gillespie, a senior strategist for Mr Romney, told a conference in Florida this year: “In 2020, if the Republican nominee for President gets the same percentage of the white, Hispanic, African-American and Asian vote that John McCain got in 2008, a Democrat will be elected to the White House by 14 percentage points.”
For the time being, the Republicans are being saved by the relative lack of engagement among Hispanic communities. Only half of eligible Latinos voted in the 2008 presidential election, compared to two-thirds of white and black voters. This is hardly a feasible long-term electoral strategy, however, and Mr Obama’s party are determined to destroy it. They are already looking beyond this year’s campaign, ploughing resources into Arizona, a staunchly conservative state that has only voted Democrat for president once in 60 years and looks likely to plump for Mr Romney this time.
In the Latino slums outside Phoenix, they are working to seize control of the next era of politics. In a grubby strip mall eight miles east of Mayor Lopez Rogers’s office, next door to the 99-cent shop, a dozen fresh-faced volunteers pound phones. Beneath banners declaring “Sí, se puede!” – “Yes, we can” – they are busy urging residents to vote Obama in November.
They are aiming to replicate the accomplishments of their office’s previous tenants. From this base last November, Danny Valenzuela, a 36-year-old Mexican-American fireman and plucky political novice, was elected to Phoenix’s city council. In an upset, he beat Brenda Sperduti, an experienced white Republican businesswoman.
Aided by a team of activist students, most of them illegal immigrants, Mr Valenzuela upturned the conventional wisdom, boosting Latino turnout in his seat by almost 500 per cent. “We came out and knocked on all 72,000 doors in the district,” he said. “In the end, something special happened.”
There was no secret formula. “Fact is, I showed up,” he said. “Many of these doors had never been knocked on by anyone running for office.”
“It had a huge impact,” conceded Ms Sperduti. “I wish I had reached out to them more.”
“The Valenzuela campaign was historic and amazing,” says an Obama campaign official. “The potential votes are here, frankly, and they showed us we can win them.” With many poor and computer-less Latino families missed by the hi-tech targeted campaigning Mr Obama’s team pioneered four years ago, it is via an intensified version of this old-fashioned person-to-person approach that Democrats believe they can turn this red state blue – maybe not this time, but perhaps in the next election.
Failure to engage similarly with this increasingly vocal section of the American public – and, whether their traditional supporters like it or not, to take a more conciliatory stance towards the latest arrivals in this nation of immigrants – may spell disaster for the Republicans, and Mr Romney knows it.
Attempting to strike a softer tone, he told a conference of Latino politicians in Florida last week: “We owe it to ourselves as Americans to ensure that our country remains a land of opportunity”. But he may be too late. Having already seized its opportunities, Hispanic voters are ready to change America’s politics.
“We are building power from our communities, and making them part of the system – which right now they are not,” says Viridiana Hernandez, a 21‑year-old student and illegal immigrant who worked on the Valenzuela campaign. “We are not just fighting for candidates, or an election, we’re fighting for our lives.”
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