Salinas showdown: conservatives, unions fight for Latino vote
A busload of social conservatives tailed by a van full union members and another of progressive advocates are California’s unlikely caravan battling for the Latino vote.
On Friday, they rolled into the Salinas Valley.
The conservative “Vote Your Values” campaign, which supports Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, stopped at Central Park in Salinas to remind Latinos that Democrats are pro-choice and support gay marriage.
The fight over the Latino vote turned into a shouting match between the two sides with few undecideds to hear. The victorious could win the races for the senate and governor.
The roughly 30 union members in attendance out-numbered the group from the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles by about two to one.
Alfonso Aguilar, the group’s executive director, used a microphone to push Latinos to vote for Republican senate candidate Carly Fiorina, but the jeers and chants of “si se peude” nearly drowned him out.
“Don’t let the unions tell you how to vote,” Aguilar said. “We are Latinos. We voted for (the anti-gay marriage measure) Prop. 8. We vote for life.”
Union backers countered that the campaign was trying to “mislead Latino voters” about Fiorina, who supports a strict Arizona immigration law.
“It’s an anti-immigrant law, and it’s discriminatory,” said Yadira Real, who lives in Salinas and is a member of public employee union SEIU.
The law allows police to question and detain someone if they believe that person is in the country illegally.
“That’s not what our community is about,” Real said.
Latinos make up an increasing percentage of California voters and are traditionally a solid Democratic block. Convincing just 10 percent of that vote to switch parties could win races for Republicans, said Aguilar, who headed the Office of Citizenship for the Bush Administration.
The 2008 ballot-box victory of social conservatives on Prop. 8 leads Aguilar to believe there is an opening in the race for Latino votes.
And, he adds, Fiorina supports two immigration reform bills that provide a path to citizenship: the DREAM Act for young adults and AG JOBS bill for farm workers.
That wasn’t enough to convince Mario Torres, an SEIU member from Salinas.
“People realize we have to have candidates that do what they preach,” he said, adding that Fiorina’s support of the Arizona law contradicts her support of the two other measures.
The conservative campaign’s nine-day, 42-city bus tour is funded in part by the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List and the anti-gay marriage National Organization for Marriage.
The campaign’s backing from anti-gay marriage groups brought David and Carol McGregor out from Spreckels to the park. They were armed with rainbow umbrellas and shirts reading “Marrying the person you love is not wrong.”
After the rally, McGregor traded heated words with a campaign supporter.
But the argument didn’t last long.
The struggle between the union hall and the church for Latino voters had to head down the road to Soledad.