Democrats court Latinos in bid to keep control of Congress
Washington - The Spanish-language advertisement in the western US state of Nevada had an unusual message: 'Don't vote, that is our only alternative to be taken seriously.' The spot ahead of Tuesday's mid-term election, which blamed Democrats for not pushing forward immigration reform, angered pro- immigrant groups and even US President Barack Obama, who called it 'cynical.' But in an election where the Democratic majority is at stake in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and where a bitter struggle is ongoing for every vote, the move provides additional proof that Latinos have critical power in the United States. The Hispanic community is already the largest minority in the country, and it keeps growing. More than 6.5 million Latinos are registered to vote next week, up 17 per cent from the last mid-term election in 2006, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), which has both Democrats and Republicans among its members. Anger over anti-immigration laws, like the controversial measure passed this year in Arizona granting sweeping powers to police to check immigration status, has led Hispanic and broader civil rights organizations to carry out massive door-to-door campaigns to get even more Latinos to register to vote. And these organizations say that 700,000 to 1 million Hispanics could turn up at the polls. It is the Democratic camp led by Obama that is courting Latinos most overtly, arguing that immigration reform - which is, according to NALEO, the top priority for Hispanics, even above the economy - has so far failed due to the lack of support from Republicans. 'There is no place in the country where the Latino vote doesn't matter,' Obama told a Hispanic radio station in an interview just a week before the election. But Democrats are not alone in their efforts to win over Hispanics. Despite their tough anti-immigration rhetoric in some states, several Republican candidates are also actively courting the vote, particularly in states with large Hispanic populations such as California and New Mexico where they are generously devoting funds to campaign ads in Spanish. The background to such courting lies in a key fact of Hispanic demographics in the United States: 85 per cent of this community is based in just 10 states, several of which are regarded as 'undecided' and could be key to transforming the current balance of power on Capitol Hill. In several of these states, Hispanics are at least 10 per cent of the electorate. 'There's no question that the Latino vote will matter in this election and in future elections,' Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest Hispanic organization in the United States, said in Washington. Nevada is one of the clearest examples: Harry Reid, a symbolic figure as the Democratic majority leader in the Senate and a key Obama ally, is facing a tough campaign against Republican Sharron Angle, who is backed by the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement. With Hispanics amounting to more than 12 per cent of the electorate in Nevada, they are hard to ignore. 'It's exactly in a race that competitive where the Latino vote makes the difference,' Arturo Vargas, executive director of NALEO, told reporters. This helps explain the conservative ad to get Hispanics to boycott the election, and also Reid's failed attempt in September to get the Senate to pass the DreamAct, a bill that would have benefited undocumented young people. US media linked the boycott campaign to the Republican Party, reporting that key people with ties to the centre-right party stand behind Latinos4reform. Among them was Robert Deposada, the Republican National Committee's former director of Hispanic affairs. On its website, Latinos4reform notes only that its campaign 'has not been authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.' The website gives no information regarding its members and no further data beyond a postal code in the state of Virginia and an email address. And yet, although it has mostly been the Republican Party that played the anti-immigration card in recent months, Democrats cannot really count on the Hispanic vote either, experts stress. They note that Latinos are not necessarily faithful to a single party, but rather focus on certain issues. Latinos are 'able and willing' to cross party lines, Vargas stressed.
Analysts highlight the Hispanic community's disappointment with the Democrats' failure to achieve immigration reform in the two years in which they had majorities in both houses of Congress. And with the poor performance of the economy, which affects Latinos even more than it does other social groups.
'Democrats can't take Latino voters for granted, nor can Republicans keep ignoring them,' the president of the liberal Centre for American Progress, John Podesta, said.