Campaigns Woo Latinos
New York City mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio stood outside City Hall last week reading a few sentences in Spanish from a cue card held by an aide in hopes of reaching a Latino audience with his message about borough inequality.
Mr. de Blasio, one of a handful of candidates seeking the Democratic mayoral nomination, has stepped up efforts in recent months to summarize his news conferences in Spanish. On Tuesday, he lunched with Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., the city's highest-ranking Latino official, at Enzo's on Arthur Avenue.
As the race to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg heats up, so has the competition for Latino voters, a swath of the electorate campaign officials and political experts say will be influential. Roughly one-quarter of the city's electorate—in both the Democratic primary and the general election—is expected to be composed of Latino voters, according to polling and census data.
"I feel like the homecoming queen—everyone wants to take me to the dance," said Mr. Diaz, a Democrat who hasn't yet endorsed anyone in the mayor's race. He spoke twice with John Liu, an expected mayoral candidate before breaking bread with Mr. de Blasio.
"It's a giant awakening," Mr. Diaz said of the Latino vote and the community's growing sense of political empowerment. "The four major Democratic candidates have a lot of work to do in the primary to make sure they can get the Latino vote.…No one has a lock on it."
In November, President Barack Obama captured 71% of the Hispanic vote in his successful re-election bid, a 44 percentage-point edge over GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney. Latino leaders say the impact of the Latino vote in the national election was a wake-up call, and some local leaders say they hope to tap into that as they engage the community in the mayor's race.
In 2009, Bill Thompson, the Democrats' mayoral nominee who is running again this year, won 55% of the Latino vote in his quest to beat Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican, an exit poll showed. According to his campaign, other data suggest Mr. Thompson's portion of the Latino vote was closer to 65% in 2009; that year, Mr. Thompson came within five percentage points of besting Mr. Bloomberg, who outspent him about 11 to 1.
An adviser to Mr. Thompson described Latino voters as "brand loyal." Mr. Thompson is the only Democratic contender who can "lay claim to the history and loyalty" of the Latino electorate, the adviser said.
While Mr. Thompson's campaign said it had an advantage with the Latino electorate, rival campaigns said they consider the vote up for grabs. "The campaign is going to be focused like a laser beam on the Latino vote," said Josh Isay, an adviser to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who holds a commanding lead in the polls. "The Latino community is one of the most important voting blocs in 2013."
The campaigns are citing policy issues they say appeal to Latino voters. Hispanic-community leaders say the top issues are education and the economy.
On Tuesday night at the Bronx Museum, Adolfo Carrión Jr., a former Bronx borough president who recently won the backing of the Independence Party, officially announced his bid for mayor. If elected, he would be the city's first Latino mayor. At the event, his father, speaking in Spanish, introduced him. Guests waved mini Puerto Rican and American flags.
As he finished his remarks, the younger Mr. Carrión led the crowd in a chant of "Es Nuestra Ciudad!" (It's our city!)
Mr. Carrión left the Democratic Party last year and is now unaffiliated with any party. He is seeking the GOP nomination, but it is unclear whether he will pick up the support of enough party leaders to get access to the Republican ballot.
Some political observers believe Mr. Carrión could drain Latino support from the Democratic nominee in the general election. But a recent NY1-Marist poll showed Mr. Carrión would make little difference as a third-party candidate; a hypothetical general election matchup showed Ms. Quinn had 59% of the vote, besting Joe Lhota, the GOP front-runner, with 17%, and Mr. Carrión, 8%.
In 2005, Fernando Ferrer, the first Latino to win the Democratic mayoral nomination, was crushed by Mr. Bloomberg in the general election. But four years before, when Mr. Ferrer lost the Democratic nomination to Mark Green in a racially divisive primary runoff, Mr. Bloomberg benefited from anger in the Latino community, attracting nearly half the Latino vote that year, according to exit polls.
This year, early public polls show Ms. Quinn doing well among Latino voters in the Democratic primary, though some rival camps questioned the validity of those surveys. Whether that support will hold is unclear because a large number of voters remain undecided.
"Clearly, Latino voters become very, very important to the success of these candidates," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. "It's a group that will be hotly contested.It could be a determining, a pivotal group."
Other highly coveted endorsements include those of Rep. Nydia Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman to be elected to Congress, and state Sen. Adriano Espaillat. Mr. Ferrer hasn't made an official endorsement, but he has been a longtime backer of Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Espaillat said all of the major Democratic candidates have reached out to him and he believed each is making a "real effort" to win Latino voters. "They recognize that this is an important vote," he said.