McCain, Obama reach out for the Latino vote
by Jerry Kammer on Jul. 08, 2008, under Nation/World, OpinionCandidates try to harness power of burgeoning demographic group
Sen. John McCain (with his back to the camera) meets supporters at the convention of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials last month in Washington, D.C. McCain has hired a marketer whose advertising helped President Bush do well with Latino voters in 2004.
WASHINGTON – Lionel Sosa, a marketing legend whose advertising aimed at Latinos is credited with helping George W. Bush win his two presidential races, is trying to work his magic for John McCain.
Sosa, the son of Mexican immigrants, said his San Antonio-based team is editing a five-minute video and a series of 30-second television spots featuring McCain. They’re also taping testimonials from Hispanics who know McCain, including Frank Gamboa, his Mexican-American roommate at the Naval Academy.
“We’re going to show Senator McCain talking about conservative values, immigration, education, small businesses and job creation and free trade agreements,” said Sosa. “We think it will be very effective in reaching out to Latinos.”
Sosa’s work, which will be presented both in English and Spanish, will be a key part of McCain’s efforts in four battleground states where the Latino vote could be decisive: Florida, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada.
McCain will wage spot-to-spot and rally-to-rally combat with Sen. Barack Obama, who is working to overcome his poor showing among Latinos in Democratic primaries against Sen. Hillary Clinton.
“We’re convinced we can do well in these states,” said Obama adviser Frederico Pena, a former mayor of Denver who later served as transportation secretary and energy secretary under Bill Clinton.
High rates of illegal immigration and low rates of naturalization and voter registration, have kept the Latino vote from reflecting the growth of the Latino population.
According to the census, the Hispanic population grew from 14.6 million in 1980 to 22.4 million in 1990 and 35.3 million in 2000. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that as of last July, the nation’s Hispanic population had reached 45.5 million.
But while illegal immigration and political apathy have muffled the Hispanic voice in politics, raw demographic power and voter registration drives have slowly turned up the volume.
The number of Latinos voting grew from 2.5 million in 1980 to 7.6 million in 2004, according to the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California. The organization projects 9.3 million Latinos will go to the polls in November.
Pew Hispanic Center reported in December that 57 percent of registered Hispanic voters expressed a preference for Democrats while 23 percent prefer Republicans.
However, in 2004, Bush won about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote nationally.
He won all four of the Hispanic battleground states with the help of Sosa-produced ads that showed him interacting warmly with Latinos. He also spoke in scripted Spanish that was far better than his spontaneous version, which former Mexican President Vicente Fox scorned as “grade-school level.”
Sosa said his work for McCain will not show the senator speaking Spanish.
“That’s not where his comfort level is,” Sosa said.
Obama is winning praise for the smooth, Spanish-language delivery of the “Message to Puerto Rico” he recorded for the island’s June 1 Democratic primary. Sosa himself was impressed, saying, “I give him a lot of credit for doing that.”
In a recent interview with the Spanish-language Univision network, Obama admitted that while he took Spanish classes in school, he has the “vocabulary of a 2-year-old.”
But Obama pledged to improve his language skills, which could offer him an advantage, especially in reaching out to recently naturalized immigrants whose first language is Spanish.
“He’s working on it, and he’s got an unbelievable retention level,” said U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, a national co-chairman for the Obama campaign.
Grijalva said he has given Obama the same cautionary advice that he has given other politicians who are considering addressing Latinos in Spanish: “It seems patronizing if you do it badly.”
Both McCain and Obama spoke recently at the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in Washington. Both men also have committed to address the conference of the National Council of La Raza in San Diego.
Immigration activist Frank Sharry expects Latino leaders will pressure McCain to provide more details on his policy about illegal immigration.
Sharry said McCain has been “clear as mud” by staking out a position that promises to “secure the border first,” without detailing what that means or what will follow.
“He’s going to have to clarify this somehow,” said Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, which advocates comprehensive immigration reform.
Obama, by contrast, has long been forceful in pressing for sweeping legal status for nation’s illegal immigrant population.
“I will not walk away from the 12 million undocumented immigrants who live and work and contribute to our country every single day,” Obama said at a National Council of La Raza conference last year.
Sosa is counting on McCain’s personal story of national service, and the stories Latinos are telling him about their relationships with the Arizonan, to persuade Latino voters that he is their man.
Sosa said his work still draws on a lesson he learned in 1980 from Ronald Reagan, who was then running for the presidency.
“He said Hispanics are conservatives and they have Republican values,” Sosa said. “He told me Hispanics are Republicans, but they just don’t know it yet. He told me, ‘Your job is to help them understand what they really are.’ ”
