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Obama Looks To Narrow Clinton's Lead Among Latino Voters
POSTED: 11:17 am PST February 1,
2008
UPDATED: 7:41 pm PST February 1,
2008
WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's campaign ditched its familiar Motown tunes this week, warming up California crowds with Ricky Martin's bilingual soccer anthem, "The Cup of Life."
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Obama also hosted a "Latino Town Hall" in Los Angeles, said he should learn Spanish, and dispatched his top surrogate, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, to Hispanic centers in New Mexico.
The Illinois senator's scramble for Latino votes is an acknowledgment that his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton, enjoys a major head start in wooing voters that could prove crucial in Tuesday's 22-state showdown.
"We have been aggressively advertising in the Latino community," Obama told reporters Friday. "I was at a disadvantage relative to Senator Clinton because she's universally known."
"But I think we are going to do much better than people anticipate," he said.
Obama is trying to close the gap, matching Clinton's Spanish-language ads and sending Kennedy to places where many older Latinos revere that family's name and legacy. As for younger Latinos, Obama hopes his proven ability to energize college-age blacks and whites will apply equally to Hispanics in California and other states voting next week.
But Obama concedes that the Super Tuesday calendar gives him far less time to engage and charm voters than he had in Iowa and South Carolina, where he scored two big victories.
Many Clinton supporters, meanwhile, feel her years-long outreach to Hispanics, and her husband's popularity, will serve her well among the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority. They note she won the popular vote in the Jan. 19 Nevada caucus after taking 64 percent of the Hispanic vote to Obama's 26 percent. If she rolls up similar margins among Hispanics next week, Obama is in for a long night.
Traditionally, politicians have talked more about courting Latinos than doing it. But in light of demographic and political trends, "it is not an overstatement to say that Hispanics may hold the key to the presidency in 2008," Simon Rosenberg, head of a left-of-center think tank called NDN, wrote in a recent study of the general and primary elections.
Latinos make up sizable portions of the Democratic electorate in California, New Mexico and Arizona, and they comprise at least 10 percent of eligible voters in Colorado, New York and New Jersey. All six states vote on Tuesday. Clinton and Obama are campaigning hard there, targeting Latinos for voter turnout, running ads in Spanish and deploying Hispanic officials as surrogates.
Hispanics surpassed blacks as the nation's largest minority years ago. But their political clout has not kept pace. They make up about 15 percent of the U.S. population but only about 9 percent of eligible voters, largely because many are non-citizens or under 18.
And if their comparatively low turnout rates continue, Hispanics will account for less than 7 percent of the nationwide vote in November, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
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But non-Florida Latinos lean strongly Democratic, and their concentration in several Super Tuesday states gives them a significantly larger role in next week's Democratic primaries and caucuses. That helps Clinton, analysts say.
The New York senator "has worked very hard on the Latino vote for a long time," said Roberto Suro, a former head of the Pew Hispanic Center who now teaches communications at the University of Southern California. "Even Obama's supporters have admitted he's been very late in looking at the Latino vote and doing any specific outreach."
Suro and others dismiss the notion, promoted recently by a top Clinton adviser, that Latinos are reluctant to vote for black candidates because of supposed rivalries between blacks and Hispanics in many neighborhoods and workplaces.
"That's not a supportable kind of argument," said Angelo Falcon, president of the nonprofit and nonpartisan National Institute for Latino Policy in New York. Hispanics have voted heavily for black candidates in many state and municipal elections, he said, and Obama did well among Illinois Latinos in his 2004 Senate win.
Obama's problems are more prosaic than ethnic, Falcon said. Latinos, like most other voters, are likely to support a familiar name who is backed by respected local officials, he said. In Hispanic communities outside Illinois, that describes Clinton far more than Obama.
"She has a longer history" with Latinos, Falcon said. She also benefits from "the identification with her husband," whose presidency marked a time of prosperity for many Latinos, he said.
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"She is the establishment Democratic Party candidate," Falcon said, and many rank-and-file Hispanics feel comfortable with that. That's why Clinton is heavily promoting her endorsements from Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Clinton cabinet member and San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros.
Obama has his own endorsers, including Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., and Federico Pena, a former Clinton Cabinet member and Denver, Colo., mayor. But he also is trying to match Clinton in courting Latinos directly.
"We've heard some cynical talk about how black folks and white folks and Latinos can't come together," Obama said at Thursday's "Latino Town Hall" in Los Angeles. But he has worked to bridge the "so-called black-brown divide" since his days as a community organizer in Chicago, he said.
Earlier this week, Kennedy campaigned for him at an Albuquerque Hispanic cultural center, a Santa Fe community college and a popular Spanish-language radio station where the host, El Piolín, heaped praise on the visitor. Obama fans hope Kennedy's charisma can trump Clinton's popularity.
But some are doubtful. "I think people are making too much of this Kennedy thing," Falcon said.
Columbia University political scientist Rodolfo de la Garza, who tracks Hispanic issues, agreed.
"It's awfully late" for Obama and his surrogates to try to overcome Clinton's hard-earned loyalty among Hispanics, he said. "The key is, he hasn't been around Latinos a lot."
Noting Kennedy's visit to Santa Fe, de la Garza said, "the Latinos there are a longtime, established, centrist group." Those words, he noted, fit Hillary Clinton better than Barack Obama.
The newspaper said either of the candidates remaining in the Democratic field -- Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton -- would be a formidable nominee in the November election. But it "strongly" endorsed Obama after praising him as an inspiring leader "most focused on steering the nation toward constructive change."
"Just because the ballot features two strong candidates does not mean that it is difficult to choose between them," the Times said.
The nation's fourth-largest paper was particularly critical of the New York senator for her Senate vote on Iraq, saying she "faced a test and failed, joining the stampede as Congress voted to authorize war." Obama, by comparison, "saw the danger of the invasion and the consequences of occupation, and he said so. He was right."
Clinton's election "would drag into a third decade the post-Reagan political duel between two families, the Bushes and the Clintons," the paper concluded. "Obama is correct: It is time to turn the page."
In the Republican race, the paper said it parted company with McCain on various issues -- he opposes abortion rights, rejects the right of gays and lesbians to marry, and advocates fighting on in Iraq. But the paper credited the Arizona senator's "fundamental individualism, spanning his distrust of big government, his support for immigration reform and his insistence on a sound American foreign policy."
"We do not support his determination to fight on in Iraq, but we welcome his insistence that America's military posture be matched by its moral purpose," the paper wrote.
The newspaper called Mitt Romney "a vigorous and articulate alternative" but said he "spent so much effort to convince Republicans he's one of them that he has called his most basic values into question."
The endorsements for the Feb. 5 primary will appear in Sunday editions. They were posted Friday on the newspaper's Web site.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed Sen. John McCain in the Republican presidential race on Thursday, praising him as an extraordinary leader who can reach across the political aisle to get things done.
McCain predicted a "flood of endorsements across this country from both liberals and conservatives" would soon come his way as he tries to take command of the nominating fight after a bruising series of early primaries and caucuses.
McCain and his principal remaining rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, square off in 21 primaries and caucuses next week with more than 1,000 delegates at stake.
At a news conference, Schwarzenegger said McCain has the national security credentials to do the job, and is a "crusader against wasteful spending."
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani also attended the event, one day after he dropped out of the race and threw his support behind his longtime friend. Schwarzenegger said he wanted to postpone his endorsement announcement until after Giuliani announced his decision to quit the race.
McCain is counting on both men -- Schwarzenegger in California and Giuliani in New York -- to help propel him to victory in the two biggest states holding primaries next week. Combined, they offer 271 delegates, more than a quarter of the 1,023 at stake in a Super Tuesday slew of primaries and caucuses.
Obama also hosted a "Latino Town Hall" in Los Angeles, said he should learn Spanish, and dispatched his top surrogate, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, to Hispanic centers in New Mexico.
The Illinois senator's scramble for Latino votes is an acknowledgment that his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton, enjoys a major head start in wooing voters that could prove crucial in Tuesday's 22-state showdown.
"We have been aggressively advertising in the Latino community," Obama told reporters Friday. "I was at a disadvantage relative to Senator Clinton because she's universally known."
"But I think we are going to do much better than people anticipate," he said.
Obama is trying to close the gap, matching Clinton's Spanish-language ads and sending Kennedy to places where many older Latinos revere that family's name and legacy. As for younger Latinos, Obama hopes his proven ability to energize college-age blacks and whites will apply equally to Hispanics in California and other states voting next week.
But Obama concedes that the Super Tuesday calendar gives him far less time to engage and charm voters than he had in Iowa and South Carolina, where he scored two big victories.
Many Clinton supporters, meanwhile, feel her years-long outreach to Hispanics, and her husband's popularity, will serve her well among the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority. They note she won the popular vote in the Jan. 19 Nevada caucus after taking 64 percent of the Hispanic vote to Obama's 26 percent. If she rolls up similar margins among Hispanics next week, Obama is in for a long night.
Traditionally, politicians have talked more about courting Latinos than doing it. But in light of demographic and political trends, "it is not an overstatement to say that Hispanics may hold the key to the presidency in 2008," Simon Rosenberg, head of a left-of-center think tank called NDN, wrote in a recent study of the general and primary elections.
Latinos make up sizable portions of the Democratic electorate in California, New Mexico and Arizona, and they comprise at least 10 percent of eligible voters in Colorado, New York and New Jersey. All six states vote on Tuesday. Clinton and Obama are campaigning hard there, targeting Latinos for voter turnout, running ads in Spanish and deploying Hispanic officials as surrogates.
Hispanics surpassed blacks as the nation's largest minority years ago. But their political clout has not kept pace. They make up about 15 percent of the U.S. population but only about 9 percent of eligible voters, largely because many are non-citizens or under 18.
And if their comparatively low turnout rates continue, Hispanics will account for less than 7 percent of the nationwide vote in November, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
But non-Florida Latinos lean strongly Democratic, and their concentration in several Super Tuesday states gives them a significantly larger role in next week's Democratic primaries and caucuses. That helps Clinton, analysts say.
The New York senator "has worked very hard on the Latino vote for a long time," said Roberto Suro, a former head of the Pew Hispanic Center who now teaches communications at the University of Southern California. "Even Obama's supporters have admitted he's been very late in looking at the Latino vote and doing any specific outreach."
Suro and others dismiss the notion, promoted recently by a top Clinton adviser, that Latinos are reluctant to vote for black candidates because of supposed rivalries between blacks and Hispanics in many neighborhoods and workplaces.
"That's not a supportable kind of argument," said Angelo Falcon, president of the nonprofit and nonpartisan National Institute for Latino Policy in New York. Hispanics have voted heavily for black candidates in many state and municipal elections, he said, and Obama did well among Illinois Latinos in his 2004 Senate win.
Obama's problems are more prosaic than ethnic, Falcon said. Latinos, like most other voters, are likely to support a familiar name who is backed by respected local officials, he said. In Hispanic communities outside Illinois, that describes Clinton far more than Obama.
"She has a longer history" with Latinos, Falcon said. She also benefits from "the identification with her husband," whose presidency marked a time of prosperity for many Latinos, he said.
"She is the establishment Democratic Party candidate," Falcon said, and many rank-and-file Hispanics feel comfortable with that. That's why Clinton is heavily promoting her endorsements from Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Clinton cabinet member and San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros.
Obama has his own endorsers, including Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., and Federico Pena, a former Clinton Cabinet member and Denver, Colo., mayor. But he also is trying to match Clinton in courting Latinos directly.
"We've heard some cynical talk about how black folks and white folks and Latinos can't come together," Obama said at Thursday's "Latino Town Hall" in Los Angeles. But he has worked to bridge the "so-called black-brown divide" since his days as a community organizer in Chicago, he said.
Earlier this week, Kennedy campaigned for him at an Albuquerque Hispanic cultural center, a Santa Fe community college and a popular Spanish-language radio station where the host, El Piolín, heaped praise on the visitor. Obama fans hope Kennedy's charisma can trump Clinton's popularity.
But some are doubtful. "I think people are making too much of this Kennedy thing," Falcon said.
Columbia University political scientist Rodolfo de la Garza, who tracks Hispanic issues, agreed.
"It's awfully late" for Obama and his surrogates to try to overcome Clinton's hard-earned loyalty among Hispanics, he said. "The key is, he hasn't been around Latinos a lot."
Noting Kennedy's visit to Santa Fe, de la Garza said, "the Latinos there are a longtime, established, centrist group." Those words, he noted, fit Hillary Clinton better than Barack Obama.
LA Times Endorses McCain, Obama
The Los Angeles Times endorsed the presidential bids of Barack Obama and John McCain on Friday.The newspaper said either of the candidates remaining in the Democratic field -- Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton -- would be a formidable nominee in the November election. But it "strongly" endorsed Obama after praising him as an inspiring leader "most focused on steering the nation toward constructive change."
"Just because the ballot features two strong candidates does not mean that it is difficult to choose between them," the Times said.
The nation's fourth-largest paper was particularly critical of the New York senator for her Senate vote on Iraq, saying she "faced a test and failed, joining the stampede as Congress voted to authorize war." Obama, by comparison, "saw the danger of the invasion and the consequences of occupation, and he said so. He was right."
Clinton's election "would drag into a third decade the post-Reagan political duel between two families, the Bushes and the Clintons," the paper concluded. "Obama is correct: It is time to turn the page."
In the Republican race, the paper said it parted company with McCain on various issues -- he opposes abortion rights, rejects the right of gays and lesbians to marry, and advocates fighting on in Iraq. But the paper credited the Arizona senator's "fundamental individualism, spanning his distrust of big government, his support for immigration reform and his insistence on a sound American foreign policy."
"We do not support his determination to fight on in Iraq, but we welcome his insistence that America's military posture be matched by its moral purpose," the paper wrote.
The newspaper called Mitt Romney "a vigorous and articulate alternative" but said he "spent so much effort to convince Republicans he's one of them that he has called his most basic values into question."
The endorsements for the Feb. 5 primary will appear in Sunday editions. They were posted Friday on the newspaper's Web site.
Schwarzenegger Casts Support For McCain
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed Sen. John McCain in the Republican presidential race on Thursday, praising him as an extraordinary leader who can reach across the political aisle to get things done.
McCain predicted a "flood of endorsements across this country from both liberals and conservatives" would soon come his way as he tries to take command of the nominating fight after a bruising series of early primaries and caucuses.
McCain and his principal remaining rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, square off in 21 primaries and caucuses next week with more than 1,000 delegates at stake.
At a news conference, Schwarzenegger said McCain has the national security credentials to do the job, and is a "crusader against wasteful spending."
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani also attended the event, one day after he dropped out of the race and threw his support behind his longtime friend. Schwarzenegger said he wanted to postpone his endorsement announcement until after Giuliani announced his decision to quit the race.
McCain is counting on both men -- Schwarzenegger in California and Giuliani in New York -- to help propel him to victory in the two biggest states holding primaries next week. Combined, they offer 271 delegates, more than a quarter of the 1,023 at stake in a Super Tuesday slew of primaries and caucuses.
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Copyright 2008 by KNBC.com and KNBC (NBC4 Los Angeles). The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
