Latinos poised for pivotal role in U.S. elections

updated 2:47 p.m. ET July 16, 2006

WASHINGTON - Before California’s Republican governor tried to get tough on illegal immigrants in the 1990s, the state had supported GOP candidates in all but two presidential elections since World War II.

California has been a solid blue state ever since the attempted crackdown, in part because of a backlash by the growing number of Hispanic voters.

Democrats hope to replicate that success nationally by using the current immigration debate to brand Republicans as anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic. But Latinos are showing signs they are dissatisfied with both political parties, making these voters pivotal players in the November election as Republicans fight to retain control of Congress.

“If the political parties use immigration as a wedge issue, there might be a very big backlash,” said Marcelo Gaete-Tapia, senior director of programs for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, or NALEO.

“We might become the soccer moms of this election, but we will not become the Willie Hortons,” Gaete-Tapia said.

Images of Horton, a convicted murderer who raped a woman while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison, were used by supporters of former President Bush in a 1988 campaign ad designed to suggest the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, was soft on crime.

Big growth, big challenges
Hispanics are the largest and fastest growing minority group in the country, accounting for more than 14 percent of the population and about half the annual growth. But several factors diminish their political clout:

• About four in 10 adult Hispanics are not citizens, which means they are ineligible to vote.
• Hispanics are young, with a median age of 27, compared with 40 for white non-Hispanics. Turnout, in general, has increased among young voters, but they still vote at rates lower than for any other age group.
• Hispanics, as a group, earn less and have fewer years of education that than non-Hispanic whites, two more indicators of low voter turnout.

Hispanics “have bad demographics for voting,” said Rodolfo de la Garza, a political science professor at Columbia University.

Still, a NALEO analysis concludes that Hispanic voters can prove critical in competitive Senate races in New Jersey and Washington, and House contests in Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas and Washington.

In each state, the number of Hispanics has grown much faster than the non-Hispanic population since the start of the decade.

“There is a sense that they are getting more political power within some states,” de la Garza said. “In Texas right now, the Latino vote is important in local elections, but not as much in state elections. In California, they can influence state elections.”

Most Hispanics — with the notable exception of Cuban-Americans — traditionally have supported Democrats. But President Bush captured about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, the most ever for a GOP presidential candidate.

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