For Clinton, Latino vote could swing the deal

Votes for Clinton, not against Obama
In exit polls, Latino Democrats gave Obama high marks for his leadership qualities and the freshness of his ideas, but even though they said they would back him in the general election should he win the Democratic nomination, they gave their votes in the primaries and caucuses to Clinton.

Roberto Suro, a professor at the University of Southern California and former director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said Clinton had a 15-year head start on Obama in cultivating support in Latino communities thanks to the popularity of her husband, who was able to maintain a 70 percent approval rating among Latino voters even at the height of his impeachment battle in 1998.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Latinos remembered the Clinton administration as “great years for working families.”

“They were years when the minimum wage was raised, the years when we invested in housing,” Villaraigosa said. “So a long history is what it comes down to.”

Clinton also got a faster start in targeting Latino voters in her campaign, the first to be run by a Latina, Patti Solis Doyle.

Early on, Clinton lined up endorsements from a wide array of influential Latino figures, including Villaraigosa; Henry Cisneros, the first Latino mayor of a major U.S. city, San Antonio, before becoming housing secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration; Raul Yzaguirre, founder of the National Council for La Raza; Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey; and Dolores Huerta, the legendary activist who helped organize the farm workers with César Chavez —whose brother, Richard Chavez, also endorsed Clinton.

Kennedy’s impact questioned
Obama began a targeted Latino outreach much later, countering with a highly publicized endorsement from Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, a popular figure in the Latino community.

Video Obama gets big endorsement Jan. 28: Barack Obama's campaign gets a boost as Caroline and Ted Kennedy endorse him for president. NBC's Brian Mooar reports. NBC News Channel

“He got a lot of play for Kennedy,” acknowledged Ace Smith, Clinton’s California campaign manager. “But we had an intensive surrogate effort that went on for a month.”

Other analysts questioned the significance of Kennedy’s endorsement, noting that much of his appeal lay in reminding voters about his brothers, President John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Many voters, Latino and otherwise, were born after 1968, when Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and have little or no firsthand memory of the brothers, but they have vivid memories of Bill Clinton.

Clinton “worked hard for a long time to capture the Hispanic vote,” Suro said. “Obama’s own advisers admit they left a little bit to be desired in their pursuit of the Hispanic vote.”

‘Too late’ for Obama?
All that could add up to trouble for Obama in Texas, whose primary is March 4.

John Garcia, a specialist in Latino politics at the University of Arizona, said the closeness of the Democratic race amplified the significance of Clinton’s advantage among Latinos. Latinos comprise a third of the state’s voters, compared with African-Americans, who have turned out in equally large proportions for Obama but make up only 11 percent of the Texas electorate.

Roberto de la Garza, a specialist in Latino politics at Columbia University, told EFE that “it’s too late” for the Obama campaign to make up the lost ground.

“The reality is that [Obama] has not been much in touch with Hispanics,” he said.

Picking the president: The candidates Click to visit that candidate's MSNBC page or click the XML symbol for an RSS feed. John McCain                Barack Obama

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