In Lawrence, political clout growing among Latinos

LAWRENCE -- Latinos have become crucial to any electoral victory in Lawrence, and both candidates in next month's mayoral election know it.

The incumbent, Mayor Michael Sullivan, a white Republican, and his opponent, Marcos Devers, a city councilor who is Dominican, have been buying up advertising in Spanish-language newspapers, logging hours on Spanish-language radio stations, shaking hands in Latino neighborhoods, and courting Latino community leaders.

''To win would be a very difficult thing without the Latino vote," said Carlos Matos, a city councilor who placed third to Sullivan in the mayoral primary election, held in September. ''It would be foolish to think you could do it without them. And it would be ridiculous to exclude the largest ethnic group and think you're going to be representing the city."

Elsewhere in the state -- and nationally -- community leaders lament the fact that the political participation of Latinos falls alarmingly short of their rapidly growing numbers. Not in Lawrence.

Here, about 60 percent of the city's population is Latino. And Latinos make up 50.1 percent of registered voters. Four of the nine city councilors are Latino, as are two of the six school committee members. Massachusetts will see its first Latino mayor in Lawrence, many people say, and soon.

For Latino political activists, the ballot in Lawrence's recent municipal primary was the stuff of dreams: three Latino candidates for mayor, three for councilor at large, five for district council seats.

''About six years ago, we saw the reality that we had tremendous political power if we wanted it," said Guilmo Barrio, a longtime local political organizer. ''We were good in the numbers, but we were invisible. Then we said, 'Enough is enough.' "

Since then, community leaders have organized efforts to urge Latinos to become US citizens and register to vote; recruited Latino residents to collect signatures and donate at fund-raisers; and sought out candidates from the Latino community to run for the City Council and the school committee.

Latinos have come into their own politically the way immigrant Irish and Italians did before them in first half of the 20th century -- by the sheer force of numbers, by buying houses and enrolling their children in schools, by starting their own newspapers and radio shows, by taking up citizenship and forming political machines.

The center of political gravity in Lawrence used to be squarely on the south side, where the white population was traditionally concentrated. Now it is edging north, to where most of the Latino immigrants live.

The rising numbers of Dominicans who are becoming citizens have boosted the Latino share of the electorate, said Rafael Tejeda, bilingual coordinator in the city's elections department. Lawrence activists said naturalization rates have spiked since the Dominican Republic approved dual citizenship in 1994, which allows Dominicans to become US citizens without relinquishing Dominican citizenship.

In the Dominican Republic, politics is as much a national pastime as baseball. Lawrence's Dominicans remain invested in the politics of their birthplace: The city has outposts of three Dominican political parties, and election days in the Dominican Republic are still big days in the Merrimack Valley.

''The Dominicans bring that in their blood, let me tell you," said Isabel Melendez, who has been a political organizer in Lawrence for almost four decades and is Puerto Rican. ''When they have an election there, you would think it was here. In the Dominican Republic, you listen to politics from morning to night every day."

Voter registrations have risen also, because many of the city's Latinos are putting down roots. In city schools, 85.4 percent of the students are Latino, according to the state Department of Education. A recent study funded by the Malden-based Immigrant Learning Center found that the number of homes owned by Latino immigrants rose by 600 percent between 1990 and 2000. Two Spanish-language newspapers -- Siglo21 and Rumbo -- are now based in Lawrence.

And making their presence felt in local politics has been easier for the city's Latinos since a 1998 US Department of Justice suit, filed under the Voting Rights Act, required the city to redraw electoral boundaries to give them a stronger voice in electing local officials. The boundaries were redrawn again a few years ago.

Latino voter strength has not translated into easy victories for Latino candidates. In this year's preliminary mayoral election, there were three Latino challengers, but Sullivan received more votes than all of them combined. The general election contest next month will be between Sullivan and Devers, who got 1,942 votes to Sullivan's 3,567 in the September contest. Tejeda said that Latinos comprised more than 46 percent of the vote.

Melendez and others said Sullivan did well because he heavily courted Latino voters.

''Michael Sullivan, even during his administration, his personal assistant is Latino," Barrio said. ''And he put the other people in positions where we said, 'Ok, the man is recognizing us, we have a Latino community here that is a force.' "

In an interview in his office last week, Sullivan, whose background is Irish and Italian, played down the significance of ethnicity. ''People are going to vote, I hope, based on where they see the city going, rather than where an elected official comes from," he said.

But just in case, Sullivan, who was elected in 2001, has covered his bases. His city hall employs many more Latinos than his predecessors have, according to Melendez and Barrio, and he always travels with a staff member who is fluent in Spanish. He also has some important allies within the city's Latino community, including state representative William Lantigua, who commands a healthy political machine.

Melendez has watched the rise of the Latino electorate in Lawrence for decades.

She arrived in 1959, when there were only four Latino families in the city. ''I suffered like hell," she said. In the 1970s, Cubans began moving in, taking advantage of inexpensive housing and plentiful mill and manufacturing jobs. They were followed by Puerto Ricans and then, in the mid-1980s, by Dominicans.

Melendez's father was a political organizer in Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico, where she was born, and she soon began trying to organize Latinos in Lawrence, urging those who were not citizens to get naturalized and registering people to vote. For three decades, she has hosted a Spanish-language radio show called ''The Voice of the Community," a talk show that focuses on politics. Asked how many listeners she has, she said: ''Oh, please! Thousands."

She ran for mayor in 2001 and lost to Sullivan by fewer than 1,000 votes. He had spent three times as much as she had. After the election, Melendez formed Voters In Action, to help mobilize Latino voters. She and others in the city say she has managed to register thousands of new voters.

On a recent afternoon, Melendez was sitting at her desk in the Voters In Action office, on Common Street, downtown. She and volunteer Cookie Laboe were rushing out of the storefront every so often, stopping passersby to ask them in Spanish whether they were registered to vote.

A couple of doors down, Heidi Vargas did not need convincing. Her parents, who are both Dominican immigrants, made sure Vargas, 22, registered to vote as soon as she was old enough.

''My parents have always been political," she said, sitting behind the bar at her family's El Cesar Restaurant. ''That's the way I was brought up. I think it's great, we're now a community that's standing out. Now we're middle class and more. There are a lot of Hispanic homeowners now. Hispanics help each other out. I hope I'll see a Hispanic mayor soon."

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at abraham@globe.com.