Latinos poised for key role in primaries

Obama scrambles to close gap amid Clinton popularity

Barack Obama supporters attended a town hall meeting at Los Angeles Trade Technical College in Los Angeles on Thursday. (EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES - Latino voters are poised to play a pivotal role in Tuesday's Democratic primaries, giving a likely boost to Hillary Clinton and frustrating the momentum enjoyed in the past week by Barack Obama, who is struggling to make himself known among a voter group that has been overwhelmingly supportive of his New York rival.

Voters and political officials say that Obama's failure to connect effectively with Latinos is driven less by historical tensions between black and Latino communities than by the fact that Latinos know and like Clinton and have had little contact with the Illinois senator. Still, it could cost Obama critical delegates in states with significant Latino communities, including California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, New York, and New Jersey.

"We all like Obama. Under any other circumstances, we would probably be supporting Obama. I would probably be yelling and screaming for Obama if Hillary were not in the race," said Representative Jose Serrano, a New York Democrat who has endorsed Clinton. But Serrano said former president Clinton and the senator "understand who we are" and have been diligent advocates on issues important to Latinos.

Obama, the first African-American with a serious chance of winning the presidency, noted that he won his Illinois Senate seat with solid Hispanic backing, and merely needs to get out his message to Latino voters. "The Latinos who know me have voted for me in overwhelming numbers," Obama told reporters recently. "When they know my track record, I do well."

Obama's mistake, some Latino leaders complained, is that he waited too long to court the critical voter group. But others noted that Obama, once considered a long shot for the nomination, had no choice but to focus his energies on early states such as Iowa, where his win helped catapult him to prominence in the race.

"It's a new group for him. He spent a year in Iowa, and I doubt he met many Latinos in Iowa," said Bob Mulholland, former chairman of the California Democratic Party.

Scrambling to close the gap, the Obama camp has unleashed a series of Spanish-language ads and dispatched Latino surrogates around the region to campaign for him.

Obama last week held an outdoor town meeting in a Latino neighborhood of Los Angeles, embracing California Representative Xavier Becerra and noting the names of every local Hispanic official in the crowd. Obama referred to questioners as "brother," and peppered his answers with appeals to join people of all races toward a common goal.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, also used his longtime relationship with Latino voters to stump for Obama in New Mexico and California over the weekend, underscoring Obama's work on the failed immigration reform bill last year. But Obama still faces a steep uphill battle in wresting Latino votes away from Clinton.

Hispanics are "clearly her strongest group, and clearly his weakest group," said Gary M. Segura, a political science professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and a specialist on Latino politics.

Political leaders and analysts, while agreeing there has been interracial discord in the past between blacks and Latinos, rejected the notion that Hispanics were reluctant to vote for Obama because of his race.

"We find it extremely frustrating that there's this conversation out there about Latinos not being willing to support an African-American. It's simply not true," said Cecilia Muñoz, senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza, noting that most members of the Congressional Black Caucus have large Latino populations in their districts.

Maria Elena Durazo, president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and an Obama supporter, said "it's no different from any other community when they're frustrated, they want a job," and may blame another ethnic group for taking those jobs. But she also noted that African-American leaders marched in pro-immigration parades.

"There is a history of tension between the African-American and Latino communities. It's been there, but it's been largely overcome," said Marshall Ganz, a Harvard lecturer and longtime labor organizer who worked with the United Farm Workers' Cesar Chavez. Obama "isn't known," said Ganz, who is working for Obama. "As he becomes known, he's going to become a very appealing candidate."

Exit polling data, however, suggest contrasting trends between African-American and Latino voters.

Obama has captured a huge majority of the black vote so far, and has inspired a strong turnout among African-American voters, said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Obama's win in heavily white Iowa, and his dominance in rural white counties in Nevada, helped convince black voters elsewhere that he was electable, prompting a huge turnout for him in South Carolina among black Democrats.

Obama's popularity among black voters gives him an advantage in Super Tuesday contests in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Missouri, and could blunt Clinton's edge in New York and New Jersey, Bositis said.

But Clinton, with a long list of endorsements from Latino elected officials and a longtime relationship with the Hispanic community, is well positioned in delegate-rich California, where Latinos comprise 14 to 17 percent of Democratic primary voters. While no Democratic contest is winner-take-all, a solid showing for Clinton among Latino voters could deliver her victories in states where Obama has been catching up, analysts say.

The Latino preference for Clinton is apparent on the campaign trail. In Nevada, Latina members of the Culinary Workers union shouted "Hillary! Hillary!" at a caucus site, defying their union's endorsement of Obama. Exit polls showed that Clinton bested Obama by a 64 to 26 percent margin among Latinos in Nevada, where caucuses were moved up in part to give more attention to Hispanic voters.

"Bill Clinton did an excellent job of doing outreach" among Latinos, and Hillary Clinton is closely association with the Clinton years, said Representative Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who is supporting Obama.

With just days to go before 22 states go to the polls in the Democratic primary, Obama has little time to catch up among Latinos. The Illinois senator did pick up the endorsement on Friday of the 650,000-member California Service Employees International Union, which has many Hispanics and which Durazo said has a strong get-out-the-vote organization.

"It's a real challenge for him," Kennedy said in an interview. But "I feel if people think about it and are conscious of [his message], he'll pick up steam," he said.

Rockard J. Delgadillo, the Los Angeles City Attorney, said he believes fellow Hispanics are moving toward Obama. To many Democrats, "When I was making my decision, I listened to [other Democrats] talk about how Bill Clinton was the first African-American president," Delgadillo said.

"I thought to myself, Obama could be the first Latino president."