Massachusetts cities with the largest Latino populations voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's Democratic primaries, increasing pressure on Barack Obama to focus more on the nation's largest, fast-growing minority group.
In Lawrence, Chelsea, and Holyoke, the cities with the highest proportion of Latinos in the state, Clinton took more than 60 percent of the Democratic vote. In Lawrence, a whopping 74 percent voted for Clinton. She also squeaked out a victory in Springfield, which has a significant Latino and black population.
Some analysts and community organizers said Obama failed to campaign among Latinos in Massachusetts as early and aggressively as Clinton, and perhaps took their vote for granted after he was endorsed by two key Democrats, Governor Deval Patrick and Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
Others said that Latinos know Clinton better because of her early work on Latino issues and her position as a US senator from New York and as wife of the former president.
Clinton won 56 percent of the Latino Democratic vote in Massachusetts, according to MSNBC exit polls, while 36 percent went for Obama.
"It says that our strategy is working," said Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli, director of Hispanic communications for the Clinton campaign, which she said started early canvassing neighborhoods and courting endorsements from such Latino officials as state Representative William Lantigua of Lawrence and former US housing secretary Henry Cisneros.
Analysts said the lesson for Obama as he heads into Texas and other states with significant Latino populations is to work harder to get his own message out.
Although Clinton's widespread support among Latinos helped her win states such as Nevada, where 64 percent of Latinos favored her in exit polls, the vote has been narrower in states such as Arizona.
"What we've seen is the longer people become familiar with Obama's thinking, the more prone they are to vote for him," said Miren Uriarte, director of the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, who supports Obama.
But others pointed out that Latinos, like all voters, want to hear candidates' positions on the issues and that Clinton was better in Massachusetts about disseminating her plans. Nationally, a Pew Hispanic Center poll last year found that immigration was a key issue for Latinos, but it still ranked behind education, healthcare, the economy, and crime.
In Lawrence, Obama had a minimal presence, with flimsy black-and-white fliers and a smattering of telephone calls. In contrast, Clinton's camp touted endorsements from the Spanish-language newspaper Siglo 21 and amassed support from community leaders such as Isabel Melendez, who called a local radio show to exhort people to vote even though she was visiting Puerto Rico.
Pedro Payano, an Obama organizer in Lawrence, said he tried to get out the word about Obama's social reforms, but said many Latinos in Lawrence had already made up their mind.
Former state senator Jarrett Barrios, a Clinton backer, said Latino support for Clinton isn't anti-Obama, despite others' concerns that past tensions between black and Hispanic residents over immigration may have played a role. He said many Latinos are attracted to Clinton's struggle to become the first woman president. "It's not about Obama," Barrios said. "She inspires us."
Other Democrats said they just hoped that the Latino vote would remain Democratic. In 2004, President George W. Bush won about 40 percent of the vote.
"It shows that the Latino vote will be a Democrat vote," said Gloribell Mota, a former candidate for state representative in East Boston who is director of education and training for the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
