Latinos seek more say at the podium
Democrats are touting the Latino vote as crucial to the party winning back the White House in the fall. So some Latino delegates want to know why the party selected only two members of the fast-growing ethnic group to speak at the convention during prime time this week.
"I like Teddy Kennedy. But 22 minutes of the past, as opposed to two or three Latinos for the future? It's a problem," said Representative Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of California. "Lots of people have told them this, but they're going to do it their way."
The party has been wooing Latino voters, whom Democratic officials and pollsters say could make critical differences in such battleground state as Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida. But only two prominent Latinos -- Representative Bob Menendez of New Jersey, a Cuban-American, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a Mexican-American -- received speaking slots in prime time this week.
"We are upset. What has happened is, they won't let us talk. Only some people get to talk," said America Schroh, a delegate from Miami.
Henry Cisneros, a former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said the party has recognized that it might need to add at least one last-minute speaker, perhaps a Puerto Rican woman, to round out the Latino voices at the convention. "It's fixable," Cisneros said yesterday as he left a meeting of Latino delegates.
Alvaro Cifuentes, chairman of the Democratic National Committee's Hispanic Caucus, said he did not know why his fellow Latinos were not more strongly represented on the speaker list: "Fair question. I really don't have the answer."
Polls have indicated that at least 60 percent of Latinos vote Democratic. Republicans hope to lure more Latinos their way by capitalizing on President Bush's relationship with Texas Hispanics when Bush was governor, and by emphasizing such issues as abortion and gay marriage, which resonate with Latinos, a predominantly Catholic group.
Democrats say they are holding strong to their support among Latinos, in large part because of what they see as Bush's poor record on education and immigration. The New Democratic Network is set to begin running Spanish-language TV ads today in Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. The spots criticize Bush's record on health care and the minimum wage -- two issues that drew strong responses from Hispanic Caucus members during speeches by Cisneros and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
In Nevada, for example, former vice president Al Gore lost by about 20,000 votes. But the fast-growing state has acquired 240,000 new residents since 2000, and "the majority of them are Latinos," Cisneros said, giving Democrats an opportunity to take a state that has not voted for a Democrat for president in three decades.
Colorado, too, holds an opportunity for Democrats, with Attorney General Ken Salazar, a Mexican-American, leading in the polls for the US Senate seat made vacant by the retirement of Republican Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Cisneros said.
Florida's Latinos have long been Republican loyalists, with Cuban-Americans largely backing GOP candidates for president who oppose Fidel Castro. But the state also has a growing number of Puerto Rican voters who are more likely than Cuban-Americans to vote Democratic. Further, the Bush administration's tough new rules on travel to Cuba have angered some younger Cuban-Americans, who are now permitted to go to Cuba only once every three years to see family members. Presumptive nominee John F. Kerry could pick up some of those votes, which could make a critical difference in a state decided by fewer than 600 votes in 2000, Miami pollster Sergio Bendixen said.
A poll released yesterday by Democracy Corps, a Democratic group, said Bush has only 30 percent support among Hispanics polled, 5 fewer percentage points than he got in 2000 and dramatically less than Kerry's 61 percent support. The survey identified education as Latinos' highest priority.
