McCain Is Faltering Among Hispanic Voters
by: Larry Rohter
The New York Times

Española, New Mexico – In the early days of the
presidential campaign, Senator John McCain seemed to be in
a good position to win support among Hispanic voters. He
had sponsored legislation for comprehensive immigration
overhaul in Congress, made a point of speaking warmly about
the contributions of immigrants and was popular among
Latinos in Arizona, his home state, which borders three
battleground states here in the Southwest: New Mexico,
Colorado and Nevada.

But less than two weeks before Election Day, those
advantages appear to have evaporated. Recent Gallup polls
show Mr. McCain running far behind Senator Barack Obama
among Hispanic voters nationwide, only 26 percent of whom
favor the Republican. The possibility that Mr. McCain can
duplicate George W. Bush’s performance among Latinos in
2004, when Republicans won 44 percent of the vote, now
seems remote.

Both candidates are spending heavily on Spanish-language
advertising, and continue to schedule campaign events to
focus on the fast-growing Hispanic vote. Last month,
Mr. McCain held a town-hall-style meeting at a Puerto
Rican community center in central Florida; a few days
later, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, came to this heavily
Hispanic city of 9,600 people for a rally at a plaza
that dates to Spanish colonial times.

In an echo of his overall slide in the polls, some of the
issues that have hampered Mr. McCain’s candidacy turn out
to have had an even greater impact on the Hispanic
population. Latinos cite the crisis in the economy as
their biggest concern, trumping immigration and the social
conservatism that Republicans thought would help expand
Mr. McCain’s appeal among religious, family-oriented
Hispanic voters.

And if Republicans were counting on tensions between blacks
and Latinos, now the nation’s largest minority, driving
Hispanic voters away from Mr. Obama, that also has largely
failed to materialize.

Early in the primary season, when Mr. Obama was still a
newcomer little known to Latinos outside Illinois, he began
campaigning among Hispanic voters, even in states where he
knew he would lose to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, then
the favorite among Hispanics. Political analysts say
Mr. McCain has only sporadically and belatedly sought to
engage Latino voters.

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“The McCain campaign was never set up in a way that spoke
to Hispanics,” said Matthew Dowd, Mr. Bush’s senior
strategist in 2004. “Throughout the entire primary, there
was no conversation because they thought that was not
where the election was. You can’t start to campaign in
September for the general election among Hispanics. They
are very frustrated with Bush and the Republicans, so
McCain has a bigger hurdle to overcome.”

Hispanics account for three of every eight voters here in
New Mexico, where the vote has been extremely tight in the
last two presidential elections. Al Gore won this state by
just 366 votes as the Democratic nominee in 2000, and in
2004, President Bush triumphed by fewer than 6,000.

In Colorado and Nevada, Latinos account for at least
20 percent of the population and 12 percent of registered
voters. Together, the three Southwestern battleground
states have 19 electoral votes that are growing in
importance for Mr. McCain as his electoral map shrinks.

But events seem to be working in Mr. Obama’s favor.
Contrary to what non-Hispanic politicians often assume,
immigration does not rank as high on the list of Hispanic
concerns as the economy, education and health care.

Instead, surveys show that Latinos see immigration as a
tool useful in identifying who is friend and who is foe.
That may have complicated Mr. McCain’s task: despite his
sponsorship of the immigration overhaul legislation, he
is burdened by nativist elements within the Republican
Party.

“The Republican brand has been tarnished as result of
the immigration debate and the extreme rhetoric that
came out of that debate,” said Janet Murgu’a, executive
director of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic
advocacy group. “We think McCain remains an advocate of
a comprehensive approach, but his standing has been
undermined by those within his own party and the tough
immigration plank in the 2008 Republican platform.”

To woo Hispanic voters, Mr. McCain seems to have singled
out three groups for attention in the Rocky Mountain West:
Hispanic veterans, owners of small businesses and social
conservatives, especially those who are members of
Protestant evangelical groups or the charismatic Roman
Catholic movement.

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James Luján, 47, a deputy sheriff here, fits into the first
category. He is a former marine with a son serving in the
military in the Middle East, and he said he worried that
Mr. Obama would withdraw precipitously from Iraq.

“The troops need to be able to finish what they’re doing,”
Mr. Luján said. “I’ve got one son who is 14 and another
who is 8, and if we pull out right away, like Obama wants,
they’re the ones who are going to have to go back.”

His wife, Julie, 36, also supports Mr. McCain. She runs
a hair salon, sells real estate as a sideline, and was
excited by Mr. McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of
Alaska as his running mate.

“I admire a strong, hard-working woman,” Mrs. Luján said.
“We need to get out of the financial casino and be
responsible, and McCain and Palin are the people who can
do that.”

But independent political analysts point to what they
say are basic flaws in Mr. McCain’s Hispanic strategy.
Republicans “can talk all they want about abortion and
same-sex marriage, but survey after survey tells us that
even among socially conservative Hispanics, it’s the other
issues that matter most,” said Christine M. Sierra, a
professor of political science at the University of New
Mexico.

Mrs. Luján’s sister, brother and mother, who work together
at JoAnn’s Ranch-O-Casados restaurant here, strongly echoed
that assessment. JoAnn Casados, 57, argues that Mr. Obama
“sees it the way we see it.”

Ms. Casados’s son, Orlando, 39, who works in the family’s
chili business, said, “I’m worried about health care and
the price of gasoline, which has driven up the cost of
doing business, and I think Obama cares more about how
that affects people like us.”

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His sister Suzanne, 29, added, “Obama is more focused on
the things that are really important, like the economy
and health care, while McCain is up and down and all over
the place.”

Though the 2004 election showed Republicans could success-
fully appeal to Hispanic voters, that experience may
provide less of a road map this year than might be
expected. The Hispanic electorate has grown greatly since
then, its numbers swelled by several million newly
registered first-time voters: green-card holders who have
recently become American citizens and young bilingual and
bicultural Latinos who are sometimes referred to as
“Generation ñ.”

In addition, the bulk of the Latino vote remains
concentrated in states not in play, like California,
staunchly for Mr. Obama, and Texas, a McCain stronghold.
That means the Hispanic vote is likely to be decisive
only here in the Southwest and in Florida, where an
influx of Puerto Ricans, who traditionally vote heavily
Democratic, and Central and South American newcomers,
has somewhat diluted the importance of the historically
Republican Cuban-American vote.

The Obama campaign in particular has sought to seize
advantage of those shifting demographic trends, organizing
a voter registration drive in states with large or growing
Hispanic populations. In Nevada, the number of registered
Hispanic voters has doubled since 2004, to about 120,000,
which is seen as a factor that could shift the balance
there.

“Nevada is very dynamic, very volatile,” said Efra’n
Escobedo, senior director of voter engagement at National
Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, an
advocacy group. “We’re talking about people who are truly
the swing vote in Nevada, with very little party
affiliation or allegiance to any particular party or
candidate.”

Initial concerns that Mr. Obama would not be able to win
over Hispanic voters who supported Mrs. Clinton in the
Democratic primaries have largely disappeared, though
signs of what sociologists call “black-brown tensions”
still surface. For instance, John Medina, a 70-year-old
Navy retiree living east of here, has a McCain-Palin
sign in his yard and when asked why he favored the
Republican nominee, he replied, “Because he’s not black.”

More common, however, was the attitude that Ms. Casados
expressed. “We need change, so the fact that Obama is not
an Anglo appeals to me,” she said. “He understands what
discrimination is about, and if he gets in there and does
a good job, that will make it easier for all the rest of
us, whether black, Hispanic or Indian, to get past that
problem.”