Inside City Hall
Panel Sounds Off on Latino Vote
NY1 News (Aired Novembe 15, 2012)

To view video, click here

Inside City Hall’s Errol Louis asked Ruben Estrada, the chairman of the state’s Latino National Republican Coalition, Democratic Consultant Eduardo Castell, Angelo Falcón, the President of the National Institute for Latino Policy and Juan Manuel Benitez, from our sister station NY1 Noticias and the host of Pura Politica, about Latino voting in the presidential election and upcoming mayoral race.

U.S. Hispanics to join together to harness the power that
has given them their participation in the presidential
Originally posted by NILP
by Mercedes Gallego, New York Correspondent
Diario La Rioja (Spain) (November 11, 2012)
translated from Spanish by NiLP

“For over 30 years, we been saying that the Hispanic vote was a sleeping giant. Well, the giant awoke.” Angelo Falcón, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy (NILP), has found in this election vindication for a lifetime of claims. For the first time, U.S. Hispanics have been instrumental in winning the White House. It’s time to pull their weight and collect on the bill for the loyalty shown to the Democratic Party, receiving 71% of the Hispanic vote.

Contrary to popular belief, that percentage is no record. Jimmy Carter won 76% of the Hispanic vote in 1976 and even before they beat Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson, with 90% and 87%, respectively. What has changed this time is the increase in population. Just in the 2000s the Hispanic population increased by 15.2 million. Hispanics are now 22 million potential voters, of which 12.2 were registered to vote and cast 10% of all votes. Each month, 50,000 new Hispanic youth reach voting age, according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center. In other words, that is 600,000 new voters each year. And while Anglo youth increased 10%, Hispanics increased 62%.

Of these, 74% of those under age 30 voted for Obama, compared to 67% of whites. The numbers could not speak more clearly. This is the greatest political treasure chest the Democratic Party has to retain power. The low turnout so far this sector has had has only shown that its potential can double. Hence the “myopia” that the former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, married to a Mexican, attributed to the Republican Party for its anti-immigration policies. “The future of our party is to reach out consistently, to have a tone that is open and welcoming to people who share our values,” he said in September during the convention in Tampa (Florida).

Laws like the one in Arizona and Mitt Romney’s speech “promoting self-deportation” making life miserable for the undocumented has also lost them the Asian vote, the largest demographic capture the Democratic Party in this election. Obama received 73% this year, compared to 62% in 2008.

Until yesterday in Florida dropped Romney’s score after an agonizing count. The visionary role of Jeb Bush, to oppose a decade of anti-immigration policies of his party and warning that it would come with a political cost, put at the head of the Republican pack that aims to recapture the White House in 2016. Many also speak of Marco Rubio, a young senator from Florida who came to power with the support of the Tea Party movement but has found a more moderate voice. His name was promoted as vice president to Romney, who ultimately chose someone more radical, Paul Ryan, to mobilize the right-wing base.

Teresa Navarro, president of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (Plan), is convinced that Rubio would not be a threat to the Democrats. “He’s too extreme, people do not identify with him,” she says. Rubio, who grew up in Nevada, is of Cuban descent, a group with very different experiences and interests to those of other Hispanics.

Juan Andrade, director of the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute (USHLI), asks not to consider the Latino electorate as a monolithic group with predetermined loyalties, because that would make them lose strength. “We are all partisan, independent and nonpartisan.” U.S. Hispanics come from 21 countries, but 64% are of Mexican origin, compared with 3.5% Cuban, which are concentrated between Florida and New Jersey. While Cubans are guaranteed political asylum in the U.S. upon setting foot on its territory, Mexicans often spend their entire lives in the country without getting legal status. Even Puerto Ricans, who are American citizens by birthm account for 9% and sympathize more with immigration problems.

More Public Sector Jobs

“I really don’t care a damn about the political fortunes of Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush or any of them,” the NILP President declared. Falcón does not believe that any of them can compete in four years with the Democrats. Neither George W. Bush, who was the Republican who received the most percentage of Hispanic votes in history to reach 40%, “with the best propaganda campaign that would have been,” explains Navarro. “They sent a CD that was very well done to all Hispanics in seven states.”

What Falcón explains is that the Democrats need to start paying back the the loyalty of their community with tangible changes that meet their needs. That would have to start with the promise of immigration reform and the increasing number of Hispanics in the government workforce. “We are the community most underrepresented in the federal government,” he explains. “We represent 16% of the population and 13% of the labor force, but only 8% of the federal charges,” he adds.

Obama said the name of both the first Hispanic justice of the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, prompting for the first time that The New York Times and other newspapers to discuss for the first whether it is better to speak of “Latino” or “Hispanic,” without coming to a conclusion.

The keynote speech at the Democratic convention was given by the mayor of San Antonio, Julian Castro, who in the opinion of Falcón is still a very local politician. Among those most mentoined to exercise Hispanic leadership are the former mayor of Los Angeles and chairman of the Democratic Convention this year, Antonio Villaraigosa, former Secretary of Housing Henry Cisneros with Bill Clinton, the former governor of New Mexico and former ambassador to the UN with Clinton, Bill Richardson, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the president of the National Council of La Raza Janet Murguia, president of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Xavier Becerra and Chicago Congressman Luis Gutierrez.

“Maybe the country is ready for a Hispanic president, but the Hispanic community may not be,” in Falcón’s judgment. “It is time to come together with a common strategy and force national political leaders to stop remembering us only when elections come. We must use the power we have, that’s the real challenge.”

Latinos and the
2nd Obama Admnistration
Originally posted by NILP
By Charles Kamasaki (November 13, 2012)

For perhaps the first time in history, the Latino vote is widely acknowledged to have proven decisive in a Presidential election. How should the community’s advocates react? The natural tendency is to push for more across the board, hoping that the community’s greater political power will automatically translate into public policy wins.

While surely there’s some truth to this assumption, it won’t be easy. Getting anything done in today’s highly-charged, deeply polarized environment is very difficult. And paradoxically, the prominence of the Hispanic vote may actually reduce the incentive for some partisans on both sides of the aisle to enact policies their political opponents might get credit for.

As Latino advocates consider what to do next, it would behoove us to step back, take a hard look at the current landscape, and make some strategic, intentional decisions about where we allocate our collective advocacy resources. Let’s start by taking a hard look at what just happened.

First, the good news: the absolute number of Hispanic voters in 2012 increased substantially over 2008 – a significant milestone given that overall turnout probably went down a bit.[1] As many as three-quarters of Latino voters supported the winner, President Obama, according to the Impremedia/Latino Decisions poll, which is likely more reliable than the media consortium’s exit poll.

Nine newly-elected Representatives will join the Congressional Hispanic Caucus next year, and Ted Cruz will join Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez in the Senate. To the surprise of many, a ballot initiative on in-state tuition for undocumented students won a major victory in Maryland. And this hasn’t gone unnoticed. Dozens of reporters, politicians, and pundits have noted the community’s growing clout, often ably assisted by press events and news releases issued by Latino advocates.

However, one of the biggest dangers advocates face is believing our own spin. Without in any way denigrating the progress we’ve made as a result of major civic engagement efforts by many of our organizations, if we parse the data carefully there are some dark clouds hidden behind the silver lining.

On the electoral front, a major long term concern is that the Hispanic electorate is not keeping up with the community’s population growth. “Straight line” growth – that is, replication of the 27-28% increases in actual voters that took place over the last two cycles – should have produced about 12.4 million Hispanic voters this year, but it appears that total Latino 2012 turnout will be below 12 million.[2]

A related concern is that the talk about the importance of the Hispanic vote was not matched by commensurate investments in expanding the electorate. As a result, hardly a dime was invested in nonpartisan citizenship or voter registration work in non-battleground states like California, Texas, New York, Illinois, or New Mexico, which have the greatest concentrations of potential – but not yet actual – Latino voters.

On the policy front, the ideological make-up of Congress hardly changed at all, and some key allies like DREAM Act sponsors Richard Lugar in the Senate and Howard Berman in the House, won’t be returning next year. This means that translating the community’s growing electoral power into policy change will remain difficult at best.

Allocating one’s advocacy resources involve inevitable trade-offs: short-term vs. long term, pushing the envelope vs. settling for a compromise, asserting parochial interest vs. working in broader coalitions, and so on. There are no “right” answers, and obviously every institution and advocate will do what they have to do on their own top priorities. But events require us to concentrate collectively on at least two major fronts right now.

The first involves imminent debates over how to address the “fiscal cliff.” Representing a community with both an immediate need for jobs and long-term human capital investments, Hispanic advocates should push for some form of immediate job creation effort and fight equally hard to protect key education and workforce programs. Achieving these goals likely will require both substantial new revenue and some entitlement reform over the long-term, meaning pitched battles with some conservatives on taxes and uncomfortable discussions with some traditional allies on entitlements.

The second is immigration reform. While it’s axiomatic that most of us will be calling for reform, there are at least three things we haven’t always done that we need to do now.

One is greater outreach to those not yet persuaded that reform is necessary or desirable. Enactment of a bill will require at least 30-35 Republican votes in the House and five-to-seven in the Senate. Only if we work on a bipartisan basis using all of our collective resources are we likely to achieve these goals.

Two, we need to continue to hold the Administration’s feet to the fire, including demanding expansion of deferred deportation to cover, at a minimum, the parents and siblings of U.S. citizen children.

But three, and this is the hard part, at the appropriate time we’ll need to be prepared to compromise when the time comes.

As immediate developments require a focus on these and other short term policy priorities, it will be equally important to focus on some crucial long term interests. Arguably the most important of these is growing the Latino electorate.

While we can and should celebrate the 11-12 million Hispanics who voted, out of slightly over 14 million registered, we cannot forget the 10 million Latino citizens of voting age who are not yet registered to vote, a group that will grow by over 500,000 per year. There are certain inherent challenges: this population is disproportionately young and low-income, has relatively low levels of educational attainment, and is highly mobile. In addition, voter ID laws and other artificial barriers are not likely to go away soon.

Charles Kamasakiis Executive Vice President of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). He has worked for NCLR for the last 32 years; his first role with organization was at a South Texas-based program where he specialized in supporting affordable housing construction. He has since headed their Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation and directed their Policy Analysis Center. Prior to working for the NCLR, he specialized in providing elected officials with technical assistance in housing and community development. He has held leadership positions with the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the National Immigration Law Center. Charles is the co-author, with Raul Yzaguirre, of the seminal paper, “Black-Hispanic Tensions: One Perspective,” Journal of Intergroup Relations (Winter 1994-5) and is currently taking a one-year partial leave of absence to write a book on immigration policy and politics. He can be reached at ckamasaki@nclr.org.

Endnotes
1. As of November 10, CNN reported a total of just over 120 million votes had been cast in 2012, compared to 130 million in 2008. However, votes are still being counted in a number of states, and decisions about which provisional ballots will be counted are still being made. Nate Cohn of the New Republic’s Electionate blog estimated on November 8 that more than seven million votes remained to be counted. Given population growth, one would have expected, other things being equal, for overall turnout to have increased slightly, so even if 2012 voter totals match those of 2008, the turnout rate overall almost certainly went down.

2. The news media consortium’s initial exit poll results estimated that 10% of all voters were Latino. Historically, this exit poll has substantially over-estimated the Hispanic share of the overall electorate, often by more than a percentage point. The United States Hispanic Leadership Institute and the William C. Velasquez Research Institute both circulated preliminary estimates suggesting the Hispanics comprised about 9% of the total electorate in 2012. Thus, the lower bound for Latino turnout in 2012 is probably about 11.25 million (9% Hispanic share of 125 million total voters); the likely upper bound is the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Official’s pre-election projection of 12.2 million. Earlier this summer, NCLR projected 11.8 million Latino voters in 2012. The best data on Latino voters won’t be available until next year, when the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey results are released.