Hillary needs Hispanic vote if she's to win

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is one of many Hispanic politicos who have jumped on the Clinton bandwagon -- photograph provided by Hillary Clinton for President

When Sen. Hillary R. Clinton, D-N.Y., thinks about being elected president later this year, her dreams include masses of brown people turning out to support her.

But if a new study of potential Hispanic voter support is any indication, she shouldn’t assume that she has that voter bloc locked up.

The theory put forth by Clinton camp followers is that getting significant support in places such as New York, California and Illinois (all of which have large Latino populations and primary elections on Feb. 5) will enable the one-time first lady to overcome her loss in a lily-white place like Iowa, or the fact that she barely won in equally-pale New Hampshire.

Clinton thinks she can win those states with their significant numbers of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in part because she expects to take the Hispanic vote, which in Chicago alone can potentially account for just over 200,000 of the city’s nearly 1.3 million registered voters – with another 150,000 Latino voters across the rest of Illinois.

But the National Hispanic Institute released a study Tuesday indicating Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is now the favored one. Clinton may very well have to scrap with Obama for the votes of people with ethnic roots from Spanish-speaking countries.

Four of every five people surveyed said they plan to take a Democratic ballot come Election Day (79 percent, to be exact). Of those, 39 percent support Obama, compared to 34 percent for Clinton.

Ethnicity does not help Bill Richardson among the institute’s voters. The Irish/Mexican-American who is governor of New Mexico only got 9 percent support among Hispanic people, which ranks him down there with Southerner John Edwards’ 10 percent backing.

For Clinton, the new survey is a radical drop from a Pew Hispanic Center study released in December that showed Clinton leading Obama 59 percent to 15 percent among Latino people.

Even worse for Obama in that survey was the fact that in California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas (the five states with the largest Hispanic populations), he only got 6 percent of the prospective Latino vote.

Basically, Clinton once had hopes that a large Hispanic mass of voters could help her overcome early losses in places where the percentage of Latino people is so low (about 2 percent) as to be irrelevant. Now, she doesn’t.

Personally, I am not convinced that a seismic shift has occurred in the Hispanic political landscape.

I never detected any great love for Clinton in Chicago’s Little Village or Humboldt Park neighborhoods, or in suburban places like Chicago Heights or Cicero. I doubt there is any different feeling in places such as Olvera Street in Los Angeles, Calle Ocho in Miami or anywhere in San Antonio.

But there was the feeling among some people that Clinton’s election was inevitable, and that one might as well get on board so they could draw from the political well of favors if she manages to win the big election in November.

Now, Obama is looking like he might have a chance of dousing Clinton’s political dreams with a bucket of water and watch them melt (insert your favorite joke about the “Wizard of Oz” here), although the better cinematic allusion for the 2008 Democratic presidential primary might be to Rocky I or II, where the two fighters went the full 15 rounds without a knockdown and left the ring two battered, bloodied pulps.

When Obama suddenly appeared to be a front-runner following the Iowa caucuses, many Hispanic people were suddenly willing to shift their support. Who knows? Maybe they will shift back to Clinton after New Hampshire’s primary?

Does this mean that Latinos are basically fair-weather fans in this election cycle? Probably. It’s almost like we’re Democrats by default; not because of any love for any one candidate.

“Richardson’s showing in particular, both in this survey and in the early state primaries and caucuses, indicates that the so-called Latino sleeping giant in the electorate may remain in slumber well past this coming November,” said Ernesto Nieto, president of the institute.

Basically, Hispanic people want to be sure that whoever does become president is someone willing to acknowledge Latino existence and is not openly hostile to our concerns on various issues.

The latter is the reason why the Republicans are failing to keep the large amount of Hispanic support (as much as 44 percent of the electorate, according to some pundits) that existed for President Bush during his two election campaigns.

The institute’s survey indicated that only 16 percent of Latinos had any intention of taking a GOP ballot. Among those voters, so-called liberal candidates Rudy Giuliani and John McCain were split pretty evenly, with none of the conservative candidates who have talked tough about illegal immigration garnering anything more than single-digit support.

To ask Democratic political operatives who support Clinton why Obama ever registered so low in polls among Hispanic people, they will tell you that Latinos were still angry that Obama dove for political cover in 2006 and voted “yes” on a bill approving construction of a wall along the nearly 2,000-mile border separating the United States from Mexico.

The ironic part is that Clinton also voted “yes” on that bill.

But she has included several Hispanic people in prominent positions in her campaign, including campaign manager Patty Solis Doyle, the brother of a Chicago alderman.

Plus, Hispanic people are not blind.

We saw the hostility that social conservative Republicans (the same people who want to believe that all Hispanics ought to be illegal) showed toward her husband when he was president – and still show toward her in their unguarded moments. It’s almost like we are willing to give Hillary a break because of that old saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

The real test of Hispanic support for Clinton is going to come Jan. 19 when voters in Nevada (with its 23.5 percent Hispanic population) hold their presidential caucuses.

To that end, the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring a “black-brown issues” debate, scheduled for Tuesday in Las Vegas. The Nevada caucuses will give the first real test of whether Clinton understands the concerns of Hispanic voters, which aren’t that different from others. The institute’s study found the Iraq War was concern number 1, with immigration, education and the economy following.

A solid performance in Nevada could be the move that sets the stage for a mass of Latinos across the United States pushing Clinton ahead of Obama in Democratic primaries.

Without a solid grasp of the Hispanic vote, Clinton would have to settle for a Latino priest to conduct a mass, of sorts, for the death of her presidential dream.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: A summary of the National Hispanic Institute’s study can be found here. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/1/prweb603941.htm