Hispanic Leaders Want Latinos to Flex Political Muscle
WASHINGTON, Oct 20 – For several weekends this August, Tedman Martinez of New London would go pick up his 71-year-old mother Zenaida Martinez at her home, which is only two blocks away from his house, to take her out. But they didn’t go shopping, out to eat or to the movies. Instead they went voter-hunting.
Zenaida Martinez said that she and her son would stroll along Federal Street, Michael Road and Crystal Avenue – areas of the city where many of the Hispanic residents live- to “knock on every door” and talk to fellow Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic neighbors to ask them to register to vote.
The Martinezes are not affiliated with any political party. He works as a guidance counselor at New London High School, and she is a kindergarten teacher in the bilingual program at Edgerton School. Strong advocates of empowerment through voting, they volunteered in a statewide Hispanic voter registration drive last summer.
In New London, the group registered a total of 100 Hispanics.
“It is a small number,” Tedman Martinez said, “but each vote counts.”
The combination of Hispanics being the country’s fastest growing population group and memories of the key role they played in Florida in the 2000 election has made the community one of the most sought-after in political campaigns this year.
There are 40 million Hispanics living in the United States today, five million more than in 2000, according to the Census. By 2050, the Census Bureau estimates, one in every four Americans will be Hispanic.
In Connecticut, Hispanics represent 10 percent of the population and, in New London, almost 20 percent. Still, they are the most underrepresented group among registered voters in the state, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
The Martinez family knows registering Hispanics is not an easy task.
“Latinos need still a lot of motivation to go to vote,” said Tedman Martinez. “They don’t identify with the process. Many only see themselves as Puerto Ricans or Dominicans; they still don’t think of themselves as Americans.”
Another reason for their apathy, he suggested, is a lost faith in politicians, “given the corruption in many Latin American countries.”
Nonetheless, Puerto Ricans, who constitute the biggest Latino group in Connecticut, have a record of high turnouts in the island’s elections.
“In Puerto Rico 85 percent of the population votes, and here it is less than 25 percent,” said Luis Martinez-Fernandez, director of the Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies program at the University of Central Florida.
“It is not easy to vote here,” said Edna Negron, the director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration in Hartford. “It is not a user-friendly system, plus there are so many different elections it is confusing: Every two years we have congressmen running, every four years, the President, every six, the senators, and then [there are] the local elections.”
When the census has asked Latinos the reason why they don’t vote, they often cite lack of time.
“They say their employers don’t give the time,” said Clarisa Martinez, Civic Participation director from The National Council of La Raza, the biggest national advocacy group for Hispanics, based in Washington, DC.
Hispanics, she said, “just like many other voters, tend to think politicians don’t care about them and that even if they vote is not going to matter.”
To curb this indifference, a vast Hispanic grassroots movement across the country has undertaken the strongest voter education and registration effort in election history, according to the William C. Velazquez Institute, a national Latino research group.
The institute estimated this week that the number of registered Hispanic voters nationwide would go from seven to 10 million and predicted the number voting this year would top the 5.9 million Hispanics who cast their ballots in 2000.
“I think we will have 7.5 to 8.4 million Latino voters this year,” said the institute’s president Antonio Gonzalez in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, “and 25 per cent of them are located in battleground states.”
According to La Raza, the majority of the Hispanic population is concentrated in states that are not considered battleground, like California, New York and Connecticut. But the group argues that there are enough Latinos in the so called battleground states -Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado – to play a pivotal role in the final outcome.
In New Mexico, for instance, 43 percent of the population is Hispanic.
“Latinos are going make a significant contribution to make outcome of the election,” predicted Clarisa Martinez, of La Raza.
Gonzalez, head of the William C. Velazqez Institute, agreed. Polls in the five battleground states where Bush and Kerry are separated by fewer than six points, he said, do not track new voters and occasional voters, who are often Hispanics.
“That is going to be a surprise factor,” Gonzalez said.
Florida professor Martinez-Fernandez recalled what happened in 2000 as an example of the growing power of Hispanics.
“We all know that Gore lost because of several thousand Cubans votes,” he said. “Back then, 30,000 Cubans changed their vote from 1996, when they supported Clinton, in part for the heavy handed way he dealt with the Elian Gonzalez issue.” He referred to the Cuban boy whose mother died in a sunken boat while coming illegally to Florida and who became the center of a national controversy when the administration returned him to his father in Cuba.
Hispanics have traditionally voted Democratic, but now some experts suggest the group is less partisan than it once was.
Martinez-Gonzalez said that nationwide Latinos vote more Democratic but “they can swing easily.” The last polls, he said, give Kerry 55-60 percent of the Latino vote and Bush 22 percent, with the rest undecided.
In this tight race both Democrats and Republicans have substantially increased the time, effort and money they invest in courting Hispanics.
A report in September from Johns Hopkins University noted that Kerry has personally addressed most major Hispanic associations and that Bush has hosted a record number of Hispanic leaders in the White House.
The report, which focused on campaign advertising, also added that a record amount of money was spent this cycle on Spanish language advertising. The report shows that Democrats spent about $4.7 million as of September and that Republicans had spent around $3 million and had a plan to match the Democrats.
Hispanic advocates said candidates are definitely more concerned this year with the Hispanic vote.
“They have changed their campaigns, not completely, but the small changes we’ve seen are because of the growth of the Latino electorate,” said La Raza’s Martinez.
“But they have tried to reach out to them with ads more than policies,” she said.
“They should not only take pictures with us, but never forget that we are watching and they need that vote.”
The Latino population is constant when identifying their top two issues as education and jobs, according to various experts on Hispanics in the United States.
“It’s bread and butter; that is, how I am going to support my family and how my children are going to be better off than I am with a good education,” said Clarisa Martinez, La Raza’s civic director.
Tedman Martinez, who works in New London High School-where 40 percent of the students are Latino-says education is key.
Immigration laws, he said, are keeping Hispanics who are not citizens from going to college. “I know some mothers are even thinking of divorcing and remarrying an American citizen so they can provide a future for their children, and that is happening in New London.”
Luis Miranda is a spokesperson for Sen. John Kerry’s campaign. Miranda, who specifically deals with Hispanic media, said Tuesday that until Election Day John Kerry will be focused in the Latino community, “because he knows we can be decisive in this election.” Their slogan for Hispanics is “Una Nueva Esperanza”-A New Hope.
The Kerry campaign, according to Miranda, doesn’t take the Latino vote “for granted,” but they admit they are spending the most of their time in states like New Mexico where Latinos are going to have greater impact.
The Bush campaign, whose slogan in the Latino community is “Nos conocemos”-We Know Each Other-is “focusing on faith and family values,” according to Professor Martinez-Gonzalez. For the Republicans, the last stops this year also will be in New Mexico, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Arizona.
Latino groups in Connecticut are feeling somewhat left behind.
“They almost never go to Connecticut,” said Edna Negron, from the Puerto Rico federal office. “We are not in their maps, even if we have a large Latino population.”
“Our community is awakening and can prompt dramatic changes in the state’s political map,” she warned.
Many of the local politicians, Negron said, don’t realize “the potential of our vote. We are not in the radar. We are invisibles.”
One of the most prominent Latino politicians in Connecticut, Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez, said the community needs more candidates to fight for the Hispanics.
Perez and several grassroots groups plan a Latino political training program in January to teach Hispanics from all over the state to run campaigns, raise money and be candidates.
“The goal is to have a Latino in one of the five statewide offices, like the attorney general, the secretary of the state, the lieutenant governor or comptroller,” Perez said.
They also want to register 100,000 more Hispanics in the next two years, he said.
“We are beginning to remove the invisibility cloak that we have,” said Negron. ###
