Latinos and the Democratic Convention

LATINO VOTERS HAVE YET TO BECOME A STRONG FORCE
by Angelo Falcon
Newsday (July 28, 2004)

Despite their efforts to count on the Latino vote, when the Democrats announced the list of speakers for the Boston convention, there was only one Latino on it. Rep. Robert Menendez of New Jersey earnestly spoke on Monday night about John Kerry's foreign policy positions.

"The message John Kerry will send to Latin America," Menendez, the highest ranking Latino in the House, told the delegates, "is different from the one Latin America and Latinos here in the United States have heard from President Bush."

But for most Latinos, having a Cuban-American talk about foreign policy, no less Cuba, probably didn't resonate.

Despite all of the attention that the 5 percent of the country's voters who are Latino has received this year from the two major political parties and the media, what is not clear is whether there is a realistic understanding of what the Latino community wants. This is the case despite the fact that there have been more opinion polls of Latinos this year than ever before, as well as record-setting amounts of money being spent on political advertising to this group of possibly 6 million potential voters.

But when all is said and done, the Latino community nationally will vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate for president. The only issue is whether the Republicans can hold onto or improve on their 2000 election's 35-percent share of the Latino voters. The Iraqi war is opposed by the majority of Latinos (56 percent in the latest poll), and probably by a much higher percentage of Latinos in the Northeast and Midwest. As Menendez said Monday night, "We need a president who understands the difference between a war of choice and a war of necessity." If the war situation deteriorates, that will hurt the president's chances among these voters.

The Democrats can't afford to look like they're taking the Latino vote for granted because this could reduce the level of Latino turnout. Low-voter turnout, a long-term problem for this community, can undo whatever advantage the Democrats have with this group. So, symbolic things, like making New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson the convention chair, become important and are politically safe. After all, how many people can name the chairmen of the conventions, anyway?

The Latino vote can be taken for granted by the Democrats because the Latino leadership in the party and in national politics in general is so weak and fragmented. In effect, there is no leadership in the Latino community capable of holding the Democratic or Republican parties accountable to their community. What you have instead is a group of Latino career politicians whose interests are more tied with the parties they belong to than the communities they represent. There are a few exceptions, but these people are not really taken seriously outside their own districts.

For those Latino voters who are eligible to vote (that is, who are citizens), the Democrats' attempt to project greater support for Latino immigrants than the Republicans probably won't make much of a difference. For Bush, his problematic immigration proposal, which was not even embraced by his own party, is probably more of a negative with Latinos because he couldn't deliver on it.

When one looks at the Democratic Party platform, for example, it is interesting to see issues regarding race relations and civil rights buried way in the back. Mexican-American leaders are pushing immigration issues, and Puerto Ricans are pushing issues relating to Puerto Rico (like the clean-up of Vieques), which are important but not central to the national policy discourse. With the average Latino voter, they just don't seem to have as much salience as schools and jobs do. And then, of course, you have Rep. Menendez pushing the Cuban embargo at the convention, which most Latinos couldn't care less about.

Although Latinos are concerned about education, the economy, crime, the war, national security and other issues just like most Americans, the difference is that they see themselves excluded from the decision-making process. That's why there was all this concern throughout the past year about the lack of Latinos in policy-making positions within the Kerry campaign and in the Democratic Party.

For Latinos, the critical issue is whether they emerge from this election as real players or remain relegated to the margins of American politics. Whether Kerry wins the White House or not, the next stage in the political empowerment of Latinos will have to include a movement to make the Democratic Party more accountable to these 40 million Americans of Latino descent. Or perhaps Latinos will need to invent another way to make themselves heard politically in this country.

Angelo Falcon, a political scientist who teaches at Columbia University, is the senior policy executive at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City. The views herein are his.