Apr 19 2012
Despite Poor Record on Latino Issues, Obama Aggressively Courts Latinos
Two days after the Republican National Committee announced its strategy to reach out to Latino voters this election year, President Barack Obama has unveiled an aggressive push of his own with four targeted Spanish-language TV ads. The ads, which began airing in Colorado, Nevada and Florida, are part of a new “Latinos for Obama” campaign which says on its website, “The Latino vote helped propel Barack Obama to victory in 2008, but there’s even more at stake this time around.” The effort is being touted as “the largest ever national effort to engage Latino Americans in their communities and involve them in the upcoming election through voter registration, volunteering and voting.”
According to the Pew Research Center 9% of all voters in 2008 were Latino, and 67% of them voted Democrat in the Presidential elections, while 31% voted Republican. Now, four years later, Obama commands a strong lead in polls over Republican presumptive candidate Mitt Romney. While his support among Latinos had fallen to about 50% last year, a new Quinnipiac poll shows Obama winning about 2/3rd of potential Latino votes over Romney.
The President is setting himself apart from his rival particularly on immigration policies. Romney’s immigration adviser is Kris Kobach, the man known for writing Arizona and Alabama’s extremely harsh immigration laws. Even though Romney is now trying to soften his image on immigration, San Antonio Mayor and co-chair of Latinos for Obama, Julian Castro, called Romney, “the most extreme nominee that the Republican Party has ever had on immigration.” The GOP’s outreach strategy involves placing coordinators in six states: Florida, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia and North Carolina, to explain how Republican policies have helped Latinos. Albert Martinez, Romney’s campaign spokesperson, told the LA Times, that the Latinos for Obama campaign “can’t erase President Obama’s record of failure on the issues most important to Latinos.”
GUEST: Roberto Lovato, well known writer and activist, strategist with Presente.org.
2 Responses to “Despite Poor Record on Latino Issues, Obama Aggressively Courts Latinos”
I have read so many content about the blogger lovers however this piece of writing is truly a fastidious piece of
writing, keep it up.
i hate politics and all this…but after reading this paragraph i will start reading newspaper 😀