Latinos may decide course of ’04 presidential

Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT) AUSTIN, Texas When Republican George W. Bush blew into Del Rio, Texas, on a campaign swing in 1998, his use of Spanish and his ability to connect with Latinos made a believer out of Javier Martinez.He voted to give the Republican another term as Texas governor and then to send him to Washington two years later. But Martinez, 55, a Del Rio businessman and host of a local radio talk show, won’t be voting for Bush again.”He does speak a little Spanish. He’s very good at connecting with the Hispanic community. That was the reason we kind of believed in him,” Martinez said. “I think he’s probably trying, but he’s not connecting anymore.”Martinez’s misgivings, and those of voters like him, could spell trouble for Republicans’ efforts to gain a larger share of the increasingly important Hispanic vote, not only in Texas but across the nation.Amid persistent unemployment, uncertainty in Iraq and a racially explosive debate on congressional redistricting unfolding in the Texas Capitol, many Hispanic activists and lawmakers assert that Democrats are quickly making up ground that they lost to Republicans.”I believe that the image has been damaged,” said Laredo Sen. Judith Zaffirini, one of the 11 Texas Senate Democrats who fled to Albuquerque, N.M., in protest of a congressional redistricting plan. “I believe that this will backlash on George Bush during his re-election campaign. He cannot talk about reaching out to minorities and at the same time stand back and do nothing as his underlings are discriminating against minorities through redistricting.”Not so, counter Republicans, who say that any ill-will over redistricting will be short-lived and lost on voters more preoccupied with schools and the economy than with who represents them in Congress.Although the two sides dispute the meaning of the constitutional amendment election and who’s doing better in reaching out to Latinos, there is little question that Hispanics will be a crucial constituency in the 2004 presidential election and beyond.One million more Hispanics voted in the 2000 presidential elections than in the 1996 contest nationwide, and they are now considered the nation’s largest ethnic minority group at nearly 40 million strong.In Texas, Hispanics have seen their share of the electorate rise from 10 percent in 1994 to 18 percent in 2002, according to the William C. Velasquez Institute.That might explain the feverish appeals that both parties are making, such as the bilingual debate held among Democratic candidates recently in New Mexico, and Republican outreach efforts in Texas and around the United States.But given Latinos’ historic preference for Democrats, many influential Republicans say it won’t be good enough to maintain the status quo.In a December 2001 analysis of the Latino vote from 2000, Republican National Committee pollster Matthew Dowd said Republicans would have to maintain their “upward trend” with Hispanic voters in order to remain competitive.”Otherwise, Latino population growth will simply be a recipe for Democratic gains,” he wrote.In the last presidential race, Bush got an estimated 35 percent of the Latino vote, more than any Republican since President Reagan’s landslide victory in 1984.Some critics say it will be tough to pull that off again. A summer survey conducted for the New Democratic Network showed Bush had suffered a 10-point drop in popularity among Latinos.”The goodwill that President Bush went to such lengths to build with Hispanics seems to be eroding,” Sergio Bendixen, who conducted the poll, said when the results were released.”Latinos really feel that someone who presented himself as their friend has now let them down.”On the other hand, a poll by Latino Opinions conducted in August found Bush in a statistical dead heat with Howard Dean, then the leading candidate for the presidential nomination; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., won a hypothetical matchup 47 percent to 31 percent.That was before Gen. Wesley Clark joined the field and shook up the Democratic race.To the extent that Democrats might be poised to strengthen their hold on Latino voters in Texas, Fort Worth Republican political consultant Bryan Eppstein points to past examples of opportunities lost.He noted, for example, that multimillionaire Hispanic Tony Sanchez, a Democrat, lost the 2002 gubernatorial race to Republican Gov. Rick Perry despite spending a record $67 million. Perry got about a third of the Hispanic vote in that race, according to a Zogby exit poll.Other past candidates, such as Dan Morales, the former attorney general waiting to go to federal prison on official corruption charges, and Lena Guerrero, who lost a railroad commission bid after lying on her resume, have dealt a blow to Democratic Hispanic outreach efforts, Eppstein said.”The highest ranking Hispanic officeholders who have aspired to ascend into statewide leadership in Texas have all had dubious demises, and that has set back Hispanic political opportunity more than any one thing,” Eppstein said.