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The New York Times

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November 6, 2000, Monday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Page 26; Column 3; National Desk 

LENGTH: 1206 words

HEADLINE: THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE HISPANIC VOTE;
Candidates Woo Latinos With Ads, but Not Policy

BYLINE:  By JOHN W. FOUNTAIN 

DATELINE: CHICAGO, Nov. 5

BODY:
Here in Little Village, a world away from the presidential campaign trail, Mexican music spilled from storefronts and passing cars. Young men up and down West 26th Street hawked sliced melon, pineapple and corn from stands in this working-class West Side neighborhood.

Ruben Gonzalez, 37, who owns Gonzalez Liquors, stood in his store as workers installed a shelf, his mind finally made up about the election. "I really don't care for either candidate," Mr. Gonzalez said. "But I think Gore is more for the people. In the community, it's all working people. We've got to vote for him."

His wife, Danila Miranda, 31, is likely to vote for Vice President Al Gore too, but "not because of any campaigning."

"There really haven't been any discussions of any of the issues, no Latino issues, absolutely," she said. "It's a foreign election."

Despite intensive courting by Republicans and Democrats, many Hispanics to some degree feel left out in the cold, said Cecilia Munoz, vice president for policy of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights group.

"We seem to have made one transition, which is that candidates get it, that they need to be campaigning in our community," Ms. Munoz said. "And that's been reflected in their use of the Spanish language and in the overall tone and tenor of the campaign, and in the extraordinary amount of marketing that is being aimed at our community."

But "for the most part, the focus has been on marketing and not on policy," Ms. Munoz said. "We would note that Latinos didn't come up in any of the presidential debates."

Among the major issues of concern for Latinos are education, employment, health care and immigration. While these issues may have been discussed by the presidential candidates, how their policies would specifically affect Hispanics was not addressed, some leaders contended.

"The major issue Latinos care about is education," said Rodolfo de la Garza, vice president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Texas. "The next issue is the economy. On neither of those two major points has Bush come forward with positions that are addressing the Latino concern."

A year ago, the Latino vote was seen as a potential key to the presidential race, an increasingly energized constituency that would be courted by both camps. After millions of dollars in advertisements by the parties and a big voter registration campaign by Hispanic groups, the fruit of that labor finally will come to bear -- or not -- on Tuesday.

What is clear is that the number of Hispanics registered to vote has grown to an estimated 7.7 million, about 5.8 million of whom are projected to go to the polls on Tuesday. In 1996, 6.6 million Hispanics were registered to vote and 4.9 million of those voted, according to the William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonpartisan Hispanic research and public policy organization in San Antonio.

Also evident is that the wooing of Hispanic voters has heightened the attention paid to a community that has long felt overlooked. But some Hispanic leaders and residents say what they still lack as a potentially potent voting bloc is respect.

"I don't think either candidate has done enough" to earn the Latino vote, said Adolfo Aguilar, a spokesman for the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies. Last year, the agency started a $10 million advertising campaign to encourage Latinos to register and vote, he said.

"I hope we are not faced with another situation that no matter which candidate wins, that as soon as the election is over they kind of take a back seat and it loses its priority status that it seems to be receiving today," Mr. Aguilar said.

The number of Hispanics registered to vote nationally has increased 164 percent over the last 20 years, while voter turnout among Hispanics has grown 135 percent in the same period, said Juan Andrade Jr., president of the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, a nonpartisan organization in Chicago that helps organize voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns.

In the next decade, Hispanics are expected to become the nation's largest minority group. This year, they represent about 6 percent of voters. With polls showing the presidential race as one of the tightest in years, a strong showing by Latino voters in states like California, and in New Mexico where they represent 40 percent of the state's voting-age population, could make the difference.

Over the weekend, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, joined the former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros and other Hispanic leaders on a tour across the country to help rally Latino voters.

On the Republican side, Gov. George W. Bush's use of Spanish while campaigning and the display of inclusiveness at the Republican National Convention last summer have at the very least won the respect of some Hispanics. But many say that did not overcome the ill feelings for Republicans, who are still seen by many Hispanics as being insensitive toward Latino immigrants.

Mr. de la Garza criticized the use of what he contends have been exclusively Spanish-speaking commercials on Spanish television and radio stations by the Bush campaign. He said it might be interpreted as an effort to appeal to Hispanic voters, but not at the expense of alienating his core constituency.

"The Bush people have long known that the way to reach Latino voters is in English," Mr. de la Garza said. "It's the immigrants who are Spanish dominant and who focus on Spanish language television. They can continue to make the symbolic claim of reaching out to Latinos, but substantively their natural constituency does not see it. So there's very little possibility of a backlash. If it's deliberate, it's a very sophisticated achievement."

Political observers say Mr. Gore will benefit from the tendency of Latinos to vote Democratic.

"What I have seen in surveys is simply the Latino electorate is one where Gore does get the benefit of being associated with Bill Clinton," said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Velasquez Institute. "He gets some of that sheen on him because Latinos are just wild for Bill."

But there is support for Governor Bush among Hispanics who have found appeal in his message of "compassionate conservatism."

Elvis Garcia, 24, a senior in accounting at Robert Morris College in Chicago, plans to vote for Mr. Bush "not just because I'm a Republican."

"I like his proposal for tax cuts," he said, and his emphasis on less government. "I'm actually prideful that the guy is running for president and he is up there trying to speak Spanish. I like that."

In Little Village, at La Justicia Restaurant, Julio Martinez, 32, the owner, says he is looking forward to voting for Mr. Bush. But Mr. Martinez says he is sure his late father, who founded a chain of grocery stores, would not have approved.

"He's from the old school. He's always been Democratic," Mr. Martinez said. "He started from the bottom up. Me, I sort of grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth.

"When it comes down to the presidency, you don't go toward Democrat or Republican," Mr. Martinez said. "You go toward the one who is going to do the best job."
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GRAPHIC: Photo: Ruben Gonzalez of Chicago said he was not ecstatic about either candidate but would vote for Al Gore. (Steve Kagan for The New York Times)

LOAD-DATE: November 6, 2000