Hispanics, seeking to punish Republicans, take it out on McCain
Xavier Rivas, a Republican activist working
on John McCain's Nevada Leadership Team, shows a card featuring a photo of McCain, walking past an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. |
Latinos displeased with Republicans flocking to Obama
The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS - Cindy Florez can't always remember the name of the man who
will get her vote for president, but she knows his party and that's enough.
"I will vote Democrat," the 23-year-old hotel housekeeper said, in
broken English, moments after registering to vote at a John McCain campaign
booth in a Latino neighborhood market.
It's an insult-to-injury moment for the Republican presidential candidate.
And when it comes to McCain's relationship with Hispanic voters, it's not
the first.
The man who once risked his career on an immigration reform bill that
was embraced by Hispanics is now struggling to win these same voters, and
falling perilously below the level of support that helped lift President
Bush to the White House.
The candidate who won nearly 70 percent of Hispanic voters in his last
bid for Senate in Arizona is watching a first-term Illinois senator run
away with those voters.
The pro-military, anti-abortion candidate is seeing Hispanics with
similar views turn away en masse.
McCain's campaign is pushing back on each of these fronts in Spanish-language
radio and television ads and on-the-ground contact in the markets, Hispanic
neighborhoods, military bases and churches across the southwest.
But polls show the candidate isn't finding it easy to shake his biggest
liability with these voters: the R after his name.
"The Republican Party pretty much alienated that voting bloc with the
debate over immigration," said Clarisa Arellano, a GOP activist in Colorado
Springs, Colo., and a co-chair of McCain's Hispanic coalition in the state.
"There's constant repetition that Sen. McCain is just another Republican,
and negative campaigning works."
McCain's trouble is most evident in his own backyard — the swing states
of Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. Hispanics in these states are a growing
and critical segment of the electorate. They are largely of Mexican descent
and trend Democratic, but in recent elections Republicans have successfully
carved out just enough of their support to win.
Bush won 44 percent of Hispanic voters in New Mexico in 2004, when
he eked out a win in the state by 6,000 votes, according to exit polling.
In a poll conducted last week, McCain was winning just 17 percent of
Hispanic voters in the state. Democratic presidential candidate Barack
Obama had 62 percent, and 21 percent were undecided, according to the survey
conducted by Research & Polling Inc. for the Albuquerque Journal.
McCain is faring somewhat better in national polls. A Gallup poll conducted
last week showed 26 percent of Hispanics favoring McCain, while 64 percent
preferred Obama.
McCain's advocates on the ground say there's no mistaking 2000 for
2008.
"I think Bush identified himself," said Larry Trujillo, a former Colorado
state legislator who is now pouring hours into McCain's campaign in the
state. "I don't think (McCain's) story is getting out, I don't think it
has resonated as loudly as I wish it would, as it should."
Trujillo and other McCain backers said they find Hispanics know little
of the senator's record and lump him in with Republicans they have turned
against.
"The problem we have, many people, instead of being with Obama, they're
anti-Bush. They want to vote against anything that represents Bush," said
Xavier Rivas, a GOP activist working on McCain's Hispanic coalition in
Las Vegas.