El artículo del día: El voto latino en la reciente elección de los Estados Unidos

En Latin American Herald Tribune: http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=375907&CategoryId=13303

Marcela Sanchez: US Election Latino Wins and Losses
Latin expert Marcela Sanchez takes us through the wins and losses for Latinos in the November 2 elections in the US, including the Latino vote helping Senator Harry Reid win his hard-fought battle with Tea Party darling Sharron Angle in Nevada but also putting Tea Party star Marco Rubio in the Senate from Florida.

By Marcela Sanchez

Republicans snapped up an early win Tuesday night courtesy of Florida senatorial candidate, Marco Rubio. The 39-year-old Cuban American is a Tea Party favorite and rising star in the GOP, a party in desperate need of attracting Hispanic voters.

Rubio enjoyed 62% support among Latinos in Florida, according to an election-eve survey by the independent polling group Latino Decisions, and easily thwarted Kendrick Meek, his competitor from the Democratic Party.

But there’s no pretending that Rubio’s victory is a sign that Republicans are making inroads with Latinos, who voted more than two-to-one for President Obama in 2008. Florida’s Latino electorate is unique -- made up largely of Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans, the two Hispanic groups least interested in immigration and thus less concerned with matters like Rubio’s support for the controversial immigration law SB 1070 in Arizona.

Rubio’s win is rather a concrete demonstration of the Republican shift to the right on immigration and a harbinger for how difficult it will be for the 112th Congress to take on the issue.

It wasn’t that long ago that another Cuban American Republican Senator from Florida, Mel Martinez, was unapologetically pro-immigrant and fought hard in the Senate to pass comprehensive reform. Before his resignation from the Senate last year, Martinez frequently warned that the GOP was headed for political hara-kiri with its more and more extreme anti immigrant position.

It was then too, prior to 2008, when John McCain, Republican Senator and later GOP nominee for president, cosponsored immigration comprehensive reform and fought alongside Martinez to pass such a bill. McCain has since fully flip-flopped and now supports SB 1070 and blames illegal immigrants for all manners of crime while calling for the completion of that “danged fence.”

Both Republican and Democrats agree that the message from voters on Tuesday is that they are frustrated with Washington. Americans, they say, want both parties to find common ground to address persistent unemployment, falling housing prices, and the overall sense that the country is declining. In that environment, politicians will likely steer clear of issues that elicit immense frustration and division such as immigration -- where the common ground has nearly vanished.

Of course, Latinos are not going away and the broken immigration system won’t fix itself.

Indeed, Tuesday’s midterm elections also demonstrated the power of Latino voters in tight races between pro-reform Democrats and anti-reform Republicans. In Nevada, where Senate majority leader Harry Reid was in a fight for his political life against Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle, nine in ten Latinos supported Reid. Before he could deliver his thanks Tuesday night, supporters wildly chanted “si se puede”.

Meanwhile in Colorado, Democrat Michael Bennet retained his Senate seat, narrowly defeating Republican challenger Ken Buck. According to Latino Decisions, 81% of Latinos in that state supported Bennet. In California, Democratic candidates Barbara Boer and Jerry Brown enjoyed 86% support among Hispanics, and won their difficult senate and governor races respectively.


The fastest growing minority is less influential in races that are not tight. In Arizona, in fact, McCain easily retained his Senate seat despite garnering only two in ten Latino votes. In 2004, when he was the other McCain, 70% of Latinos voted for his reelection to the Senate.

Perhaps even more painful for pro-immigrant forces was the reelection in Arizona of Governor Jan Brewer who signed SB 1070 into law. Brewer won despite only 14% support among Latinos.

For some advocates the hope now is that Obama will do much more than he has to fulfill his promise of making immigration reform a priority. Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigrant group America's Voice said that Obama’s “re-election may be imperiled if he doesn’t.”

But Tuesday’s election also showed that even without progress on immigration, Latinos come out in force for Democratic candidates who face opponents who vilify immigrants in the main extreme media or in vitriolic political attacks.

To get such support from Latinos outside Florida, Republicans will need to move back from the fringe on immigration and return some civility to their political discourse. And if they do, Latinos could claim that on Tuesday they won far more than anyone may think.