L.A.’s Latinos are a sign of things to come, but for them, Obama must signal change
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The Los Angeles Times Opinion section takes a closer look at the fact that the Latino population voted overwhelmingly Democratic in last week’s elections.
Tim Rutten argues in this Opinion piece ‘L.A.’s Latinos are a sign of things to come’:
Another clearly marked signpost to the future was Latino participation, which has been growing in Los Angeles for decades but which surged to historic levels across the country in this election cycle, according to an unusually comprehensive exit poll conducted by Loyola Marymount University’s Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles under the direction of Fernando Guerra. No one predicted at the campaign’s outset that more than six out of 10 Latino voters would cast their ballots for the first African American president, but they did. The significance of that landslide was amplified by the fact that Latinos are clustered in the Western states that Obama pried from the red column. Seventy-three percent of Colorado’s Latinos went for the Democratic candidate, as did 76% of Nevada’s and 69% of New Mexico’s. More striking, Latinos helped deliver to Obama two of the three Sunbelt states crucial to Reagan’s first realigning victory. In California, 77% of Latinos went for the Democrat, as did 57% of Florida’s. Even the third, Texas, seems to be teetering on the blue precipice. It’s hard to believe that little more than a decade ago, many analysts were predicting that Latinos, mainly Catholic and socially conservative, would be irresistibly drawn into the Republican orbit, much as Italian Americans of similar background had been after World War II in Eastern states.
But this editorial, ‘Obama must signal change for Latinos,’ argues that although there are many issues of concern to Latino voters, immigration is a key one and immigration reform must be a priority for President-elect Barack Obama.
In now-blue states such as Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, many Latino voters have suffered housing foreclosures and seen their small businesses battered by the economic crisis. But they have an additional issue: immigration. Although they are U.S. citizens, most have a relative, friend or co-worker who aspires to become a legal resident. When undocumented immigrants are insulted or threatened, Latino citizens feel they are branded too.
Latino voters felt unrepresented, if not betrayed, by the Republican Party. And there’s good reason for that. Republicans overwhelmingly supported the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, which launched construction of the 700-mile U.S.-Mexico border fence and made it a crime to aid illegal residents. The law ignited protests across the country by Latinos who vowed to vote in future elections. Furthermore, many were angered by John McCain’s retreat from immigration reform for what they saw as a sop to the hard-line Republican base.
Click here for more about immigration.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City