Spanish Stations Play to Latino Voting Strength

Television viewers straying into Univision territory--in Los Angeles it’s KMEX Channel 34--may have heard and seen a humorously perplexing sight the night of the recent presidential debate.

Vice President George Bush seemed to be countering in Spanish while Gov. Michael Dukakis also seemed to be retorting but with Cuban accents, unlike his Boston-accented Spanish.

The audio channels weren’t accidentally scrambled two Sundays ago during the televised face-off between Bush and Dukakis. The debate’s simultaneous translation/dubbing by four interpreters instead marked the first time a Spanish-language TV network had broadcast such an event live, a precedent Univision will follow for Wednesday’s meeting between Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. Dan Quayle and Democratic candidate Sen. Lloyd Bentsen. KMEX debate coverage will begin at 5:30 p.m.

September’s debate broadcast was another example of the high-profile role networks like Univision are playing in an election where Latino voters may hold the balance in five states, including California, totaling 149 electoral votes.

“I think that at some point, after all the results are in, the news media are going to discover that Hispanics were the major news story of the 1988 election,” said Guillermo Martinez, Univision’s Cuban-born news director and former Miami Herald editorial writer. “Well, we’ve been doing this story since before March.”

Although 90% of the Latino voters are concentrated in nine states--Texas, California, New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Colorado and New Mexico--Texas and California will be critical for Latinos, Martinez claims.

“Latinos in these states account for 14% of the vote, and in a close race, that can be crucial,” he said. “If Dukakis picks up 80% of the Hispanic vote in California, Bush’s task here will be all but insurmountable.” He said Univision will therefore conduct polls in these states later this month to predict how Latinos will vote.

That’s why upstart Telemundo and veteran Univision networks have followed the presidential contenders through the primaries and the Democratic and Republican conventions with hours of live coverage and special reports focusing on Latino issues.

Univision, still the nation’s largest Spanish-language network, conducted pre-Super Tuesday polls in Florida and Texas in March and April that predicted that Latinos would vote overwhelmingly for Bush or Dukakis--figures the New York Times, USA Today and the Washington Post promptly re-reported as the prospect of a spoiler Latino voting role began to emerge.

Since then, the Spanish-language Galavision cable network, which has switched to a 24-hour, weekday news format, has also made a commitment to simultaneously air the debates.

The candidates have responded to coverage in kind. Both networks say the Bush and Dukakis campaigns will not only pay for more Spanish-language TV advertising than ever before, they have courted Spanish-language network news teams more vigorously.

“I’m almost overwhelmed by the aggressiveness of each campaign in reaching out to Hispanics,” said Marlene May, the Cuban-born executive producer of Telemundo’s CNN-produced evening newscast. “They are coming after us because we are getting to the voters.”

Just last week, May said, the Dukakis campaign offered a free satellite link-up so that “Noticiero Telemundo-CNN” reporters could interview Rep. Bill Richardson (D.-New Mexico) for post-debate reactions. Other Spanish-language media veterans see the same trends.

Some credit this courtship of Spanish-language TV to the creation of Telemundo, the nation’s second national Latino network, and the increased investments both networks have plowed into their news operations. May says Dukakis’ and vice presidential running mate Loyd Bentsen’s Spanish fluency is another factor tailor-made for TV exploitation.

Whatever the reasons, Spanish-language TV is in the middle of political activities. Recent Telemundo and Univision marketing studies report, for example, that Latinos watch 32% more television than their English-language peers.

These figures have led Martinez and others to conclude that Spanish-language TV is creating the kind of national Latino political culture and agenda some politicians dreamed of when they earlier declared the 1970s the “decade of the Hispanic.”

Richard Ybarra, Dukakis’ deputy national field director, cautions against giving Spanish-language TV too much credit. Ybarra said a big portion of the nation’s more than 20 million Latinos are almost exclusively English-speaking.

“The single most significant factor that will determine whether a person is going to vote is their level of education,” he added. “That’s where the danger signals are when you look at Hispanics. We are the fastest growing group, but the least educated.” Finally, he said, Latinos still are divided by different regional agendas, though less so than previously.

Martinez counters Ybarra’s arguments with a metaphor: “If you look through a telescope, you see an enlargement of the world,” he said. “If you look through the other end, you see a smaller image. The issue of Hispanic political unity is much the same. If you look at the issues close up, you can be pushed into concluding that all Cuban-Americans are fervent anti-Communists and that all other Latinos are liberal Democrats.

“But the issues run deeper than that,” he said. “Hispanics of all origins have very strong traditional family values, they tend to be very religious, they share a reluctance to abandon their cultures and, at the same time, in an apparent paradox, they are following the path of other ethnic groups into the American political mainstream.”

Spanish-language television, he concluded, is shaping this process in three ways: “We are explaining the nation’s political system to our viewers, we are explaining Hispanics to Hispanics and we are keeping them informed of developments in Latin America.”

Nevertheless, obvious differences of scale separate the Spanish-language networks from their English-language counterparts. Univision’s budget for election coverage is only 1% of NBC’s $40-million election coverage, Martinez said. May adds that the election budget for “Noticiero’s” 25-member, Atlanta-based bilingual staff is even smaller.

“Obviously, we can’t compete with the financial resources of the CBSes and NBCs of the world,” Martinez said. “But they can’t compete with our knowledge of the Hispanic community and its needs.” He then offered the latest example of Univision’s strategic news coverage.

Co-anchor Maria Elena Salinas will file reports from Chile this week leading up to this Wednesday’s plebiscite that could decide if Gen. Augusto Pinochet rules another eight years. Univision also predicts, based on a poll it commissioned, that Chile’s “No” voters will have the last word and end Pinochet’s 15-year reign.

The Washington-based pollsters say that 59% of Chile’s voters will vote “No,” compared to 26.7% voting “Yes.” Pinochet has promised that a “No” victory will set the stage for multiparty elections next year.

Said Martinez: “I think all of this shows that there’s a commitment to informing our people and making this election relevant to them.”