Latino Rights Activist to Get Medal of Freedom : Award: Vice President Gore tells Pasadena audience that presidential honor will go posthumously to Willie Velasquez, who led Latino voter registration drive.

Vice President Al Gore announced Friday in Pasadena that President Clinton is bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously on Willie Velasquez, a leading local Latino rights activist who founded the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project 20 years ago.

Gore, aiming to attract swing voters before the 1996 presidential election, told a Latino voter registration group the Clinton Administration would combat measures similar to Proposition 187--the measure that would prevent illegal immigrants from attending school or using most social services--in other states.

“We must create a future in which our children can look back on the demagoguery of this day and time, and lightly pass it off with an amused shake of the head. We will create that future by the sweat of our brow, by registering voters,” Gore told the audience at a banquet hosted by the Southwestern Voter Registration Education Project, which has launched a campaign to add 100,000 Latinos to the voter rolls before November 1996.

“We stand for the proposition that men and women of different ethnic, national origin, and language groups can live together in harmony. . . . We are a nation that looks like the world,” Gore said.

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White House strategists say Clinton must carry California in 1996 if he is to have a chance at reelection. But the President is coming under fire from California lawmakers who blasted him for ignoring the state’s economic decline, and now risks a backlash from military employees at bases targeted for closure.

Only 11% of California’s Latinos vote, according to the Tomas Rivera Center, a Claremont-based think tank. Nonetheless, the Latino electorate has played a pivotal role in recent political contests, including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s close win over Mike Huffington, in which Latinos voted 67% to 22% for Feinstein.

Gore voiced support for voter rights measures such as the so-called motor voter law, and criticized Gov. Pete Wilson for opposing the law. “There are some states that don’t want to go along,” said Gore. “They don’t want to make it easy for people to register. That’s why we’ve sued Illinois, we’ve sued Pennsylvania, we’ve sued South Carolina and we’ve sued Pete Wilson.”

Gore also criticized the Republican-led Congress for bowing to right-wing “extremists,” including the Christian Coalition. “This new majority is taking its marching orders from the very powerful members of the coalition that got them there,” he said.