Latinos Push for Voters to Register

With a touch of Hollywood and some old-fashioned glad-handing for money, Latino activists are launching a nationwide effort to register 1 million voters in time for November’s general election.

The ambitious goal to increase Latino voting power in the United States by 20% is the subject of a weekend conference and glitzy campaign kickoff in Los Angeles led by the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a nonprofit organization that has worked to increase Latino voter rolls since its founding in 1974. As many as 3,000 people are expected to attend the conference at the Biltmore Hotel.

“This is the first time that Southwest Voter has been able to link up with others in a national campaign to register Latinos nationwide--in the Northeast, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Pacific Northwest, everywhere,” said Southwest Voter President Antonio Gonzalez. “This hasn’t happened before.”

The Texas-based Southwest Voter, which has registered 2 million new voters in the last 20 years, will concentrate its efforts in the West. In California, Gonzalez said, the group is aiming to register 300,000 new voters, seeking to bring the number of Latinos registered to vote to 2.1 million.

There are now about 5 million Latino voters in the United States.

Although 1 million seems an unrealistic goal to some observers, others believe that it’s not that farfetched.

“Symbolically, it is important that they’re talking about 1 million new voters,” said professor Fernando Guerra, director of Loyola Marymount University’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

Other groups in the campaign, dubbed Latino Vote U.S.A., are the Midwest/Northeast Voter Registration Education Project in Chicago and the Hispanic Educational and Legal Fund in New York City.

The campaign may be helped to a degree by the hostile environment in which, according to recent surveys, many Latinos see themselves. The passage in 1994 of Proposition 187 has prompted large numbers of eligible Latinos to seek U.S. citizenship, uneasy that their immigrant status might work against them. Meanwhile, Proposition 187, which sought to deny public education and various social services to illegal immigrants, has been largely blocked in the courts.

The registration drive’s effectiveness may be tested in the 69th Assembly District in Orange County. Freshman Republican Jim Morrissey of Santa Ana is being challenged by Democrat Lou Correa.

As part of the GOP sweep that took over the Assembly in 1994, Morrissey won the reapportioned 69th--which has a decided Democratic edge in voter registration (43,000 to 27,000). That seat had been held by Democrat Tom Umberg. Despite the registration edge, Latino strategists believe that Correa is no cinch to win the seat unless Latinos, who make up a sizable portion of the Santa Ana-Anaheim district, register to vote.

If Latino candidates, including Correa, do win in strategic Assembly races in the fall, as many as 14 could be seated in the Assembly, doubling their numbers from 1992.

The weekend conference to start the voter drive will be highlighted by a satellite hookup tonight linking Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and San Antonio with celebrities and Latino lawmakers.

“NYPD Blue” star Jimmy Smits and “My Family/Mi Familia” director Gregory Nava are among the headliners of the event, set for Union Station at 8 p.m.