Sanchez Win Gives Boost to Latino Voter Drive

After working intensely for months to register and motivate Latino voters in the Nov. 5 election, members of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional rested for two days. Then they started knocking on doors again.

Now, every weekday at noon, a dozen or more workers from the Latino civil rights group leave their headquarters in downtown Santa Ana in search of likely new voters, primarily immigrants from Mexico whose first step is to become citizens.

“We’re out there every day that it doesn’t rain,” said Raul Moreno, a native of Mexico City who became a U.S. citizen last spring and now works for Hermandad. “There is a lot of work left to do.”

The vote promoters from Hermandad are not alone. Encouraged by this year’s elections, which replaced veteran Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) with political newcomer Loretta Sanchez and saw a Latino take the helm of the state Assembly for the first time, a variety of Latino organizations are gearing up to recruit a new electorate.

The groups are drawing from a pool of potential Latino voters that has grown exponentially in recent years, as the population grows and large numbers of immigrants become citizens. If projections from these groups pan out, the impact on state and local politics, already hinted at in November, could be enormous.

“The last election was nothing more than a loud yawn from the sleeping giant,” said Manuel Gomez, vice chancellor of student services at UC Irvine, who is active in Latino community affairs. “But it was enough to alert journalists and others to the potential that is there.”

Perhaps the most dramatic shift was seen in Dornan’s 46th Congressional District, where Latinos’ share of the vote jumped from 13.8% four years ago to 20%, according to a Times analysis. In the district, Latinos make up slightly more than 50% of the population.

Dornan has charged that the election was tainted by fraud, particularly among new Latino voters. He is in the process of having a recount conducted. Dornan also sent six Spanish-speaking volunteers into Latino neighborhoods last weekend to knock on doors and seek out incriminating information.

Nativo Lopez, director of Hermandad and a lightning rod for Dornan’s complaints, said the charges are just part of an inevitable backlash that could grow fiercer as the Latino vote grows in importance. “Because of the overwhelming numbers out there, there’s this perception that, ‘My God, they’re taking over,’ ” Lopez said. “We want to be careful not to create that feeling.”

Countywide, the Latino vote share grew from 6.3% to 8% of the total. The potential for far greater change is clear in another set of numbers: Latinos account for nearly one-fourth of the county’s population, and record numbers of them are signing up for citizenship and voter registration.

“The Latino share of the voting pool will continue to increase,” said Carol Uhlaner, a professor of politics at UC Irvine who specializes in ethnic voter participation. “It’s harder to predict what that’s going to mean for the split in party support. What Republicans keep hoping is that party affiliation is still up for grabs.”

In the recent election, Latinos voted as a solidly Democratic block in what was believed to be a response to anti-immigration policies endorsed by the Republican Party. However, if the Republican Party tempers its stance, that alliance could shift, Uhlaner said.

“There are clear divisions among Latinos,” she said. “It’s not a homogenous block of voters. How homogenous a block it is depends a lot on the issues and how they are fought.”

Among the new voters is Santa Ana resident Miguel Cobian, 75, a retired field worker who came north from Jalisco, Mexico, in 1962. After taking citizenship classes at Hermandad and passing a naturalization exam, Cobian and his wife, Ricarda, were sworn in as citizens in a February ceremony in Buena Park.

“It was time. I feel good,” Cobian said of casting his ballot, pounding his chest and laughing. “I want to hold my head high.”

The couple’s 32-year-old daughter, Teresa, has passed her citizenship exam but still awaits a date for her swearing-in ceremony. When she takes the oath she will be part of a wave of new Latino citizens expected to make an even greater impact at the polls in two years.

Indeed, academic researchers and community activists said the electoral surprise in the 46th was only a taste of what is to come. “We’re going to have Latinos on statewide ballots, and they’re going to be successful,” said Antonio Gonzalez, director of the Southwest Voter Registration Project in Los Angeles, which signed up thousands of new voters this fall. “Every election will have Latinos winning office for the first time. It will be business as usual. People will come to expect it.

“I think there’s a number of Dornan-Sanchez scenarios out there,” Gonzalez said. “There are nearly 60 congressional districts [nationwide] where Latinos are 20% of the population or more, and only 19 of those are in Latino hands. That’s going to change.”

One important factor fueling the change: Many thousands of immigrants who became legal residents under a 1986 immigration law are now becoming eligible for citizenship after having waited a mandatory period as legal residents. The Santa Ana-Anaheim region was second only to Los Angeles in legalizing immigrants under that law.

Lopez, director of Hermandad, said he estimates that at least 230,000 Latino legal residents in Orange County are now eligible for citizenship. Encouraged and assisted by groups such as Hermandad and Catholic Charities, 30,000 to 40,000 of them will become citizens each year during the next few years, he said.

Tempered by their experiences of the last few years, groups promoting Latino voter participation have become more effective, learning, for instance, that Latino voters are likely to use absentee ballots.

Hermandad workers ran a tightly organized registration and get-out-the-vote effort leading up to the last election. In the final month, they visited about 24,000 homes in Santa Ana five times each, according to a publication put out by the group.

Other nonpartisan groups made similar efforts. The Southwest Voter Registration Project has posted volunteers outside Santa Ana churches nearly every Sunday afternoon since late summer to sign up new voters.

And under a pilot program run by Latin American Voters of America, a nonpartisan group founded by Santa Ana attorney Jess Araujo, students at Cal State Fullerton last spring earned academic credit by registering new voters as part of a class in the history of voting and demographics.

The effort netted 2,000 registered voters, most of them Latino, Araujo said. In February, the Cal State Fullerton program will be replicated at Rancho Santiago College.

But there is more driving the political change than sheer numbers of voters, activists said.

Candidates have become more savvy and credible, helped in part by leadership programs sponsored by Latino organizations. One program, sponsored over a five-year period by MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, encouraged Latinos to aspire to local boards, commissions and offices.

“Thirteen people have run for public office from our program,” said John Palacio, who directed the MALDEF leadership course. Although only one of the candidates was successful, he said earlier, narrow losses helped show that Latino victories were possible if funded and managed properly.

Many Latino activists see candidate recruitment and development as a logical next step. To that end, the Southwest Voter Registration Project will open leadership training centers in Los Angeles and San Antonio next month, Gonzalez said.

“The notion is that we have to increase the quality of our representation,” he said, “and you really do that by getting the leaders and raising their skill levels as they enter politics.”

In Orange County, Latino business leaders have joined together with the goal of forming a bipartisan political action committee to recruit candidates and raise funds for their campaigns.

“I think we have reached a level of maturity in which it is necessary for us to provide our own qualified candidates for local and countywide offices,” said Alfredo Amezcua, a Santa Ana attorney and a Democrat who is one of the driving forces behind the coalition. “Up to now, it is my personal belief that we have been involved in politics but not at the level of sophistication that our community deserves.”

Making the group truly bipartisan will be a challenge, organizers conceded, at a time when Latinos have been drawn to the Democratic Party by overwhelming numbers. “Trying to build a consensus with respect to candidates isn’t easy to do,” said Manny Ramirez, an accountant who is among the Republican members of the group. “The only thing we do agree on is that we need more representation.”

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Lee Romney.

* LATINOS COMPLAIN

Dornan’s repeated fraud charges called intimidation. B4

* LAWYERS MAKE LIST

Possible irregularities outlined in letter to voter registrar. B5