Latino Votes Pursued in Few, Unusual Places

The battle for the Latino vote was supposed to be fought in the barrios and suburbs of Southern California and New York City, and in states such as Illinois and New Jersey. But now, with the clock ticking toward election day, the cries of “Viva Bush” and “Viva Gore” are being heard in only a few, unexpected places.

Last week the GOP’s drive to win Hispanics--the preferred term for Spanish-surnamed people in New Mexico--arrived in Mora, a town of 1,900 people where crumbling adobe buildings line the main drag. An audience of a dozen people and Savino Garcia’s Solo Band waited to greet a GOP caravan.

“I’ve always voted Republican,” said 70-year-old Juan Leyva. Later, after a few speeches, he was rewarded for his loyalty to the party with a free meal.

Elsewhere, in places that are home to millions of Latino voters, only a smattering of ads is running in Spanish-language media. In general, the battle for Latino hearts and minds is a lesser sideshow to the all-out push to win centrist voters in states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

With Texas in George W. Bush’s camp and California, New York, Illinois and even New Jersey firmly in the Al Gore camp, big Spanish-language media buys don’t make much sense. Instead, those ads running are turning up in places such as New Mexico and Nevada, and in Midwestern states where Latinos make up only a fraction of the vote.

“The circumstances of this election have led both candidates to ignore the Latino vote almost completely, because tactically, they don’t see it as important,” said Hector Orci, founder of La Agencia, an ad agency that targets Latinos. In the last weeks of the campaign, “it’s gone from zero to a little more than zero, from nothing to nearly nothing. That’s not enough.”

The sense of disappointment among Latino activists is deep, especially given the promise of the primaries and the summer conventions, when both sides declared this would be the year in which the Latino vote was vital.

At the Republican convention, the Mexican crooner Vicente Fernandez took to the stage and sang a tune. A lengthy video touted Texas Gov. Bush’s links to tejanos in places such as San Antonio and Brownsville. And when the nominee himself finished his acceptance speech, the orchestra launched into a Ricky Martin song.

Vice President Gore, too, professed a love for all things Latino. He worked hard at honing his pronunciation of “si se puede” (“yes we can”). He liked to tell Mexican American audiences that he hoped his next grandchild would be born on Cinco de Mayo (because his first was born on the Fourth of July).

These days, the Bush and Gore campaigns aren’t speaking as much Spanish.

One of the few states where both campaigns agree the Latino vote is crucial is New Mexico, a tossup state whose five electoral votes are up for grabs. And even here the battle for voters such as Juan Leyva is in many ways a halfhearted affair, with one side all but conceding the vast majority of the vote to the other.

“We’re very outnumbered here,” said John Sanchez, sheriff in Mora County and one of a handful of Republican elected officials in northern New Mexico, a sort of rural “heartland” for Hispanic voters.

A recent poll of Hispanic voters in New Mexico by the William C. Velasquez Center found Gore beating Bush by an almost 3-1 ratio. The large gap, mirrored in other polls, is surprising given Bush’s strong appeal among Latinos in his own, neighboring state.

The GOP’s inability to appeal to large numbers of Latinos outside of Texas and Florida says much about the diversity of the electorate. The down-home style that won over so many Mexican Americans to Bush in places such as San Antonio and Houston has not translated to much support in Los Angeles or San Francisco.

Gore has had a similar problem. The liberal social policies that draw strong support from Puerto Ricans in New York and Chicago fall flat in South Florida, where Cuban Americans are still angry about what happened to the castaway boy Elian Gonzalez.

To help win over Hispanics in New Mexico, the GOP assembled a team of three Mexican American politicos from Texas to tour the state’s northern region Sunday. Their daylong bus tour was distinguished by the sort of low-level patronizing and cultural cliches that are the hallmark of both major parties’ efforts to reach Latino voters.

In Las Vegas, a community of old brick storefronts northeast of Santa Fe, the GOP event opened with the blaring trumpets and swooning violins of a mariachi band. U.S. Sen. Pete V. Domenici introduced “three very good friends of George W. Bush who also happen to be Hispanic.” El Paso Mayor Carlos Ramirez then spoke, followed by Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas) and Texas Railroad Commissioner Tony Garza.

“I know that some of you, when you get Texans coming here, you want to say, ‘Chicano, go home,’ ” Garza told the crowd, to a smattering of laughter. “But today, we’re all amigos.”

The speeches seemed to go over well. But when Domenici asked, “Who are you going to vote for, Bush or Gore?” shouts of “Gore!” mixed in with the louder cries of “Bush!” One cynic even lined up for the free GOP breakfast while holding a large Gore sign over her head.

Most in the audience, however, said they would support Bush and the GOP. “They’re honest, that’s what I like most,” said Issac Gold Jr., 53. “I like what they stand for.”

But his fiancee, Gina Mares, quickly chimed in, “I’m for Gore. . . . I really don’t feel that Bush is going to help the poor people. He’s for the rich.”

GOP leaders here too have mixed feelings about the Hispanic community. On the one hand, the party is eager to win over a potential swing group. On the other, they fear voter fraud in northern counties where political patrones, or bosses, have delivered the Democratic vote for decades. In 1997, 19 people, including several election officials, were indicted for voter fraud in Rio Arriba County.

“New Mexico is rife with election improprieties,” said state Republican chairman John Dendahl. “The deck is loaded against us.”

To fight potential fraud, the New Mexican GOP has created a toll-free hotline that will be staffed by a team of lawyers on election day. At one point, they also considered offering a $20,000 reward but dropped the idea at about the same time it was leaked to the media.

The California GOP has had a similarly ambivalent relationship with the Latino community. Former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s strong endorsement of Proposition 187 and a series of controversies over alleged noncitizen voting have led to some strained relations between the GOP and Latinos. Recent polls confirm the trend: Gore leads Bush by more than 4 to 1 among Latinos.

Even so, some Latino Republicans remain undeterred, and on Wednesday 400 Latino business leaders from California endorsed Bush. “He has what it takes,” said Javier F. Rodriguez, an insurance broker in South Gate, at a news conference in the City of Commerce. “His experience as governor of Texas has shown he can help the Latino community.”

In Southern California, home to the largest Latino population in the United States, only in the waning days of the campaign are Republicans planning to air any ads on Spanish-language television.

Last week, the Bush campaign was running Spanish-language ads in only four cities: Miami, Orlando and Tampa, Fla.; and Albuquerque. The Democrats were running Spanish-language ads in Albuquerque; Las Vegas, Nev.; and Milwaukee.

“In the states where there’s a race, a lot of stuff is going on,” said Antonio Gonzales of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project in Los Angeles. “We don’t see much of it here in California.”

One of the places where both campaigns are reaching out to Latino voters is Wisconsin, another tossup state. Latino voters make up, at best, 3% of the state’s electorate.

Recent years have seen important strides by Latino voters in Milwaukee, the city electing its first Latino city councilman and state legislator. But some Latino political leaders in the city are dismissive of the campaigns’ efforts.

“This month we saw the first ads in our Spanish paper here,” said Dagoberto Ibarra of Latinos United for Political Action. “The Democrats spent $500 on a one-page ad. The Republicans bought a half-page for $150. That’s the great flood of money they’re spending.”

For Ibarra, the few drops of campaign money spent in Milwaukee’s Latino community is hardly enough. Among other things, the hoped-for investment in large voter registration efforts never materialized.

“That’s why we’re cynical about these people who say ‘Viva Bush’ and ‘Viva Gore,’ ” Ibarra said. “They come and eat the tortillas and think we will follow them.”

In New Mexico, food was at the center of each of the GOP tour’s stops. Chorizo and eggs in Las Vegas for breakfast; taquitos in Mora; barbecued burgers in Espanola, where an enthusiastic crowd of 700 filled a gymnasium.

In Espanola, several people took their plates of food and ate outside in their parked cars, not bothering to listen to the speeches. One of them, city employee Henry Garcia, confessed to being “undecided.” But about the food, he was unequivocal.

“When you’re hungry,” he said, “anything tastes good.”

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Times staff writer Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios contributed to this story.