Finally, the Democrats Refocus on Latinos

An important group of Democrats has decided to put extra time, money and effort into wooing the Latino voters that their party often takes for granted. It’s a smart move, even if it has been too long in coming.

Indeed, some Democrats argue that the timing of the so-called Democratas Unidos project could not be better because President Bush, the politician most responsible for the recent defection of Latino voters to the Republican side, is showing some vulnerability on issues important to Latinos.

That, at least, is the message that members of the New Democrat Network, a political action committee associated with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, are drawing from a poll it recently commissioned.

NDN is taking the poll’s findings across the country to help local Democrats better connect with what the Census Bureau now says is the nation’s largest minority group. Democratas Unidos also aims to create a national agenda that Democrats can use to remind Latino voters that there are still significant differences between the two major parties on issues like immigration reform and education spending. Not coincidentally, those are two topics identified as vulnerabilities for Bush in a national poll of 800 Latino registered voters conducted for NDN by Bendixen & Associates, a Florida-based Democratic polling firm that specializes in Latino public- opinion surveys.

“The personal and emotional connection that the president worked so hard to develop [with Latino voters] may be in jeopardy,” said Sergio Bendixen. He cites poll findings that Bush has hurt his credibility among Latinos by neglecting Latin America, most especially by not working with Mexican President Vicente Fox on an immigration agreement. About 69% of poll respondents believe that Bush “broke his promise” to focus on Latin America.

Also potentially troubling for Bush are the poll’s findings that 60% of Latino voters believe more spending on public schools is the best way to improve education. Bendixen said that Bush needs to increase education funding despite the deficit. Three-quarters of Bendixen’s respondents said it would “offend them a lot” for a candidate to get elected promising to help schools, then not adequately fund them once in office

Bendixen says Bush’s wavering Latino support shows up as a 10% drop over one year in two polls his company did for NDN. In May 2002, 44% of the Latino voters Bendixen polled supported Bush, compared with 46% who supported Vice President Al Gore. But in Bendixen’s 2003 survey, completed last month, only 34% of Latinos supported Bush, while 48% said they would support an unspecified “nominee of the Democratic Party.”

It is noteworthy that the Democratas Unidos project was first made public in Washington last week at a meeting of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, whose 18 members are all Democrats. Last year the three Latino Republicans in Congress formed their own GOP-focused caucus.

The fact that Latino Republicans no longer feel a need to affiliate with a larger, more visible caucus dominated by Democrats shows how confident the GOP is that Bush’s personal popularity with Latinos can transfer to his party.

But it would be as big a mistake for Republicans to take Latinos for granted as it has been for the Democrats. There have been Republican presidents in the recent past, like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who got lots of Latino votes. Yet whatever loyalty they generated for the GOP has long since been eroded by Republican support for anti-immigrant measures like California’s Proposition 187, or by the Republican affiliation of anti-immigrant politicians like former GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.

“We’re trying to convince as many Democrats as we can that they can no longer assume Latinos are part of the party’s voter base,” NDN Vice President Maria Cardona says. “They are now swing voters, and we have to work to appeal to them.”

Give the New Democrats credit for trying. Nobody at the Democratic National Committee has shown such creativity lately, one big reason Bush’s appeals for Latino support have proved so effective. The president is sincere, but he’s also operating in a vacuum with no competition from Democrats on the national level. Maybe that will change, if NDN can get its party’s leaders to listen.

Frank del Olmo is associate editor of The Times.