It’s a voting bloc party

As TV pundits go, they’re not yet in the same showbiz stratosphere as David Gergen and Arianna Huffington.

But it’s a safe bet that Humberto Guida, Maria Teresa Petersen, Jesus Malverde and their colleagues on LATV’s “Decision 2008” have more insight than their fellow talking heads about what’s on the minds of one of America’s fastest-growing voting (and viewing) blocs: Latino youth.

Spreading that knowledge among young Latinos, as well as to the general public, is the impulse behind LATV’s freewheeling, election-year round-table debate show, apparently the first of its kind. Produced in-house by L.A.-based bilingual entertainment network LATV, in conjunction with the get-out-the-vote organization Voto Latino, “Decision 2008” was shot in front of a live Los Angeles studio audience earlier in the fall and first aired Oct. 20. It will be rebroadcast at 8 p.m. today.

Hosted by Guida, a Cuban American journalist and TV producer, the show’s panel includes Malverde, a Mexican American hip-hop artist and activist; Petersen, Voto Latino’s Colombian-born, Harvard-trained executive director; and Carlos Arias, a Cuban-Brazilian producer whose credits include the upcoming reality show contest “Miss University.”

The banter, mostly in English, with occasional colorful bursts of Spanglish, is lively and informal, and the overall seriousness level hovers somewhere between CNN and the bilingual channel MTV Tr3s. Rounding out the formula is a large dose of pep-talk enthusiasm, urging viewers to register to vote.

Topics covered include the current global financial meltdown and U.S. trade relations with countries such as Colombia. A sprinkling of brief man-on-the-street interviews overturns conventional wisdom by revealing that young Latinos this election cycle are as concerned about finding jobs and the state of the economy as they are about hot-button issues like immigration.

Guida, 27, who cites Bill Maher and Jon Stewart as his talk-show role models, believes that an up-tempo, well-informed show about politics, with a touch of irreverent wit, will attract far more young Latino viewers than plodding earnestness.

“I think that humor is a great way to reach young people, even on real issues,” he says. “Young people might be angry, but they’re also optimistic. So they don’t want a whole lot of end-of-the-world kind of talk.”

“Decision 2008” is part of an ambitious multimedia strategy developed by 4-year-old Voto Latino to boost electoral participation by Latinos ages 18 to 34. Largely overlooked by politicians and the mainstream media as an emerging force for the last decade, this group made its national presence felt en masse with the huge pro-immigration rallies that swept the country in May 2006.

“These kids were the impetus behind the largest mass marches in our history,” says Petersen, a frequent CNN commentator. “And how did they organize? By text-messaging and MySpace.”

Accordingly, Voto Latino has been reaching out to potential young voters by hooking up with popular Latino political blogs and websites, recruiting help from Voto Latino co-founder Rosario Dawson and rapper Pitbull, among others, generating audience interest by launching telenovela spoofs and other programs on MySpace and releasing a benefit album on iTunes Latino. So far, Voto Latino has registered more than 30,000 new voters online.

The idea of “Decision 2008” was cooked up by Petersen, then pitched to Danny Crowe, LATV’s president and co-founder. “The reason we picked LATV specifically is that they have been groundbreaking in Latino youth space,” Petersen says, adding that Voto Latino also has been collaborating with two other bilingual networks, MTV Tr3s and L.A.-based SiTV.

Crowe says that although LATV is an entertainment rather than a news network, “we’ve been inspired recently by everything that’s going on in the country.”

“No one’s doing this to make a living,” he says of the collaboration with Voto Latino. “They’re doing this to make a difference.”

Petersen believes that although 52% of all Latinos who voted in this year’s presidential primaries were 29 and younger, and 50,000 Latino youths turn 18 each month, many politicians still are struggling to find ways of connecting with this demographic. “Even though Latinos have been here for generations, politicians are using blunt instruments,” she says.

So is the mainstream media, which largely hasn’t recognized that 79% of all eligible Latino voters, many of them second- or third-generation Americans, speak and conduct their lives primarily in English, not Spanish, Petersen says. Because of their greater English fluency and wider exposure to U.S. culture, many young Latinos frequently are better informed than their parents or grandparents about politics, personal finance and other crucial matters (as was dramatized in a recent episode of the ABC series “Ugly Betty”).

“Oftentimes their parents and their family members look to them for the decision making,” says Petersen.

Guida agrees that politicians have been slow to reach out to young Latino voters. “I wouldn’t give these people an A,” he says. But he also thinks that “it’s our job, through shows like this, to show we have a voice.”

“I guess I’m putting the onus on Latino youth more than on the politicians.”

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reed.johnson@latimes.com