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Hispanic Media Size Up Election Results: Litmus Test for
Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
By Elena Shore, New America Media
NAM Editor's Note: Can Republican candidates win on an
anti-immigrant platform? And did the immigration protests translate
into more Latino voters? Hispanic media, analysts and community
organizations say the results of Tuesday's elections mean different
things to different people. Elena Shore monitors Spanish-language
media for New America Media.
SAN FRANCISCO–Hispanic media and other close observers of Latino
affairs are reading Tuesday's elections as a barometer of the
public's views on immigration and Latinos' ability to show their
power at the polls.
Some in the media say there is no question that the anti-immigrant
backlash is alive and well. Others predict the anti-immigration
tactic could backfire and Republicans could lose votes from the
growing and coveted Latino electorate.
In the closely watched special House race in San Diego to replace
convicted former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican Brian
Bilbray, running on an anti-immigrant platform, narrowly beat
Democratic challenger Francine Busby (with 49 percent to 45 percent
of the vote). The two candidates will face off again in November to
compete for a full two-year term.
The winner, Republican Brian Bilbray, "ran his entire campaign on
(the issue of) illegal immigration," says reporter Hiram Soto of
Enlace, the San Diego Union Tribune's Spanish-language newspaper.
"It was a test to see if the anti-immigrant stance will bring you
votes."
Daniel Muñoz, editor of the bilingual newspaper La Prensa San Diego,
says, "Republicans have lost their way" by taking an anti-immigrant
position. "It's not the rallying cry they think it is."
But Republicans may be reading the San Diego election as a sign that
Bilbray's anti-immigrant platform helped him win -- a claim that the
candidate himself made -- and may replicate it in other areas.
"The results (of the San Diego election) will give those who want
draconian legislation some momentum, and that could affect the House
and Senate," says Hispanic pollster Sergio Bendixen. "This would
make the House more unlikely to compromise with the Senate, and the
result would be a deadlock," he says. Congress would then be unable
to agree on any immigration reform bill.
The Republican win in San Diego also may have served as a reality
check for Democrats, who spent more than $2 million on the local
race in hopes that a Democratic win could signal a shift in
November.
"Anyone who knows what's going on in American politics knows this is
going to be a bad year for the Republicans," says Bendixen. "But it
may not be as good as the Democrats thought."
(Democratic National Committee Spokesman Luis Miranda, in a
statement released June 7, called Bilbray's win "a victory for the
anti-immigrant extremist Republican leadership in the House of
Representatives.")
But Douglas Rivlin, communications director for the Washington,
D.C.-based National Immigration Forum, says it's not a sure thing.
"I think a lot of candidates are going to try to run on an
anti-immigrant platform, and there's certainly a lot of money to be
gained from groups like FAIR (Federation for American Immigration
Reform, the anti-illegal immigration group for which Bilbray was a
lobbyist)," Rivlin says. "But it remains to be seen whether
immigration is a golden bullet or fool's gold."
The real question is the strength of the Hispanic vote.
Tuesday's election saw an all-time record low turnout for a
California statewide race, according to Mark DiCamillo of the San
Francisco-based public opinion research firm Field Research. Low
turnout means voters' demographics tend to be different than those
of the regular voting population (read older and whiter), he says.
Field Research's pre-election polls, published on Tuesday, predicted
that 73 percent of the voters would be white, 14 percent Latino, 5
percent black and 8 percent Asian and other races.
The general voter population, by contrast, is only 67 percent white.
Latinos represent 19 percent of registered voters in California,
says DiCamillo, and make up 23 percent of those eligible for
registration.
DiCamillo says he wouldn't extrapolate from the low turnout in this
election the extent of Latino participation in the fall. Many new
Latino voters register as Independent and were unable to vote for a
candidate in Tuesday's Democratic gubernatorial primary, says
DiCamillo. The issues in the statewide election may not have
resonated with Latinos, adds Marcelo Gaete of the Los Angeles-based
National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO).
Latino voter turnout is steadily rising over time as registration
increases. Latinos' share of registered voters, DiCamillo says, has
almost doubled what it was 20 years ago, when they represented only
eight to nine percent of registered voters. Though this is primarily
due to population changes, national voter registration drives and
get-out-the-vote efforts heavily promoted by U.S. Spanish-language
media may also have played a role.
Hispanic media, which were successful in mobilizing national
protests over the last few months, are again attempting to
capitalize on the energy from the immigrant rights' protests to
drive people to the polls.
Gaete, senior director of programs for NALEO, says Spanish TV giant
Univision was a key partner in encouraging Latinos to vote in
Tuesday's elections.
Univision helped promote NALEO's bilingual voter information hotline
through news segments, interviews and public service announcements.
The hotline received close to 1,000 calls from people across
California on Tuesday, most of them asking about the location of
their polling place.
One of the most popular Spanish DJs in the country, Renán Almendárez,
"El Cucuy," played an active role in getting Latinos to the polls as
part of the Voter Registration and Education Project. The campaign's
slogan, "Before we marched, now we vote" is an update of the popular
slogan from the immigration protests, "Today we march, tomorrow we
vote."
DiCamillo predicts that the Latino voter registration drive,
combined with increased national attention on immigration issues,
means Latino turnout could increase to 18 or 19 percent in the
November elections, equivalent to the percentage of Latino voters in
the 2004 presidential election.
"I'm expecting that because the issues on the table are the issues
they care about," he says.
Hispanic media in the region hope this is true.
"If we don't get out and vote, then all those protests, all that
marching will be all for naught," says Muñoz, "because people are
just going to look at it and say, 'Hispanics don't vote, so why
should we enact policies that benefit them?'"
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