There is a lot to be excited about the presidential election, but if you are a Democrat in Texas, Barack Obama’s victory is bittersweet. Obama won the election, but lost Texas by eleven points. That’s why my state will continue to be an afterthought in presidential politics and people will continue think Texas will never turn blue. However, I never believed we were solid red. I have mentioned it here and here.

Prior to the election, the Texas Observer ran article which stated that “a Democrat can’t win a statewide race in Texas without carrying Harris County.” Something interesting did occur in this election, Obama did win Harris County (51/49). he won the state’s other largest cities Bexar County (San Antonio, 52/47), Dallas County (57/42), and Travis County (Austin, 64/35).

Yet, Obama still didn’t win Texas. If Harris County was considered the vanguard of the Democratic effort to turn the state blue, then we are forced to ask, what happened? The answer is simple, the devil is in the details.

The Latino Sleeping Giant
The Associated Press reported that about two-thirds of Latino voters chose Obama over John McCain and among new Latino/a voters 76% backed Obama compared to 23% for McCain. The 2008 election will go down in history as the election in which Latino voters emerged as a political force. After years of being viewed as the “sleeping giant”, it finally woke up. According to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) roughly 9.6 million to 11 million Latinas/os voted in the election, up from 7.8 million in the 2004 presidential contest. The Wall Street Journal reported the Latinos turned out in record numbers to vote for now President-elect Barack Obama. There is no doubt these are extraordinary numbers, worthy of celebration.

One would think it would catch on here in Texas, but it didn’t. The Latino vote simply didn’t come through. Sure, a large majority of Latinos that voted for Obama, but the turnout was low. In mostly Hispanic counties, election turnout ranged between 34 to 47 percent:

Texas Counties – Presidential Election 08

Presidio – 33.66%; 84.36% of the population is Latino
Starr – 35.47%; 97.54% Latino
Frio – 38.58%; 73.76% Latino
Culberson – 39.65%; 72.24% Latino
Zapata – 39.65%; 84.78% Latino
Maverick – 40.43%; 95.01% Latino
Hidalgo – 42.73%; 88.35% Latino
La Salle – 43.03%; 77.12% Latino
Cameron – 43.31%; 84.34% Latino
Willacy – 43.42%; 85.69% Latino
Jim Wells – 43.65%; 75.71% Latino
Webb – 44.37%; 94.28% Latino
Val Verde – 44.84%; 75.46% Latino
San Patricio – 45.57%; 49.42% Latino
Hale – 46.52%; 47.90% Latino
Jim Hogg – 46.57%; 89.98% Latino
Duval – 47.18%; 87.99% Latino
El Paso – 47.44%; 78.23% Latino
Reeves – 47.49%; 73.38% Latino
Zavala – 47.71%; 91.22% Latino
Dimmit – 47.90%; 84.97% Latino

Sources: Texas Secretary of State and USA Today

So what went wrong?

Support in Texas
There is an old Texas saying that the smart move is to “dance with the one who brung ya.” The growth in the Latino electorate in strategically important states places Latino voters in more advantaged positions to influence the outcome of this election than ever before. However, in Texas, Latinos not only didn’t “dance with the one who brung ‘em,” they simply were not invited.

Latino leadership coalitions have spent millions in an unprecedented grass-roots effort to mobilize the Latino vote in as many as 13 states. Spanish-language publisher ImpreMedia, inserted 990,500 voter registration forms into its publications in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas. Media giants Univision and Entravision also are running television and radio spots. The Obama campaign pledged to spend $20 million to court the Hispanic vote.

However, the focus has always been on four of those states – Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Florida. There is no doubt in my mind those efforts provided a dramatic increase in Latino voter turnout which greatly benefited Obama and the Democrats. So what occurred in Texas is really not surprising.

According to the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the Democratic Party could have won Texas, but didn’t because they simply did not “commit more voter registration and ‘get out the vote’ resources to Texas.” I would have to agree with this assessment. In fact, prior to the election, Juan Sepulveda, Texas State Director of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, periodically sent out e-mails asking for volunteers to help Obama in other states, other than Texas. This has been blogged about before, here and here.

Despite the fact that the Houston Chronicle had already reported Barack Obama had a seven point lead in Harris County, Juan Sepulveda made a last minute push recruit volunteers to go to New Mexico and Ohio. From the email I received seven days remaining until the national election:

This weekend, Texans from all over the state will be coming together to board campaign buses and head into battleground states like New Mexico and Ohio — not just to reach out to swing voters and get folks to the polls, but to help bring change to all of America.

Its not surprising that some will disagree with this assessment. Instead of taking the responsibility, Harris County Democratic Chair, Gerald Birnberg, defended the local Democratic Party’s effort and put the blame on “former supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

Local Democratic Chairman Gerald Birnberg said his party struggled to get former supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential primary candidacy to return to the polls and vote for Obama and the rest of the party’s slate. Clinton was immensely popular among Hispanic voters in Texas.

“The head wind was the demoralization of many of the Hispanic Hillary Clinton supporters and that was a reality we faced throughout the election,” Birnberg said.

If this was true, then the Democratic Party did nothing to try to change their minds. During this campaign season the candidates practically ignored Spanish-language TV. Both local Spanish-language TV stations KXLN (Univision) and KTMD (Telemundo) received less than $75,000 in ad buys from Republican US Senator John Cornyn and Harris County Sheriff Democratic challenger Adrian Garcia.

If there was a lack of resources, then why should people be surprise the Latino vote fell short in overall turnout. Political consultant Marc Campos points out the devil is in the details. While Harris County had a 62% voter turnout, however, this was not true in mostly Hispanic state House districts.

Harris County had a 62% turnout this past Tuesday. However in HD 143 (Ana Hernandez) we had a 40% turnout, HD 145 (Carol Alvarado) a 45% turnout, HD 140 (Armando Walle) a 41% turnout as compared to HD 142 (Harold Dutton) a 58% turnout, HD 147 (Garnet Coleman) a 59% turnout, and HD 134 (Ellen Cohen) a 74% turnout.

Harris County is just one example. Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka also wrote about the lack of Latino turnout in Nueces County.

Latino leaders, nowhere to be found
Throughout Obama’s campaign, he acknowledged, he would not take the Latino vote for granted. Therefore, not all of the blame should go to the Democratic Party, some of the responsibility also goes to the inactivity of many Hispanic leaders and politicians. So, despite the proclamation that the Hispanic vote should not be taken for granted, that is exactly what occurred. Since many of our local Latina/o politicians were already enjoying a comfortable lead with Latino voters and they were already being counted in the win column for them, they took the Hispanic vote for granted, offering little if nothing in return.

Put bluntly, a large majority of them were nowhere to be found and therefore there were no outreach appeals from either of them. By doing this, this allowed the McCain/Palin campaign to define the issues with the support of the corporate media. With regard to Latinos, the right-wing strategy was not to win over the Latino vote, but to neutralize the Latino vote by inciting ignorant, racist, and nationalist stereotypes to whip up a “fear and distrust of the Negrito.”

This is not the first time Republicans have used this tactic. Investigators from the US Senate’s Watergate Committee had uncovered an elaborate scheme to influence how Hispanics voted in the 1972 presidential election. The goal was quite simple: [It] “will be our job to try to crystallize” [that segment] “toward La Raza [Unida], toward the Republican party, or staying at home.” To accomplish this, the Republican inner circle would provided incentives for Hispanic leaders to either turn Republican or to allow the Republican incumbent to win by going passive. The campaign encouraged undecided voters to not vote at all by satisfying them with information about Republican accomplishments and creating an ambivalent attitude. The thought was their divided loyalties would make them stay home. The strategy worked.

There’s an old saying, “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” If we don’t take the time to look back and learn from history and past, we will repeat them.

Recently, the Los Angles Times reported that the Democratic Party are setting it’s sights on Texas. They decided to go after the large and growing Latino population there remains untapped in Texas. There plans for turning Texas blue can be seen taking shape.

For the Democratic Party win the Latino vote in Texas, they must become more familiar to Latinos again. It is obvious that Obama understands how important it is to win the hearts and minds of the Latino community. It is evident the Obama Administration is transcending the cultural stereotypes that has created the black and brown divide.

Right after the election, Barack Obama began tearing down those stereotypes by immediately appointing two South Texas to his transition team, Juliet Garcia and Espiridion “Al” Borrego. Several prominent Latinos are mentioned for several Cabinet positions.

For labor secretary Linda Chavez-Thompson, a longtime AFL-CIO leader; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; and CA Rep. Xavier Becerra have been mentioned. Two Latinas are being considered as education secretary: University of Texas-Pan American President Dr. Blandina Cárdenas and Susan Castillo, Oregon’s superintendent of public instruction.

Contenders to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development are Miami Mayor Manny Diaz (also considered for secretary of homeland security) and Saul Ramirez Jr., a deputy HUD secretary under Clinton. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There many more Latinos being considered for Cabinet positions.

The DNC should also consider developing appeals that focus on values and issues, also with an emotional approach. It is imperative that connections be made with Latino youth – “new voters.” Most importantly, the Party must stop going to the same old Latino political well that has remained stagnant for years and instead develop young Latinos as party leaders. This has allowed to Republican Party to advantage and flipping demoralized potential leaders to their side.

Complacency has settled within the Latino leadership on all – community, state and national – levels. It is this complacency that has maintained the status quo, rather than cultivate new leadership. In Houston, power in the Latino community is concentrated into too few hands. Like a cancer, greed and vanity has allowed them to keep a tight reign on their elected positions. Challenges to the power base has divided to community and created apathy among the Latino electorate.

My challenge to DNC, NDN, state and local party, will they repeat the past mistakes or are they willing to take chance and develop a new crop of Latinos to be the future of the Democratic Party?

Related posts

• Score One for the Latinosphere (1)
• Score Another for The Latinosphere (3)
• Obama Campaign Responds To Immigration Reform Survey While McCain Campaign Remains Silent (9)
• Holding Politicians Accountable: Online Activists Are Still Waiting For Presidential Candidates’ Answers (8)
• Harris County’s Latino Vote: By The Numbers (0)

Tags: Barack Obama, bexar county, dallas county, democratic effort, Harris County, John McCain, latino vote, latino voters, sleeping giant, travis county |  Print This Post |
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