by Raúl Yzaguirre
When I agreed to lead Sen. Hillary Clinton’s efforts to attract Latino voters during the presidential primaries, I believed she was the most qualified candidate for the job, in part because she had built a profound and lasting relationship with our community.
In my view, Senator Clinton had earned the respect and support of a majority of the nation’s Latino electorate.
Most Latino primary voters agreed. In state after state, Clinton routinely attracted 60 to 70 percent of the Latino vote against Barack Obama, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee.
President Clinton may have been this nation’s first “black president,” but Bill and Hillary have long been among the Latino community’s greatest advocates. Latinos made significant gains during the Clinton administration in appointments and a wide array of policy initiatives. I felt Senator Clinton’s ascension would lead again to Hispanics playing an important role in the White House.
When Senator Clinton lost in the primaries, I pondered the potential impact on our community that the election of Barack Obama or John McCain could have. I worried that Latinos would not wield much influence with either administration and expressed that view in a commentary in Hispanic Link Weekly Report.
Senator Obama is smart and well intentioned, but he lacks deep ties to our community and an intimate understanding of the needs and interests of the nation’s Latinos.
In short, he doesn’t have a track record with us, I pointed out.
As for Senator McCain, whom I regard as a friend, most Latinos disagree with much of the GOP platform. Our community also was disappointed by his shift to placate his party’s extreme right wing, which many of us view as antagonistic toward immigrants and people of color. His choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, likewise, was a great disappointment.
Given the outcome of the primaries, I believed Latino voters needed to take a broad view of the Nov. 4 election. Our community’s fast-growing population, the overall excitement of the campaign, and a slew of get-out-the-vote efforts attracted record numbers of Latinos to the polls. Senator Clinton may not have made it to the finish line, but Latinos still played an important role.
The White House wasn’t the only game in town. The Latino community redoubled its efforts to elect candidates at the local, state and federal level especially in Congress, where we are woefully underrepresented.
In the long term, Latinos must be well represented in both the Republican and Democratic ranks. Voting exclusively for one political party diminishes our leverage in the overall political process.
It remains vital that we grow our representation in state legislatures in advance of the 2010 U.S. Census. It is our state representatives who, based on the Census results, will get to redraw the district boundaries that directly affect who gets to represent us in the state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives.
The long-term effect of voting local is critically important.
School boards, city councils and the like are often stepping stones to statewide or national office. No matter how you look at it, the road to the White House begins at your local polling place.
If the success of Barack Obama proves anything, it is that the United States is still a country where people born to modest means can rise to the top of the nation’s political or economic ranks. Like Senator Obama, many of our nation’s most successful Hispanic politicians got their start as community activists. I’m convinced there’s a future presidential candidate in our midst.
In the end, I decided, no matter who was elected to the White House, the November election offered Latino voters an opportunity to shape our nation’s future. That opportunity was not wasted. Hispanic Link.
(Raúl Yzaguirre is executive director of the Arizona State University Center for Community Development and Civil Rights. He built the National Council of La Raza into the nation’s most influential Hispanic organization as its president for three decades before stepping down four years ago. E-mail: raul.yzaguirre@asu.edu). © 2008
