by Luis Carlos López

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Momentum for candidates in 37 competitive congressional races and three gubernatorial contests this coming fall will hinge heavily on Latino voter turnout, a report released Feb. 8 by America’s Voice reveals.

On average over the years, Latino voters have supported Democratic candidates in presidential race years by at least two-to-one margins. The Latino turnout for the November 2008 presidential election shot to 10 million — up nearly 2.5 million over four years earlier, with a similar or stronger preference for Democratic candidates in congressional races.

Exit surveys by the Bendixon polling firm found that Latinos cast their presidential ballots for Barack Obama over the GOP’s John McCain by a 75 -25 percent margin.

The strong presence or absence of Hispanics in the coming November mid-term elections can keep Democrats in power on Capital Hill or yield a shift to Republicans, says AV executive director Frank Sharry.

Eight Senate and 29 House seats spread across 12 states, plus gubernatorial contests in California, Texas and Colorado, are particularly at play, he says.

The expected candidates for California are Democrat Jerry Brown, the current state attorney general who served two terms as governor, (’75 -’83) and former EBay CEO Meg Whitman. In Colorado, Denver’s Democratic Mayor John Hickenlooper will face off against either Scott McInnis or Dan Maes both of whom served in Congress.

In Texas, former Houston Mayor Bill White will faceoff against US Senator Kay Bailey-Hutchison and Governor Rick Perry. The America’s Voice study notes that Hispanics now comprise at least 25 percent of the population in 79 of the nation’s 435 congressional districts.

Of those, 54 are represented by Democrats and 25 by Republicans.

and four are Republicans. They are concentrated in three states.The success of either party is largely based on how well it addresses the issue of immigration, Sharry states.Currently, of the 27 Hispanic voting members in Congress, 23 are Democrats,

­“All these things have to play out,” he explains. “There’s going to be a major mobilization in favor of immigration reform. The final chapter has not been written as to whether immigration reform is going to happen in 2010.”

Sharry and the panel that participated in releasing the report do not speculate on how many Latinos will turn out this fall.

However, they point out that Latino participation significantly increases even in nonpresidential election years.

Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of Service Employees International Union, says, “Latinos want to see comprehensive immigration reform and they’ll fight to get it… If any party thinks that not acting is going to work to their advantage by depressing turnouts, they are mistaken.

“And any party that believes they have a lock on this community because they don’t have anywhere to go is also mistaken,” he said. “This constituency is highly motivated and will participate.”

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by the University of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Overweight men have a better chance of surviving a crash, but only if they’re wearing a safety belt, according to the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

In a new study in the current issue of the journal Traffic Injury Prevention, UMTRI researchers Michael Sivak, Brandon Schoettle and Jonathan Rupp found that belted male drivers who are obese (those with a Body Mass Index between 35 and 50) have a 22 percent lower probability of being killed if involved in a fatal crash than belted male drivers who are underweight (those with a BMI between 15 and 18.4).

However, the opposite is true for unbelted males, they say. The probability of being killed is 10 percent higher for unbelted male drivers with a BMI between 35 and 50, compared to those with a BMI between 15 and 18.4.

The UMTRI researchers analyzed data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for nearly 300,000 drivers involved in fatal crashes in the United States from 1998 to 2008—about 51 percent of whom were killed. They found that, overall, drivers who fail to wear safety belts are 2.1 times as likely to die in a fatal crash as those who are belted.

Further, their results indicate that female drivers are 1.1 times as likely to dies as male drivers. However, for women who wear safety belts, a normal BMI leads to the lowest risk of death, while both higher and lower BMIs increase the risk.

Belted female drivers with a BMI between 35 and 50 have a 10 percent higher probability of being killed in a crash than those with a normal BMI between 18.5 and 24.9. Likewise, the probability of being killed is 8 percent higher for those with a BMI between 15 and 18.4, compared to those with a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9.

The researchers found no statistically significant differences among the BMI categories for unbelted women drivers.

“Our findings suggest that for increasing BMI, the optimal balance between the positive effects of extra cushioning and negative effects of extra mass and momentum depends on the gender of the driver and the use of safety belts,” said Sivak, research professor and head of UMTRI’s Human Factors Division.

­“At a similar BMI, men are generally heavier than women because of height differences. Therefore, a man is more likely to overload the airbag, resulting in the increase in risk with increasing BMI for unbelted men. The decrease in risk with increasing BMI for belted men is likely because the safety belt tends to prevent this overloading.”

Overall, Sivak and colleagues say their findings suggest that the designs of airbags, safety belts, knee restraints, seats and other components of occupant-restraint systems may need to be improved to better protect drivers and their passengers at both extremes of BMI.

“Doing this will likely require new tools that can be used to evaluate the ability of restraint systems to mitigate injury potential, such as new crash-test dummies and finite-element models, because current dummies and models represent normal BMI occupants,” Sivak said.

­by the El Reportero’s news services

Alvaro Uribe

Colombia’s electoral campaign for presidential elections on May 30 officially got underway last week, but voters are none the wiser as to who will be contesting them.

Until the constitutional court decides whether or not President Alvaro Uribe is able to stand for a second re-election, his prospective rivals have not even bothered to pull together electoral manifestoes.

The uncertainty surrounding Uribe means that rather less attention has been paid to the congressional elections due to be held on March 14. The deadline for candidates to register for these elections was Feb. 2. The signs are that parapolitics (the term coined to denote collusion between politicians and paramilitaries), which so discredited the present congress, has not been purged from political life.

The Cubanisation of Venezuela

On Feb. 4, President Hugo Chávez commemorated the 18th anniversary of his failed coup attempt against the former president, Carlos Andrés Pérez, with a defiant call to battle, as the Caracas metropolitan police again dispersed opposition students with tear gas and water cannon. Chávez is in provocative pre-electoral mode, though it is unclear what his next move will be.

His most wild-eyed opponents claim that he is preparing to declare an ‘autogolpe’ and cancel this year’s scheduled legislative elections. We would argue that given his near total control over the main state institutions, including the army, he has no need to do so. Furthermore the opposition has the habit of tripping itself up, without any input from Chávez.

In other Venezuela’s news:

After more ‘pre-war’ tirades Hugo Chávez, says he’s considering talks with Obam

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez continued to raise the temperature of what has been described as a ‘pre-war’ situation, accusing the US of violating Venezuelan airspace with aircraft flying from Curaçao, and Colombia of preparing to launch an incursion on the pretext of attacking a guerrilla camp inside Venezuela.

He then went on to accuse the US of using the earthquake in Haiti as cover for a military occupation of that country. Then came a sudden change of tack: an announcement that he was ‘evaluating’ an offer of talks by US president Barack Obama.

­Congress reconvenes amid uncertainty

On Feb. 1 congress reconvened for its second session since the mid-term elections in July 2009. The current short session (which ends before Easter) looks as though it will confirm President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa as a lameduck. The opposition-controlled congress has signaled that it will not approve many of Calderón’s ambitious political reform suggestions. The consensus in congress, and among political commentators, is that the reforms, far from strengthening the legislature as Calderón claimed, will weaken it…

by Adrian Rochaand Ruth Gened

Despite the short shrift President Obama gave immigration reform in his State of the Union speech to Congress Jan. 27, the White House remains firmly committed to passage of comprehensive immigration reform this year, claim key advocates who follow the issue on a daily basis.

Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, the nation’s most prominent immigration reform advocacy group, and Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Center for American Progress, briefed Hispanic Link News Service and a select group of other journalists Jan. 29 about their ongoing sessions with White House and congressional leaders in the seemingly never-ending reform negotiations.

Rejecting conventional wisdom, they have pieced together the essential scenario for gathering enough votes to move a bill through Congress before the mid-term November elections. “The White House is operating full steam ahead,” Sharry insisted. “The activity on the inside, which they are deliberately not making public, is with an intensity that shows they are getting ready for a legislative battle.” Capital Hill veteran Kelley contributed, “This remains a priority for the President. It is an issue where I have never seen so much being done by Cabinet secretaries, high-level White House people, senators and staff that nobody knows about.

“That’s not an accident. This is an initiative. We know that if you put a bill out there, it has a major target on its back and the [opponents] will go after it and go after it hard. So, it’s very deliberative,” she said.

Earlier that week, a high-ranking Administration official described to Hispanic Link the President’s assessment as “optimistic,” but conceded, “We all know that it is not going through without Congress’s support.”

Sharry and Kelley said Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (RSC) are close to completing work on bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform legislation — a bill that unlike health care, will pick up some bipartisan support.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (DNev.), they added, remains fully committed to moving forward with a bill. He faces a difficult reelection battle in a state with a significant Hispanic population.

“They are working on it,” Sharry said. “Schumer and Graham want an additional Republican and Democrat to flank them when they roll it out. Clearly, Graham doesn’t want to be the only Republican out there. Who will it be? Well, there are lots of names being mentioned but no one has signed on, and we are not interested in putting targets on anyone’s back.”

The strongly pro-immigrant bill introduced last month by Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) will dates can and must appeal to this swing group. “The politicians have finally figured out that the Latino immigrant vote is where\ the action is,” Sharry said.

Still, many — maybe even most — Hispanic advocates and leaders (the latter not for attribution) hold little hope for passage of an immigration bill this election year. Only one Latino in Congress, Democratic Rep. likely be pushed aside, but he is expected to remain a player in the process.

To gain a bit of bipartisan backing, Kelley said, “There’s a small window of Republicans who are possible, maybe six or seven.”

Sharry and Kelley asserted that immigration reform is no longer a divisive issue that congressional moderates need to shy away from. Referring to the 2006 and 2008 elections, Sharry said, “Illegal immigration didn’t work as a wedge issue. In fact, the demonization of Latino immigrants served to mobilize Latino voters who turned out in record numbers in the last two elections,” It is really why immigration reform has a chance in this Congress, he said.

Sharry said Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts to fill the U.S. Senate seat of the late Edward Kennedy would not stall immigration reform as it has health care.

He mentioned a poll (Politico/Insider Advantage, ­www.southernpoliticalreport.com/storylink_128_1238.aspx, showing Brown won more than three-fourths of the Hispanic vote as evidence that GOP canddates can and must appeal to this swing group. “The politicians have finally figured out that the Latino immigrant vote is where the action is,” Sharry said.

Still, many — maybe even most — Hispanic advocates and leaders (the latter not for attribution) hold little hope for passage of an immigration bill this election year. Only one Latino in Congress, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuéllar of Texas, has dared to opine publically that it’s a dead issue.

Speaking to Adrian Campo-Flores of Newsweek, Rev. Samuel Rodríguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which has campaigned for a reform package, referred to Obama’s remarks as “the death knell of immigration reform in 2010.” If that happens, it’s a given that the Democratic Party, with Obama at the top of the list, will be the biggest immediate loser with the Hispanic electorate. Obama’s failure in his State of the Union address to utter the words “comprehensive immigration reform” or mention its essential elements infuriated thousands who trusted his oft-repeated campaign promise to address reform during his first year in office.

A “Viewer Guide” released to the press by the White House the day of Obama’s speech clearly stated his commitment to “a path for legalization” for the country’s estimated 12 million undocumented residents. These words were absent from his address to Congress.