White House Cheat Sheet: Obama's Latino Courtship
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is one of the leaders of the Obama Administration's aggressive outreach to Hispanics. Photo by John Gress of Reuters.
Today's Spanish-language town hall meeting hosted by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is the latest evidence of the White House's active courtship of Latinos -- the nation's largest minority group and a (still) sleeping giant in electoral politics.
The town hall, which will be anchored by Univision's Edna Schmidt and will focus on the swine flu outbreak, is being billed by the White House as "an unprecedented effort to engage our nation's largest minority group."
Luis Miranda, director of Hispanic media for the White House, said outreach to Latinos has been a "priority" for Obama.
The town hall comes several weeks after Obama traveled to Trinidad & Tobago to attend the Summit of the Americas -- a major geopolitical event in the Spanish speaking world -- and staged the first bilingual press briefing in White House history. Obama has also granted one-on-one interviews to Univision anchors Maria Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos in the days since being elected president.
The biggest test of Obama's commitment to the Latino community, however, may well come over the next few months as he chooses the next Supreme Court justice and decides how hard to push a comprehensive immigration reform proposal -- both issues of critical importance to the Hispanic community.
"So far so good, said Gil Meneses, a Democratic consultant, of the Obama administration's effort at Latino outreach. "All eyes on immigration reform and of course, [Supreme Court] nominee. That will be a milestone for Latino community"
Already a number of Latino legal groups have been making the case for Obama to make history by naming the first Hispanic American to the Supreme Court, filling an opening caused by Justice David Souter's retirement from the bench.
"I can think of no better moment for him to nominate the Supreme Court's first Hispanic and someone who will uphold our Constitution's promise of equal justice and freedom for all," said Henry Solano, president and general counsel of the Mexican America Legal Defense & Education Fund (MALDEF).
Several Hispanics appear to be under active consideration including 2nd District Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor who isregarded by many as the current frontrunner for the nomination.
As for immigration reform, there are conflicting reports of how high a priority it is for the president.
The New York Times reported in April that Obama was ready to put his political capital behind efforts to overhaul the immigration system but White House aides cautioned that nothing had changed from the president's initial stance that immigration reform was one of a handful of priorities for the administration.
Immigration reform is a dicey political issue as it is of tremendous importance to the Latino community but is viewed far more skeptically by non-Hispanic voters -- particularly those living in Rust Belt states where the loss of blue-collar jobs is blamed -- broadly -- on America's immigration policies. (The Post's E.J. Dionne wrote a terrific column on the political perils of immigration reform earlier this week.)
What is beyond dispute is that the Latino vote is a critical piece of both parties' electoral math in future national elections.
In 2004 then President George W. Bush stunned the political world by winning 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, repeating the successes he had demonstrated in courting this community as the governor of Texas.
Four years later, however, President Obama crushed Sen. John McCain among Hispanics -- 67 percent to 31 percent -- despite the fact that Obama had struggled to win over Latino voters during his prolonged primary fight against then Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Obama is working to consolidate his demonstrated strength in the Hispanic community in advance of his 2012 reelection race. But, how he handles his Supreme Court nominee and immigration reform will do much to inform how he -- and Democrats more generally -- are perceived in Latino circles in coming years......
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Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
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