In a historic election that will probably change how both political parties regard and court the Latino vote, for
the first time ever Hispanic candidates, all Republican, won top statewide offices in predominantly blue states.
That is not, however, the only good news for Hispanics or the only measure of growing Hispanic power. Latinos made their mark as well on the Democratic side.
Latino Democrats are now
getting at least some credit for the surprising victories of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada against tea-party upstart Sharron Angle in what was one of the most contentious and close races in the nation.
Latinos accounted for 14 percent of the vote in Nevada, and based on exit polls, two-thirds of Latinos voted for Reid. Latinos are also credited for the last-minute surge of Michael Bennet, the incumbent Democrat candidate for the U.S. Senate in Colorado, where Latinos make up 13 percent of all voters. Bennet, whose election to a full term was in doubt during much of the campaign, claimed victory on Wednesday afternoon. His opponent, Ken Buck, a Republican district attorney with tea-party support, has conceded.
But the greater measure of expanding and shifting Latino voting power – a measure that might give Democrats some alarm – was the GOP's ability to field
three top-tier Hispanic candidates for major office while the Democrats fielded nobody. The Republicans also fielded Latinos to run for U.S. House seats and at least three won against entrenched Democrats in Texas, Idaho and Washington state.
All three candidates for major statewide offices won big victories in
New Mexico, Nevada and Florida with platforms highlighting hot-button issues like jobs, the economy, taxes, the deficit and immigration. They ran ahead despite their support for tougher anti-illegal immigration measures like the Arizona law that is opposed by many Latinos.
In New Mexico, Susana Martinez, a Republican 50-year-old county district attorney, became the first female Hispanic governor anywhere in this country. She drew support among Hispanics, who usually vote Democratic, and independents. During the campaign, she favored lower taxes, less spending, tighter border security, and like most tea-party-backed candidates, she is pro-life and anti-gay marriage. Hispanics make up
38 percent of all eligible voters in New Mexico; she was expected to get 30 percent of that vote, which is high for a Republican in New Mexico. Overall she won 53.6 percent over 46.4 percent for her Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Diane Denish.
In Nevada, voters elected a Latino governor for the first time, Brian Sandoval, a 47-year-old Republican who is a former federal judge, and who may have alienated some Latino votes when he said publicly that his children "didn't look Hispanic." But while Latinos seemed to have helped rescue Harry Reid from defeat, at least a good number of Latinos supported Sandoval over his opponent, Harry Reid's son, Rory Reid, a Democrat, who won 53.4 percent to 44.6 percent.
Though
Martinez and Sandoval made history by becoming the first Latina and Latino governors of their states, the star of the 2010 Latino Republican class is, without doubt, Marco Rubio, the 39-year-old son of Cuban exiles who is now the U.S. senator-elect of Florida.
Already tagged as
"the great right hope" and "the Cuban Barack Obama," Rubio skyrocketed from the semi-obscurity of Florida state politics to defeat the current governor, Charlie Crist, for the GOP nomination to the U.S. Senate seat. Crist became an independent and ran for the seat along with the Democrat Kendrick Meek. Rubio beat them both by a wide margin – Rubio at 49 percent, Crist at 30 percent, Meeks at 20 percent.
Rubio, a tea-party darling with a charismatic personality and youthful good looks, has set out his own path, mixing pragmatism with hard-right conservative principles, but he doesn't come off like an ideologue like, say, Rand Paul, the newly elected senator from Kentucky. Such is Rubio's appeal that the GOP establishment leaped to embrace him. He was
endorsed by past or future presidential candidates including Mitt Romney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and Sarah Palin.
At his victory party, at the historic Biltmore Hotel in affluent Coral Gables, Fla., Rubio projected a self-assured and commanding presence with a somber message of homegrown, flag-waving American values and his hope and promise that he would not go to Washington and become like everyone else there.
There are some
contradictions perhaps between his personal background and his politics. He supports tough anti-illegal immigration measures, though his parents are first-generation Cuban exiles who struggled to rise to the Florida middle class. Though he is bilingual, he supports making English the official language of the United States, an issue that at one time riled Cuban immigrants as discriminatory.
Those contradictions, or incongruities, between the personal and the political may be exactly what makes him a successful Latino Republican candidate. He appeals to the growing Latino middle- and upper-classes in states like Florida and Texas who oppose illegal immigration (because the negative image of illegal immigrants affects the image of all Latinos) and who believe in assimilation in the American mainstream.
Rubio embodies most of all that. His vision and passion, coupled with an attractive stage persona and political savvy, make him, inevitably, a rising supernova in the GOP firmament. Hours after his election, there was already speculation about a Rubio vice presidential candidacy in 2010. He dismissed it all with a tight smile.
"It's flattering and it's fleeting," he said on cable news interviews. "Politics is full of one-hit wonders, of people that stood in a room like this with a bunch of cameras, and no one hears from them anymore."