Posted on 08/25/2003 12:28:50 PM PDT by Tacos
Bustamante's run excites Latinos
Many perceive a strong role in helping to shape outcome
Eighteen-year-old Martha Ochoa voted for Gov. Gray Davis last November and doesn't think he should be recalled. But when Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante entered the race, she suddenly began looking forward to the Oct. 7 election.
Like many Latino Democrats, Ochoa will still vote against the recall. But she'll also vote for Bustamante, in case Davis loses his job.
"I feel now that I have someone I can vote for," said the University of San Diego student.
Latino interest in the recall election has grown dramatically since Bustamante, the grandson of Mexican immigrants to the Central Valley, entered the race for governor.
"You can feel the electricity," said Mateo Camarillo, president of the Chicano Democratic Association of San Diego County. "It's dawning on people that they're right in the middle of history being made and that they have a role in shaping that history."
Latino grass-roots organizations are already pushing people to register and planning get-out-the-vote drives for election day. The hottest story in the Spanish-language media is la destitucion, or the recall, with much of the talk focused on the vicegobernador, or lieutenant governor.
Enrique Morones, a Latino activist who hosts a daily talk show on KURS-AM, said that while Bustamante has widespread appeal among all Democrats, he has a special appeal for Latinos. "They see him as one of us," Morones said.
If Bustamante wins, he will be California's first Latino governor since Romualdo Pacheco held the office briefly in 1875. But while the possibility of electing a Latino governor excites many Latinos, others simply want someone in office who is sensitive to their concerns, particularly in the areas of employment, health care, education and immigration.
"Latinos have confidence in Latino (politicians) because they understand their problems," said Guadalupe Rodriguez, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in City Heights.
The 54-year-old health care worker is particularly interested in a bill that would allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver licenses. She plans to vote no on the recall and yes on Bustamante, because she figures either he or Davis would sign the legislation.
Benjamin Contreras of south San Diego thought about voting for Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, but now the 49-year-old shipyard worker thinks he may vote for Bustamante.
"Being Latino, I want to support a Latino," Contreras said. "But I still need to hear what his plans are."
Retired pipe fitter Mario Delgadillo of National City doesn't see much difference between Bustamante and Davis. He'll vote for Schwarzenegger because "he's not a politician."
Results from polls gauging Latino support for Bustamante and Schwarzenegger vary.
A poll last week by the Public Policy Institute of California showed Bustamante leading Schwarzenegger, 27 percent to 19 percent, among Latino voters.
A Los Angeles Times poll released yesterday showed that 51 percent of Latinos likely to vote would back Bustamante, with 12 percent favoring Schwarzenegger. Overall, the Times poll showed Bustamante with 35 percent support among likely voters, compared to 22 percent for Schwarzenegger.
Poll watchers caution against conceding the Latino vote to Bustamante.
"Latinos don't just vote surnames. They vote issues. This is a very complex, diverse community," said Marcelo Gaete, senior director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
"You have Latinos who obviously will benefit from Cruz's plan (to address California's budget problems) and then you have some who will be incredibly opposed to it."
Raul Furlong, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico who owns a software business in El Cajon, said he will vote for Republican candidate Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks because McClintock is a fiscal conservative who won't raise taxes.
"The plethora of initiatives that he (Bustamante) has suggested are all bad for private business," said Furlong, 61. "The probability of him winning is really high. If that happens we will continue to bear the burden of the liberal policies of the Democratic party."
Richard Babcock, a Chula Vista-based demographer who is active in Republican politics, said Bustamante's proposal to raise some taxes, most notably on commercial property, will reduce his popularity among the growing Latino middle class. Babcock, who is Hispanic, said a poll by his firm, Profile Research & Marketing, showed more Latinos backing Schwarzenegger than Bustamante.
Schwarzenegger's image among some Latinos suffered when it was revealed that he voted for Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigrant initiative of 1994. Naming former Gov. Pete Wilson co-chairman of his campaign didn't help, since Wilson was a staunch supporter of Proposition 187, which many Latinos saw as anti-Latino.
But San Diego Republican commentator Raoul Lowery Contreras thinks Schwarzenegger's immigrant background will appeal to Latinos.
"He represents everything that the Hispanic immigrant in California wants: success, a place in society," Contreras said. "He got here the same way they did, with no money in his pocket and he couldn't speak the language."
The question for many is whether large numbers of Latinos will go to the polls on election day. The question is crucial, because if Davis is removed from office, his successor could be elected with a modest plurality of votes.
Latinos consistently vote Democratic in California, but their turnout has been less than predictable. While they make up one third of the state's population and about 16 percent of the state's registered voters, Latinos accounted for only 10 percent of the votes cast in the governor's race last year, according to a Los Angeles Times exit poll.
"Bustamante has a real incentive to turn the Latino vote out," said Louis DeSipio, a political science professor at the University of California Irvine and researcher at the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute. "In an election where you're not trying to win the majority, but just trying to get the most votes, that's a significant block."
DeSipio said Latino turnout could also be boosted by Proposition 54, often described as the racial privacy act.
The statewide initiative, which would prohibit state and local governments from collecting racial and ethnic data in most cases, is opposed by many Latinos because, according to critics, it would make it difficult to identify inequities in public services.
The groups that support Bustamante are encouraging their constituencies to oppose Proposition 54 and oppose the recall – but vote for Bustamante.
Alfonso Camacho is among the Latinos who will be voting for the first time in the October election.
At work in his family's barbershop in Logan Heights this week, the 23-year-old said he still remembers being among the hundreds of San Diego students who walked out of school in 1994 to protest Proposition 187 – so he wouldn't feel comfortable voting for Schwarzenegger.
Instead, he'll probably vote for the candidate that his brother, Carlos Ramirez, 30, likes. Camacho can't remember the candidate's name. He described him as "this Hispanic guy trying to be governor."
"Who knows, maybe he'll win by one vote and my vote will make a difference."
yes, but does it also excite African-Americans, or, as Cruz Man-Breasts likes to refer to them, "n*gg*rs".!
Camacho exemplifies the collective intelligence of California voters.
Seeing as California is being annexed by Mexico on the installment plan just about along the lines of the Sudetenland for the Nazis, is there any surprise he would have a strong lead in this area?
Do EVERYTHING within your control to ignore or not touch the issue of illegal immigration and fraud voting, in order to phantom, pipe-dream "SECURE" massive Latino votes for the G.O.P., and in so pandering, creating a floodgate situation that then permeates the entire electorate so that the Democrats have a voting majority and they will continue to elect and relect Latino liberal politicians. They can always say "hey, thanks Republicans--for creating such a situation that, while altruistic and naive for you, secured an embedded political dynasty for us to be unbroken for many years to come. You gave us the boost to stay entrenched in power, and create even more laissez faire policies with respect to crossing the border, driver's licenses and voting, which will keep the cycle going for ever.
It's going to be like Santa Fe New Mexico literally where no NON LATINO will ever be elected because the Latino voting base, like black voting base, is largely racist and will refuse to vote for candidates that are other than their color or ethnicity.
Do they speak Latin?
It would be more funny if it were not a bellweather of how many other States are liable to go in this nation over the next 50 years due to an absolutely OUT OF CONTROL situation. Foreign countries would have to view us from afar and say we have little differences with population shifts such as Serbs coming into Kosovo and taking that over. Overrun. Completely overrun.
Imagine if that white voter not only voted for a candidate just because he was white, but also didn't care that the candidate had used the "N" word!
Once again, the hypocrisy of the media glares on strong. If I were to say something to the effect of "Whites have confidence in White (politicians) because they understand their problems," I would be completely pilloried. Similarly, if I founded an organization called The Aryans, as opposed to La Raza (The Race), I would be immediately and completely shunned as a racist.
RACISM IS A ONE-WAY STREET, thanks to decades of ignorance and deceit. When minorities exhibit racist sentiments, the media bow before them, and then turn around and brand all of us non-minorities as racist. Idiots, all of them. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't even do that, become reporters.
Jerks.
:/ ttt
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