Tag: Latino Voters

With Republican power elite connections and a conservative voting record that served him well while in the GOP-dominated 4th Congressional District, Republican Bob Schaffer has never had to heavily campaign among a number of different voting blocks in an election. But one growing block that Schaffer has not courted while battling Democratic Rep. Mark Udall for the U.S. Senate seat could end up making all the difference: the Latino vote.

The Obama campaign will begin airing a Spanish-language ad Wednesday in Colorado slamming John McCain for "the same distortions and lies on the immigration issue," according to The Washington Post. It's part of a contest for the Hispanic vote carried out largely beneath the mainstream media's radar with both campaigns waging attacks in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida, the Post reports.

To figure out where the presidential candidates stand on affirmative action, one need look no further than Colorado's ballot. Amendment 46, dubbed the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, will destroy preferential treatment for women and minorities in public contracting, hiring and education. That measure, plus an identical one on Nebraska's ballot, is part of a national attempt to dismantle affirmative action state by state. The effort's main backer, a black California businessman named Ward Connerly, has sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Colorado proposal alone. In an interview with the Associated Press, Connerly said that John McCain has tepidly endorsed the measure but "would ideally like to leave [the issue] alone," if elected.

Latinos — who could comprise more than 10 percent of the vote in Colorado alone this year — could steer traditionally conservative battleground states to blue on the electoral map in 2008, and though John McCain's campaign has in recent weeks reached out to Hispanics, the popular wisdom is that Barack Obama has their support nailed.

This dusty agricultural city, home of a Marine Corps air station and Army proving grounds for more than a decade was the center of a big wave of illegal immigration into the United States. Today, immigration registers barely a blip on the local political radar screen as some Border Patrol agents pine for the good old days of mass arrests and too much to do.

Do bad economic times mean an increase in deportation or at least anti-immigrant sentiments? Some Latino activists fear history will repeat itself as Americans are faced with an increasingly shaky economy and look for scapegoats beyond Wall Street.

On the heels of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s disparaging remarks about community organizers, more than 50 Barack Obama supporters attended a campaign outreach and volunteer training session focused on reaching out to Colorado’s Latino community.

On the heels of a citizenship campaign that helped one million Latinos begin the naturalization process, the same coalition is launching a massive get-out-the-vote...