Latino Voters Gaining Political Clout

Latino Voters Gaining Political Clout
Now 5 Percent of Electorate, Hispanics Help Clinch Key Races, Win More Offices

By William Branigin Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 9, 1998; Page A08

After years of what they regard as political neglect, Latinos emerged from Tuesday's elections as an electoral force to be reckoned with, helping to decide key races in several states and breaking new ground as candidates.

As a percentage of the electorate, Latinos continued a steady climb in recent years that reflects the overall growth of the U.S. Hispanic population and record numbers of citizenship applications by Latin American immigrants. Latinos accounted for 3.7 percent of voters in the 1992 elections. Last Tuesday, exit polls indicated, about 5 percent of voters were Latinos, the highest proportion ever recorded. The nation's 28 million Latinos currently make up 11 percent of the population, but fewer than half are eligible to vote.

Although the recent increases in political participation have been largely incremental, the intensive courting of the Latino vote during the latest campaign made it clear that both parties recognize it as an important factor in many states.

"After decades of invisibility, it is now apparent that in no future election will the Latino community or its impact as a swing vote be neglected," said Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, a leading Latino advocacy group.

In addition to capturing high offices in several states with large Hispanic populations, Latinos also made political inroads in states without such concentrations. Voters in Michigan and Wisconsin elected their first state legislators of Hispanic origin -- in fact, two were elected in Michigan -- and Massachusetts voters sent three Latinos to the state House of Representatives, which last had a Latino member in the 1980s.

The biggest gains came in California, where Cruz Bustamante (D), the former speaker of the Assembly, was elected lieutenant governor, becoming the first Latino to hold statewide office there in more than a century. Latinos also increased their share of legislative seats from four to seven in the state Senate and from 14 to 17 in the Assembly. All three of the new Latino members of the Assembly were Republicans, who defeated non-Latino candidates in mixed districts and bucked a trend of heavy Latino support for Democrats in California.

Nationwide, 18 Latinos -- all but three of them Democrats -- represent seven states in the U.S. House of Representatives, a number unchanged from two years ago. However, they now include two new faces, as voters in California and Texas replaced retiring congressional representatives with younger Hispanics who rose from state offices.

After Tuesday's elections, Latinos will now hold seats in 15 state senates and 25 state houses or assemblies, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, which represents more than 5,400 such officeholders across the country.

Yzaguirre said Latinos Tuesday were "discerning voters" who were more likely to back candidates based on issue positions than along party lines. In Florida, for example, Latinos strongly supported Republican Jeb Bush in his successful race for governor but also helped reelect Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, he said.

In New York, exit polls showed that Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D) captured 80 percent of the Latino vote in his victory over Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato (R) in their Senate race, said Lisa Navarrete of La Raza's research office. "Schumer has always had a good record on Latino issues and did considerable outreach to the community in New York," she said, while D'Amato "did too little, too late." Latinos made up 6 percent of the electorate in New York, exit polls showed.

In California, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) got 69 percent of the Latino vote, Navarrete said. Latinos accounted for 13 percent of the state's voters this time, up from 8 percent in 1994, polls showed.

The increased participation came despite the disappearance of immigration as an election issue this year, in sharp contrast to 1996, when Republicans campaigned against illegal aliens, moved to cut welfare benefits to legal immigrants and accused the White House of naturalizing thousands of "criminals" before the elections.

According to Navarrete and other analysts, the immigrant vote in California represented a "backlash" against Republicans, especially Gov. Pete Wilson, because of such positions. They said this reaction helped explain why Wilson's lieutenant governor, Dan Lungren, received scant support from Latinos in his losing gubernatorial bid despite a major effort to reach out to them during his campaign.

However, a group that advocates reducing immigration, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, cautioned against reading too much into the Republican debacle in California. Its director, Dan Stein, said Republicans had badly miscalculated by reversing themselves and "supporting high levels of immigration" or "ignoring the immigration issue entirely" in their efforts to appeal to recently naturalized Hispanic voters, many of whom are poor.

"Not surprisingly, these newly naturalized voters are not lining up to vote for the party that stands for reducing, or eliminating, government services and reducing taxes for the middle class," Stein said. "People vote their pocketbooks, and for many recent immigrants, that apparently means voting Democratic." He said Lungren and California's GOP leadership "ignored their base and tried to appeal to a bloc of voters who, for economic reasons, are simply out of reach of the Republicans."