Can You Imagine a Latino President of the US?
[Editor’s note: This was written by Dr. Henry Flores, professor of Political Science and Dean of the Graduate School at St. Mary’s University, in San Antonio, Texas. I recently mentioned him in one of my posts. He will be a regular contributor to News Taco, and you can read more of his biography below.]
by Henry Flores, Ph.D.
¡Chihuahua! I can’t keep up with my younger colleagues! I keep wanting to say something about Latino population growth and its political implications pero Victor and Sara Inés beat me to it everytime!
Anyway, I looked up the definition of “game changer” and there wasn’t one. All I can say is that what is happening today in the United States is that the dramatic growth of the Latino population over the last ten years (really this has been going on for thirty years, it just accelerated) will lead to political change over the next fifteen to twenty years. We already have an African American as president and we have a Latino mayor, not the first. Why not a Latino governor in Austin and grabbing 30% or more of the two state houses?
The rapid growth of Latinos will “change” the normal course of the political “game” in Texas. Why do you think that the Tea Partying Republicans have filed a Federal law suit arguing that it is unconstitutional to include undocumented individuals in the counts to determine the size of congressional districts? What the Tea Baggers want, the law suit is titled Teuber v Perry, is that only citizen voting age population be used in determining the composition and design of each congressional district. This law suit if heard favorably by the federal court will require that the Census Bureau gather information on citizenship each decade. They don’t do it now because the United States Constitution requires that “all persons” be counted, citizenship isn’t even mentioned. The Tea Baggers know that the writing is on the wall, the game is about to change, and that if Latinos take over the government business in Austin will take on a different color (excuse my pun).
On another level of the game an interesting phenomenon is occurring across the nation. As the Census Bureau releases each state’s updated numbers daily it appears that fully 50% of all the population growth in the nation has been attributed to Latinos. Most importantly, I discovered that approximately 90% of all Latino registered voters, this does not include undocumented persons just in case a Tea Bagger is reading this, live in only 15 states. These 15 states account for 295 Electoral College votes and it only takes 270 to win the White House. Can you imagine how the game would change nationally and internationally if a Latino were to be elected to the presidency of the United States?
[Photo by Campanero Rumbero]Henry Flores, Ph.D., is a Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Graduate School at St. Mary’s University. Dr. Flores has served as the departmental chairperson for two terms and directed both Graduate Programs in Public Administration and Political Science. He has taught classes at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in public administration, public policy, urban politics, and research methods and statistics.
Since 1986, Dr. Flores has served as an expert witness in more than 50 federal voting and civil rights lawsuits including serving as the statistical testifying expert in NAACP v. Harris which focused on the presidential challenge in Florida in 2000. Dr. Flores has been active with many community-based organizations such as COPS, Metro Alliance in San Antonio, LULAC, NAACP, MALDEF, the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, and the Esperanza Environmental Justice Project. During state redistricting efforts in 2001, he was a senior policy analyst with the William C. Velasquez Research Institute, providing research on the racially polarized nature of the Texas electorate.
Dr. Flores is the author of “The Evolution of the Liberal Democratic State With a Case Study of Latinos in San Antonio, Texas” (2003) and coauthor of “Mexican Americans and the Law” (2004) with three other colleagues.
