Will Latinos Desert Democrats during the Mid-Term Election?

By Dr. Henry Flores, NewsTaco

The short and quick answer to this question is “no.”  The reasons are innumerable and I have pointed them out here before.   But, it appears the media just doesn’t want to understand Latino voters.  They, traditional pundits, seem to think that the Latino vote is one-dimensional and that the only issue that we are concerned with is the failure of President Obama to immediately give us an immigration policy that we like.  Well, ¡valgame dios!, but Latinos are what Political Scientists call rational voters.  We vote for candidates and parties that stand for more than one issue.  And, we vote for those that stand on the same side of issues that we do.

Trying to Understand the Latino Vote

For some time now various pundits have identified us as a sleeping giant whose vote will dramatically transform the American political landscape.  This perception was based upon the dramatic growth in the Latino population since 1970.  This growth has been particularly pronounced in states having large populations strategically placing us in the “Presidential Election driver’s seat.”  It seems that approximately 90% of all Latino voters live in states that have enough Electoral College votes to elect the president.  So who needs the smaller populated “Red” states anyway?  (It’s funny how “red” used to have such a negative political connotation in the United States during the Cold War.  Now it practically stands for “true blue patriotism!”)

Beginning in the 1980s Republican operatives started to spin lines such as “Hispanics are Republicans, they just don’t realize it yet.” Or, “Hispanics believe in strong family values so they are naturally Republicans.”  As if being a Democrat is someone who does not believe in family, country, hard work, and so forth!

Still, Latinos perplexed both Republicans and pundits by not voting Republican.  As a matter of fact, it appears that since 1980 Latinos have been supporting Democratic presidential candidates at higher percentages than ever before.  So, if Latinos are so like Republicans, why are they voting more and more for Democrats?

The Answer to the Last Question

The fact of the matter is that Latinos are voting more and more for Democratic candidates because Republicans are forcing us to do so.  Let me explain.  Although Republicans say they want to attract us to their party they do little in the way of outreach.  What passes as outreach are a bunch of Latinos who come from minority factions within the Latino community who go about spouting empty rhetoric about the American Dream and trying to show us that our values are Republican values.  In other words, these Latino Republican spokespersons are just repeating the same old rhetoric that their Anglo Republican handlers are telling them to spout.

Simultaneously, the Anglo Republican handlers of the Latino Republican “spouters” espouse policies that go against the expressed interests and needs of the Latino community.  For instance, we want immigration reform that includes protection for our Dreamers, citizenship for those who have been here for a significant amount of time, affordable healthcare, good quality education for our children, clean food and air to enhance the quality of our lives and livable wages.  We also would like to have our right to vote protected so we can enjoy the same and equal citizenship status that Anglo Republican citizens do.  We want to have our ancestral language respected as much as other languages within the United States.  We don’t want to be rousted and stopped by police every time they feel like it and made to prove who we are.  We find it blatantly offensive that a culturally and environmentally destructive wall is being constructed separating us from our ancestral homelands.  We find it offensive that the government will not do anything to prevent small-minded “gun totting wannabes” from patrolling our country’s southern borders.

It appears to us that all of these issue positions that we find so patently offensive are espoused by the Anglo Republican leadership yet they say that they we are welcome into their party?  I don’t know but it seems to me that there is some lack of consistency here and Latinos will not move over into the Republican Party’s column until they change their tune about all of these issues.  Until then, regardless of what the Democratic Party does or does not do we’ll support them because, at least, they don’t seem like they find our presence in this country offensive.

Henry Flores, PhD, is a Distinguished University Research Professor, Institute of Public Administration and Public Service; Director, Masters in Public Administration (MPA); Professor of International Relations and Political Science at St. Mary’s University.