Harry Reid’s Big, Complicated Latino Legacy Won’t End When His Career Does

*Carrasquillo does a good job of pulling the curtain in this piece, telling us how Sen. Harry Reid had his hands on the legislative gears that failed to pass immigration reform, but also put together the idea and momentum for President Obama’s executive action on immigration. There’s a lot to consider. According to Carrasquillo’s reporting, Obama’s reelection campaign took its Latino outreach playbook directly from the Reid campaign. Back then Reid was in a contentious reelection race, and he saw the Latino vote has his saving grace. His advisors disagreed, but he went with his hunch. This is the problem I have with this part of the story: Reid, for all the credit he gets on immigration, pursued the Latino vote for politics, not because it was the right thing to do. If his passion were truly immigration reform, wouldn’t he have made sure that it became a reality when Democrats held both houses of congress? He played politics then, and he played it for his reelection, and Obama followed his lead.

On the other hand, a big part of this story is spent on Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, and how she’s Reid’s preferred person to replace him. If she did, she’d be the first Latina U.S. Senator. … the gears of politics move in strange ways. VL

By Adrian Carrasquillo, BuzzFeed

In the Spring of 2012, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina gathered a group of high-level Latino Democrats and operatives to update them on what they were doing to win support from Latino voters.

“I’m obsessed,” Messina began, according to someone familiar with the meeting, “with the way Harry Reid’s campaign did it in 2010. We’re looking at that very closely.”

Obama would go on to win 71% of the Latino vote, two years after Reid dominated with Hispanics in a tight race against a Tea Party candidate. The lessons from the Nevada senator were implemented.

Click HERE to read the full story.