McCain, Obama battle for Hispanic votes

Knowing that they both have their work cut out to woo Hispanics in the general election, presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama on Saturday reached out to the fastest growing voting bloc in the country.

Both senators, in back-to-back speeches, addressed the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) at the group’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. The group predicted that at least 9.2 million Hispanics would cast their vote in November and it will be crucial for the two presumptive nominees to secure their share of support from this key constituency.

{mosads}“The Latino community is going to turn out in record numbers,” said David Castillo a Democrat who sits on the Oklahoma City School Board and who is running for the state’s House of Representatives.

While McCain, the Arizona Republican, received applause during his speech at NALEO, he was also interrupted several times by hecklers opposing the war in Iraq. NALEO officials apologized to McCain and said the hecklers were not part of their organization. In recent years, Hispanics have more strongly backed Democrats but McCain hopes to make inroads with the group.

The support for Obama in the packed ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Washington was a lot more palpable with standing ovations and cheering during his speech.

The Illinois Democrat faces the challenge of convincing Hispanics to back him after they largely supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in the primary. The former first lady on Thursday addressed the group and urged the Hispanic community to vote for Obama.

“We are embracing Obama, but he still has some work to do, because Hillary Clinton was such a strong leader and we really had a connection,” said Rosaura Aguerrebere, a school board member for the Falls Church City Public Schools in Virginia.

On Saturday, the Democrat sought to connect with the audience by saying that he hoped the first Latino nominee was somewhere in the audience.

Meantime, both candidates assured the crowd that an immigration overhaul will be one of their top priorities when they take office.

“It’ll be my top priority yesterday, today and tomorrow,” McCain said. “We must also understand that there are 12 million people who are here, and they’re here illegally and they are God’s children.”

Obama used his speech to criticize McCain for walking away from his previous commitment of an immigration overhaul when he started running for president.

McCain worked with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) to craft legislation that offered a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, attracting much criticism from many within the GOP who called the move “amnesty.” The measure failed, and McCain now says, in a move that appeases conservatives, that the U.S. must first secure its borders before devising a guest-worker program.

That does not sit well with Andres Ramirez, who is a strong Obama supporter.

“Today McCain failed me,” said Ramirez, the vice president of Hispanic programs at the New Democratic Network, which, he stated, worked with McCain and Kennedy on the immigration legislation.

“He has been talking about border enforcement first and comprehensive immigration, those are not the same thing. I was hoping he would clear that up. Today he mentioned both and he was not very clear.”

He added that Obama is receiving a lot of support from Hispanics because they are upset at Republicans over immigration and the state of the economy. But it is far from a slam-dunk for the Democrat.

“Obama can’t take that [support] for granted,” Ramirez said. “He has to be able to deliver and show Hispanics that he has earned his support.”  

Obama also promised to make immigration a priority, saying that the issue had been “demagogued.” He added that he favors greater border security, a path to citizenship and a crackdown on employers exploiting undocumented workers.

While Republicans have recently not been the first choice for many Hispanics, McCain has shown in the GOP primaries that he has support in the group, especially in the crucial general election battleground state of Florida. McCain received 54 percent of the Hispanic vote there.

“He is going to help us pass immigration reform,” said John Bueno, a Republican NALEO board member. “McCain has very strong support among the Hispanic community. Obama has to work for it.”

A Gallup poll in May found that 62 percent of Hispanics favored Obama, compared with 29 percent for McCain.

While immigration was high on everyone’s minds on Saturday, Oklahoma’s Castillo said that, for many Hispanics in his state, education and issues family issued ranked much higher. McCain and Obama also addressed issues related to healthcare, education and energy.

For Mary Herrera, the New Mexico Secretary of State, the war in Iraq is the deciding issue when choosing between Obama and McCain. Herrera, a strong Clinton supporter, came to the convention “open-minded” to listen to both candidates. At the end of the speeches, she said she swayed towards Obama.

“Basically we need to end the war in Iraq,” she told The Hill. “It’s time that we look into Iraq and see what is going on there.”