Democrats losing favor with some Latinos

Early this year, Brian Sandoval and Susana Martinez made history. He became Nevada's first Latino governor. In New Mexico, she became the country's first Latina governor.

Just as striking as their breakthrough is their party affiliation: Both are Republicans.

For many in the GOP, the twin victories last November, along with the election of Sen. Marco Rubio in Florida, marked an important step in efforts to mend the party's frayed ties with Latino voters, which have suffered over the last several years of hard-line talk on immigration.

For Democrats, the election of the three was something else: a warning sign at a time when Latino support has grown increasingly vital to the party's success, especially in the battleground states of the Rocky Mountains and desert Southwest.

Sens. Harry Reid of Nevada and Michael Bennet of Colorado each withstood the 2010 Republican wave thanks in good part to Latino support. President Obama is counting on strong Latino turnout to hold on to Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico — states he won in the last White House race — and to expand the 2012 competition to Arizona and, maybe, Texas and Georgia.

"The Republicans, by electing three national Latino leaders, have really challenged the Democratic Party," said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, until recently one of the highest-ranking Latino Democrats in the country.

"Democrats have to recruit more Latino candidates and they have to start siding with Latinos on redistricting and other issues," Richardson said, "because many Latinos perceive that the party doesn't care enough about electing more Hispanic officials."

No, but being strong Catholics, that’s the most horrendous to most of my friends. None voted for him in the first place. The black folk I know, however, people at my church and work, all claim to be Christians, but had to vote for the “bro.” I would say my hispanic friends are being true to their faith, while my black friends may have an unpleasent accounting in their future.

It is the Catholic Hispanics that are the liberal Democrats, the Protestant Hispanics vote roughly 50/50 Republican.

In 2004 Bush got 56% of the Protestant Hispanic vote, and in 2008, McCain/Palin got 48% of the Protestant Hispanic vote.

[excerpt] SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Cheering crowds in the steamy tropical heat are expected Tuesday when President Barack Obama makes a rare presidential visit to Puerto Rico.

[snip]

Democrats see the Puerto Ricans in Florida as a potential counterbalance to the larger, traditionally Republican Cuban-American community in a state Obama needs badly to win a second term.

That’s where this trip comes in.

“I am sure they will be happy about this,” said Pedro Pierluisi, the island’s nonvoting representative in Congress, who has been working to generate for support for Obama on the mainland. “We have lots of Puerto Ricans in central Florida and I know they keep close eyes on Puerto Rico.”

Reaching out to Puerto Ricans is part of a broader effort to court Hispanics, who accounted for more than half the U.S. population increase over the past decade and now number about 50 million. It’s hardly a uniform community, but there are “shared issues” of concern that include support for education, and social services, said Louis DeSipio, a professor at the University of California, Irvine.

The number of people of Puerto Rican descent, the second largest Hispanic group in the U.S. after Mexicans, grew by 36 percent over the past decade to 4.6 million, according the census. The island’s population fell by 2 percent during that time as people fled a dismal economy.

Puerto Ricans tend to be less interested in immigration overhaul because they are U.S. citizens and can move freely back and forth between the island and the mainland, but as migrants who often need to learn to speak English and face other challenges they have similar experiences, said DeSipio, chairman of Chicano-Latino Studies at the California school.

“To the extent that the president talks about issues of bringing Puerto Ricans into the U.S. mainstream that will certainly resonate with other Latino communities and immigrant communities generally,” he said. [end excerpt]

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-ap-pr-obama-06122011-20110612,0,6565861.story

There are a lot of Puerto Ricans in Florida, and we also get a lot of visitors from PR.

However, I think this guy is fixating on Newyoricans. That is, people who were the children or grandchildren of the “Marine Tigers,” people brought in on planes of that name to work in various NYC industries during and shortly after WWII. When the economy dwindled in the 60s, both blacks and Puerto Ricans were told by the Great Society that they actually were going to be life-long clients, and way too few of them stood up and kicked the government in the teeth.

Still, most Puerto Ricans who climbed upwards (in many cases thanks to the Catholic schools) are now married to other Catholics, mostly Irish and some Italians. One of the problems is that they are so assimilated that nobody even counts a New York Rivera or Hernandez as Hispanic anymore. It’s a problem only in terms of US statistics, btw, not in terms of their lives.

That said, Puerto Ricans should arm themselves with pies and get ready to pitch them at this evil/idiotic imposter who wants to exploit them.

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