WASHINGTON, July 11 (UPI) -- Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain both courted America's 40 million-strong Hispanic community this week in their struggle for the White House, but Obama is clearly winning.
Obama and McCain this week both addressed the 79th convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Last week McCain, R-Ariz., took a high-profile trip to Mexico and Colombia to boost his credentials with Latin voters. He also is trying to woo middle-class Hispanics with a commitment to maintaining President George W. Bush's tax cuts.
However, Obama, D-Ill., is succeeding where the Rev. Jesse Jackson failed 24 years ago in forging a genuine "Rainbow Coalition" of black, white and Hispanic voters that could carry him into the White House. Even in his long primary contest with Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., he showed unexpected strength among younger Hispanic voters, and now he is winning over older ones as well.
In a hard-fought presidential race where polls show the two crucial swing states of Ohio and Missouri are still too close to call, the Hispanic vote looks to be crucial. They will be the crucial factor in determining the outcome in New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and, most of all, Florida, whose Electoral College votes put Bush in for the first of his two terms in 2000.
Obama, the Democrats' standard-bearer, has the votes of almost 40 million African-Americans locked up and shows a consistent lead with women and young professionals. McCain retains strength among white men and may retain the fading Republican cultural appeal in the South and Southwest. In this race, the political loyalties of Hispanic-Americans could therefore prove crucial.
Bush left McCain a valuable foundation but also unpopular policies with the Hispanic community. In 2004 Bush carried 40 percent of the Hispanic-American vote, according to exit polls, a record for the GOP. But since then, the unpopularity of his economic policies, the subprime crisis, soaring gasoline prices and the continuing war in Iraq have weighed the GOP down badly with Hispanic voters.
McCain, ironically, comes with a record of defending open immigration, including from Mexico, a huge issue with the Hispanic community. But he has been forced to hew to the right and emphasize border security, because this has become a hot issue among conservative white voters, especially across the Southwest and in his native Arizona.
Republican strategists had joked that Obama would trend weakly among Hispanic-Americans because in his long, grueling primary race with Clinton, most of the established loyalties in the Hispanic community went to her. But a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed Obama winning around 66 percent of the Hispanic vote to only around 33 percent for McCain.
Obama has proved shrewd and tactful in locking up at least some of the key elements of Clinton's coalition, especially women and Hispanic voters. It didn't hurt, either, that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Hispanic-American, longtime Clinton loyalist and former secretary of energy and ambassador to the United Nations, threw his support clearly behind Obama as Clinton's star faded.
Obama, for all his rhetorical brilliance, tight discipline, superbly organized and funded campaign and first-class political intellect, still has a big problem attracting white males, especially older ones. And while he leads McCain in all polls, the senator from Arizona is still polling well ahead of his floundering congressional party. So Obama badly needs to restore the traditional Democratic lock on most of the Hispanic vote.
If Obama can hold on to at least 75 percent of the Hispanic vote, as opposed to the only 60 percent that anemic Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., managed to attract in 2004, he can afford to trail overall with white male voters. But a showing as weak as Kerry's four years ago could lose Obama the presidency.
McCain knows this, too. Expect Hispanic-Americans to be courted ever more fervently by both candidates as summer turns into fall.
