Why the Latino Vote in Arizona Could Be Decisive in 2012

[babylonsister]

http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/22/why-the-latino-vote-in-arizona-could-be-decisive-in-2012/?iid=sl-main-lede

Why the Latino Vote in Arizona Could Be Decisive in 2012
By Michael Scherer | @michaels



Photographs by Marco Grob for TIME

snip//

In the coming weeks, the Obama campaign will open its fourth field office in Arizona, a state no Democrat has won since Bill Clinton and which native-son John McCain won in 2008 by nine points. The location of the office, a storefront on Phoenix’s majority-Latino west side, matters. Just a few months ago, it was used by campaign volunteers for Daniel Valenzuela, a local firefighter, who mounted an underdog bid for the City Council on the theory that he could turn out Latino voters who don’t normally vote. He won big in 2011, as did the new Democratic major in Phoenix, John Stanton.

A group of young people calling themselves “Team Awesome” knocked on 72,000 doors in the city to support Valenzuela’s bid. They increased off-year turnout among the Latino community by 480%, more than delivering Valenzuela’s margin of victory. “There is a ripple effect that has the city and the county and the state of Arizona looking at the way they approach politics,” says Joseph Larios, 29, a community organizer now working with the state Democratic Party who helped Valenzuela develop his strategy. “It’s impossible to say going after low-propensity Latino voters doesn’t matter based on what happened.”

For the Obama campaign nationwide, “expanding the electorate” increasingly means “expanding the Latino electorate.” If Obama is able to win heavily-Latino Western states like Nevada, Colorado and Arizona, he could still win in the electoral college even if he loses historically key states in the industrial Midwest like Ohio and Wisconsin. “If we do our grassroots stuff right on the ground in all these Western states, which we will, because it’s something we are good at,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told me, “we could seriously change the outcome.”

At the same time, Republicans have generally done a dismal job through the primary of appealing to Latino voters. George W. Bush won more than 40% of the community in 2004, but in a recent Latino Decisions poll conducted for Univision, 72% of Latinos said the GOP either did not care about their support or was hostile to their community. The 27% who sensed hostility represented a seven point increase from April of 2011, when the same pollsters asked the question. “Conservatives have not realized how their tone and rhetoric has turned people off,” says Jennifer Korn, who led George W. Bush’s Latino outreach effort in 2004.

more...

http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/22/why-the-latino-vote-in-arizona-could-be-decisive-in-2012/?iid=sl-main-lede

[rfranklin]

1. "you'll take these beatings and like it..."

Conservatives can't understand why Latinos are turned off! LOL!

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

2. Hence, the birther laws, the "papers, please" laws, and voter ID laws.

They want to suppress the vote as much as possible.

Make me sick!!

[ellisonz]

3. There needs to be an active effort...

...to reach out and turn out the Latino community.

[babylonsister]

4. Opening the 4th field office in AZ sounds pretty active to me. nt

[ellisonz]

5. Hopefully there are more to come...

...if this article shows anything it is that grassroots organizing turns out the vote. For every dollar spent on big advertising, there ought to be a dollar spent on local organizing efforts.