Spanish might not translate into more votes
Kaine’s second language no big deal, experts say
“I tell ya,” Tim Kaine said to the crowd in Miami, warming up to the part of his life story that took him to Central America, “my time in Honduras changed my life in so many ways.”
The cheering grew louder. The newly introduced Democratic nominee for vice president paused for half a second. Then Kaine launched into the Spanishlanguage part of his speech, telling listeners how he learned some of his lifelong values in the Honduran village he’d once called home.
“En Honduras aprendí los valores de mi pueblo,” he said, his Spanish inflected with the tones of the American Midwest.
The crowd roared. On his couch 2,000 miles away, Pete Rios smiled. Among the family gathered in his Dudleyville, Ariz., home, heads turned to the television, backs straightened and people clapped.
It is ancient political history now, but Rios was once at the forefront of the battle against English-only bills in reaction to an influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants in the 1980s.
Now, Rios’ family was watching a white, Englishspeaking politician trying to appeal to voters like them in a language they once were threatened with punishment for using.
“It was just electric,” said Rios, a former state legislator and current county commissioner. “How amazing.”
Kaine’s Spanish has been sold as a draw to Latino voters in an election year in which the other major party’s nominee, Donald Trump, said a fellow candidate “speaks Mexican.”
But in interviews across the country, many Latinos said Kaine’s Spanish is less important to them than his positions on crucial issues: immigration reform, detention and deportation policies, jobs.
If Spanish were the ticket to the Latino vote, some said, Republican Marco Rubio might be on the ballot in November.
Kaine hasn’t limited his Spanish to his reference to Honduras at the rally at Miami’s Florida International University, where Hillary Clinton introduced him as her running mate. His speech at the Democratic National Convention last month was salted liberally with Spanish.
“Somos Americanos todos,” the Virginia senator declared: “We’re all American.”
Fifteen years ago, Kaine’s somewhat halting facility with the language would have been a major draw, politicians and analysts said. Today, some are offended at his attempts to communicate with Latino voters in Spanish.
Felix Sanchez, a Democratic political strategist and co-founder of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, said Kaine’s speaking Spanish is simply unnecessary.
It’s a political trope that has run its course, he said. “I prefer to have candidates address issues, supply solutions and then see that they get it done, over scripted Spanish pablum.”
If Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, were serious about attracting Latino voters with a Spanish-speaking running mate, there were three Latinos being considered for vice president, Sanchez said: Rep. Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro and Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez.
“The truth is that Kaine is a strategic choice to win Virginia,” Sanchez said.
Right-wing commentators were predictably unimpressed with Kaine’s Spanglish at the Democratic convention.
“Dems are enthralled by an American politician who can speak Spanish,” conservative political columnist S.E. Cupp wrote on Twitter. “Unless his name is Jeb or Marco.”
The notion of Kaine’s Spanish appealing to Latino voters is a fundamental misunderstanding of the electorate, said Nelson Flores, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.
“We certainly don’t need a politician to use Spanish for us to understand his or her message,” Flores said.
Authenticity aside, Kaine’s use of Spanish may be too late for the generation of Latino voters now coming of age.
The principal factor driving the growth of the Latino population in recent years has been higher birth over death rates, not immigration.
Thus, the community is undergoing a natural American integration process that is supplanting Spanish with English as the main language, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund. Duara reported from Phoenix, Carcamo from Los Angeles and Ulloa from Sacramento, Calif.