LATINOS SPURRED TO VOTE IN ARIZ.
‘ Everything comes down to turnout’ among His panics
The USA TODAY Network is spending time in eight counties in eight states, exploring the key electoral themes that could decide this fall’s election. Each week until the election, we will feature a different one. The series has looked at Waukesha County in Wisconsin, Chester County in Pennsylvania and Wayne County in Michigan. Today: Maricopa County in Arizona.
Fred Oaxaca bounded into a PHOENIX room inside a Phoenix union hall and yelled a cheer. “Se puede?” (“Can it be done?”) The room full of workers, mostly young Latinos in high school or their early 20s, yelled back even louder. “Si, se puede!” (“Yes, it can be!”) Oaxaca, 21, a team leader for Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy ( CASE), pounded the table with his palms, ending the cheer with a loud clap. The room shook as everyone joined in. They were pumped and ready to spend another afternoon going door- to- door in the 100- degree heat, standing in shopping mall parking lots or riding the light rail to register Latino voters.
“It’s all about turnout. Everything comes down to turnout,” Oaxaca said.
Turning that energy into votes in Maricopa County won’t be easy. No other demographic group represents so much potential and so much disappointment on Election Day.
The number of Latino voters has steadily increased nationally from one presidential election to the next: 11.1 million Latinos voted in 2012, up from 9.7 million in 2008, according to Census data. But their voting rates significantly lag other demographic groups. In 2012, 48% of Latinos voted, compared with 66.6% of blacks and 64.1% of non- Hispanic whites, according to the Pew Research Center.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s tough stance on immigration, anchored by a promise to build a giant wall on the southern border and make Mexico pay for it, may spur Latinos to the polls. But Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has not ignited the same level of excitement nationally among Latino voters as President Obamadid in2012.
A poll taken Aug. 19- 30 by the polling firm Latino Decisions showed 75% of Latinos view Obama favorably, compared with 68% for Clinton and 21% for Trump.
Perhaps no place illustrates the lackluster voter turnout among Latinos better than Maricopa County.
Sprawling over more than 9,000 square miles is a mix of sun- drenched farming communities, tourist resorts, strip malls, red- tiled suburban housing subdivisions and the gleaming glassandsteel office towers of Phoenix, the nation’s sixth- largest city.
Six out of 10 Arizonans live in Maricopa County. Its Latino population has soared in recent years, from 345,000 in 1990 to more than 1.2 million in 2014, and is the fifth- largest of any county in the nation.
The growth is driven in large part by a surge in voting- age Latinos who have turned 18 since the last presidential election.
Every month, on average, 2,042 Latinos in Maricopa County turn 18, compared with 1,975 whites— a trend taking place nationally, according to estimates by the Morrison Institute Latino Public Policy Center at Arizona State University.
When it comes to voting, Latinos here have a reputation of “punching below their weight.”
Considering the size of the Latino population, their voting rates have been “slow and evolving,” said Lattie Coor, the former president of Arizona State University who runs the Center for the Future of Arizona, a think tank in Phoenix.
Many Latinos in Maricopa County don’t vote because they are documented immigrants who haven’t become naturalized citizens or they are in the country illegally and have no way to legalize their status and become citizens.
What’s more, data show people with high school diplomas and college degrees vote more often than those who don’t, Coor said. Latinos in Arizona are less likely to have high school diplomas or college degrees than other demographic groups, he said.
After leading the cheer, Oaxaca drove off to pick up a group of high school students to take themto a neighborhood on the city’s northwest side for an afternoon of voter canvassing.
Since the beginning of July, Oaxaca spent every afternoon registering voters. By the time he left to start his senior year at Santa Clara University in the San Francisco Bay Area, his records showed he had registered 414 people, many of them young Latinos like himself with parents who are immigrants and can’t vote. “There are a lot of other members of the community that have very similar ( backgrounds), and if we aren’t voting, then we are voting against our own family,” he said. “Not voting only allows the status quo to continue.”
CASE is one of a dozen groups in Maricopa County that belong to One Arizona, a coalition of 14 non- profit, non- partisan, mostly immigrant and Latino rights groups that statewide is trying to register 120,000 Latino voters after meeting its original goal of 75,000.
The group receives funding from the Unite Here labor union, among other liberal organizations. Because CASE is non- partisan, canvassers can’t talk about particular candidates or take sides on political issues when registering voters, said Brendan-Walsh, the executive director.
Its main focus is to get more Latinos to vote, so both parties will pay attention to them, he said. “Arizona’s politics and