Election may float on a river
Agreat river of Latino voters on Nov. 6. That’s what Hispanic organizations and leaders would like to see come Election Day. They are well aware of how crucial the coming election is for Latinos and the entire country, and they know the Hispanic vote could play a decisive role.
And after the President and his Republican challenger addressed the immigration question during last Tuesday’s debate, the river may actually become a mighty ocean.
“We exceeded our projections (of the number of voters we would register) because immigrants are fired up to vote this year,” said Patrick Young, program director of the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN), in Brentwood, L.I.
Community and labor groups, as well as service providers, registered some 5,000 new voters on Long Island.
Fresh from running highly successful voter registration drives, and with most voter rolls already closed, CARECEN and other groups, both local and national, have turned their efforts to the never-easy task of mobilizing Hispanics to the polls.
“We want to make sure that Latino voices are heard in November and that their influence is felt at the local and national level on Election Day and beyond,” said Clarissa Martínez-de-Castro of the National Council of La Raza. She added that that her group will inform these voters about their rights and give them the information they need to exercise their vote confidently.
NCLR, the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the country, announced it has registered 90,000 new voters.
For President Obama and Mitt Romney, rivals in one of the most heated presidential elections in memory, a huge Hispanic voter turnout will be either a nightmare or a dream come true.
If it was not always clear which of the two would get to dream sweet dreams, it became obvious after Tuesday’s debate.
“President Obama made his vision clear to us: he wants to put 11 million undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship. Gov. Romney tried to sow confusion, but his views add up to this: He wants to purge most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants from the country, making it impossible for them to work and survive here,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice. “The President wants most undocumented immigrants to stay, and the governor wants most undocumented immigrants to go. The contrast is crystal clear,” Sharry added.
In fact, after the extreme antiimmigration positions Romney embraced during the primaries, no matter how much he tries now to pass himself as a moderate, few Latinos believe his sincerity.
In a new television, ad the GOP flag-bearer, without giving any specifics, claims he will offer a “permanent solution” to immigration.
But if he thought he would attract Latino voters with this message, he is sorely mistaken.
More than anything else, the “permanent solution” promise takes on ominous overtones coming from a man who proposed selfdeportation, wanted to veto the DREAM Act, offered the racist Arizona law as a model for the rest of the country and enlisted as a campaign immigration advisor none other than Kris Kobach, the architect of the racist anti-immigant laws of Arizona and Alabama.
Yes, every sign points to a huge Latino turnout on Nov. 6. A potent ocean of voters with enough power to drown Mitt Romney’s presidential ambitions once and for all.