City Watch (California)
By Tony Castro
August 11, 2015
TONY
CASTRO’S LA-American political history is rife with presidential
elections that were determined well before the year in which the
campaigns were held.
The
most prominent example in our lifetime may have been Jimmy Carter’s
election in 1976 that likely was decided when his opponent, incumbent
President Gerald Ford, pardoned
his successor, the disgraced Richard Nixon, whose Watergate scandal
brought down his presidency.
Four
decades later, could that happen again? Has next year's presidential
election been determined by President Barack Obama's broken promises for
comprehensive immigration
reform -- which has angered many immigration reform activists,
including some threatening a boycott of the 2016 elections?
Could
a low Hispanic voter turnout among traditionally Democratic-voting
Latinos, caused by disappointment over the Obama failure to secure
comprehensive immigration reform
legislation, cost frontrunner Hillary Clinton, or whomever becomes the
Democratic nominee, the presidency?
Last
fall, members of a DREAMers’ organization confronted the former
Secretary of State at a North Carolina rally over the Obama
administration’s dismal record on immigration
reform, raising the possibility that disillusioned young Latinos could
threaten to urge the nation’s 25.2 million Hispanic voters to skip
casting ballots in 2016.
Latinos
boycotting the election would be payback for the foot-dragging by
President Obama on immigration reform, which he promised in 2008 but has
put off successfully
championing in Congress and has only minimally executed through
executive action.
Democrats
in California today are still reeling from the likelihood that the
notoriously low turnout among Hispanic voters in the 2014 off-year
elections likely cost former
Assembly Speaker John Perez the state controller’s election.
Perez,
former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s cousin, finished behind
fellow Democrat Betty Yee by fewer than 500 votes, dampening the rising
star dreams of the
once politically powerful Perez, who had been a favorite to win the
office.
Latinos
make up more than one of every five registered voters — 22.7 percent —
in California. But for Perez's important statewide election they voted
at a rate of just
6 percent.
Although
Latinos historically have been low turnout voters, especially in
mid-term elections, no one expected the dismally low turnout would cost
Hispanics a statewide
office and also raise questions about 2016, especially if immigration
reform activists follow through on their boycott threat.
The
reason for the President continually putting immigration reform on the
backburner has been nothing short of playing politics. In 2014, Obama
chose not to risk giving
Republicans something more with which to rally their faithful in that
mid-term year, fearing that the Democrats could lose control of the
Senate in his final two years as president.
The
GOP, however, captured the Senate anyway and, with control of the House
of Representatives, virtually assured that the already sparse Obama
legacy would have little
more to showcase in his lame-duck years.
It
has been theorized in recent years that not only could the
ever-increasing Latino vote decide the next presidential election and
those beyond, but it could shift the
balance of power that will be felt negatively in 2016. A poor Latino
turnout would effectively serve as a Hispanic voter boycott.
DREAMers and other immigration reform activists could potentially turn presidential politics on its ear.
“By
mobilizing against Mrs. Clinton,” The New York Times reported last
fall, “the self-named Dreamers hope to pressure her to commit to
immigration change or risk losing
critical Latino votes.”
Cristina
Jimenez, managing director of United We Dream, the largest national
network of young undocumented immigrants, was even more direct in
threatening to launch a
campaign urging withdrawal of support by the traditionally
Democratic-voting Latinos from the 2016 Democratic ticket.
“If
you’re going to pick politics over our families,” said Jimenez, “you
should know that you can’t take this constituency for granted.”
This
is especially critical for Clinton, considering that the Latino vote
could potentially be even more important for her than it was for Obama.
In
2008, it was the overwhelming Latino vote that helped Clinton almost
overtake Obama in their bitter Democratic primary battle for the
nomination. That year, in Super
Tuesday’s 16 primaries, Clinton carried 63 percent of the Hispanic vote
compared with 35 percent for Obama.
The question now is whether Democrats will take the threat of a Latino boycott seriously.
It
might do them well to acquaint themselves with what amounted to a
similar Latino boycott in Texas in 1970, a time when Hispanic voters in
the Lone Star State were proportionately
the biggest Latino group in America.
Disillusioned
with the Democratic Party, young Latino activists urged Hispanic voters
not to vote in the 1970 election but instead to sign a petition to get
the Chicano
movement’s Raza Unida political party on the ballot for the 1972
election.
Texas state laws did not allow voters to both vote in the elections and sign the petition.
Ultimately,
the Chicano activists succeeded in getting enough signatures from
Latino voters to qualify La Raza Unida for the 1972 ballot. In doing so,
though, the low
turnout of Latino voters had an unintended historic impact.
U.S.
Senator Ralph Yarborough, the incumbent darling of Texas progressives
who was seeking re-election, was upset in the Democratic primary by
businessman Lloyd Bentsen
in a defeat that many liberals blamed on Chicano activists and their
Latino voter boycott.
For
Clinton, her potential problem with Latino voters is now compounded by
statements she has made in the past while attempting to support the
Obama administration’s decisions
delaying immigration reform -- as well as comments about the tens of
thousands of Central American immigrant children who flooded across the
border in 2014.
“I
don’t think she had any idea of how that response was perceived by a
young Dreamer who is thinking, ‘Um, we’ve elected a lot of Democrats,’”
says Frank Sharry, executive
director of the pro-immigration group America’s Voice.
“Immigration
is not the only issue, but it is the defining issue, and she will need
to learn that the old lines and old dynamics no longer apply.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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