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McCain, Obama battle to court Hispanic voters

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

July 14, 2008

ORLANDO, Fla. - Like eager but awkward suitors, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are working hard and sometimes fumbling while courting Hispanic voters who could swing November's presidential election.

For Obama and McCain, the problem is trying to understand a group whose own diversity can make it a mystery to others. It's not a simple matter of saying, "Take me to your leaders."

But that is the ground game the presidential candidates and their campaigns have been pitching to voters who could form decisive constituencies in critical battleground states.

"They just come to me and say, 'Who are the bosses of the Latin community?'" said Patrick Manteiga, who runs a family-owned newspaper for Hispanics in Tampa's historic Cuban neighborhood of Ybor City. "That's like coming and asking, 'Who are the bosses of white America, of the soccer moms?'"

Both candidates are pressing their cases in three speeches to Hispanic groups and working to make their outreach more sophisticated. Republicans have opened an office in Orlando, where most of the state's Puerto Ricans live, and Obama opens one this week in Ybor City.

McCain is respected by many Hispanics for refusing to pander to anti-immigrant sentiment over the years. Yet he is viewed in some Latin quarters as a sequel to the unpopular President George W. Bush, a problem he has with voters at large, too.

Obama's vitality and soaring oratory appeal to Hispanics just as they do to others. Whoops of approval were heard throughout his speech this week to the League of United Latin American Citizens' convention.

Yet Obama emerged from primaries a distant second to rival Hillary Rodham Clinton among most Hispanic groups. Like voters at large, Latino voters question the one-term senator's experience. And there are tensions between blacks and Hispanics.

Hispanic voters are hardly monolithic. Some have roots going back more than two centuries, while others were sworn in as citizens last week. Some consider themselves white and some black, and many represent every shade in between.

During the last presidential election, Hispanics in key swing states such as Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Florida represented anywhere from 8 percent to more than 30 percent of voters, according to exit polls, and their numbers are only expected to grow this year.

Manny Genao, a Dominican native, has run the Cafe Madrid in east Orlando for years and displays portraits of local Republican leaders across his walls.

Genao said people in his neighborhood complained about an uptick in crime with the influx of "the diverse people" who poured in from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In the next breath, he said the Bush administration was too close to oil companies and he views McCain as more of the same. Then he compared Obama's speeches to those of Martin Luther King Jr.

"I'm still undecided," he said.