Obama ad campaign targets Hispanic voters

WASHINGTON -- Organized labor and a super-PAC supporting President Barack Obama's re-election have teamed up for a $4 million ad campaign that targets swing-state Hispanic voters and aims to portray Mitt Romney as callous toward the working class.

The Spanish-language television and radio ads announced yesterday by Priorities USA Action and the Service Employees International Union juxtapose Hispanic voters critical of Romney with video and audio clips of verbal miscues by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on jobs and the economy.

These include him saying, "I like to be able to fire people who provide services to me," "I'm also unemployed," and "You can focus on the very poor -- that's not my focus."

The ad offensive targets a constituency whose support Obama will attempt to hold for re-election. In 2008, Obama won the Hispanic vote over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) by 67 percent to 31 percent, according to an analysis of exit polls by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, now a Romney campaign adviser, said earlier this year that Republicans have to win closer to 40 percent of the Hispanic vote this year or risk being "consigned to minority status."

With the economy threatening to undercut Obama's overall support, maximizing the allegiance of Hispanic voters may be crucial to Obama in several tightly contested states.

In one ad, a Latino voter says, "I'd never support someone with that type of thinking, values or theories," while another says, "If we are not important for him, neither is our vote."

The ads are to air in Colorado, Florida and Nevada, swing states with significant Hispanic voting populations through the summer. They are meant to counter Romney's own outreach to Hispanic voters through Spanish-language ads.

SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Eliseo Medina said that, "when Latinos hear Romney, in his own words, they really know what's going on," and that they feel "insulted and angry" to hear the wealthy businessman joke about being unemployed.

At 16 percent of the U.S. population, Hispanics are the largest ethnic minority. In Colorado, their population has grown by about 40 percent since 2000. In Nevada, they comprise more than a quarter of the population.