Home
Archive
Newsletters
Video
Blogs
Discuss
About
Search
Donate
Advertise
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
  • AlterNetYour turn

Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.


Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Why John McCain Lost the Latino Vote

By Peter Costantini, IPS News. Posted November 12, 2008.


Many Latinos are angry at Republicans for pushing for the criminalization and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

Share and save this post:

      

      

Share on Facebook       

AlterNet Social Networks:
follow us on twitter
find us on Facebook

More stories by Peter Costantini

Advertisement
Upcoming AlterNet stories on Digg

PUEBLO, Colorado, Nov 7 -- Interstate 70 in western Colorado heads east towards Denver along the upper reaches of the Colorado River.

On a railroad track paralleling the highway, two orange and black locomotives of the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe line haul a long train of hopper cars full of coal up a steep grade into the Rocky Mountains and across the Continental Divide to points east.

The river, not much wider here than a fly-fishing stream, meanders westward down the valley that it carved over millennia between red-rock mesas, bordered in early November with yellow-leaved cottonwood trees.

Broadening as it flows through the Grand Canyon, the Colorado is corralled by huge dams that provide water and electric power for Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and irrigation for the thirsty farms of the Southwest and California.

By the time it crosses the border into Mexico and empties into the Gulf of California, the river is a mere trickle. Mexican wetlands and farms are drying up because of the reduced flow.

Mexico, for its part, has been more generous in sharing its resources, particularly its human ones, with its northern neighbor. Millions of workers, unable to make ends meet at home, have ranged northward for many decades to provide labor for the farms and cities of el Norte.

The state of Colorado has been a destination for a good part of them. The population of 4.86 million is 19.5 percent Hispanic, about a third more than the Hispanic share nationally.

Along with immigrants, Colorado is also home to many Hispanic families who have been here since before the United States was. U.S. Senator Ken Salazar and his brother, Representative John Salazar, come from a family that has lived in the area for 12 generations. A large part of the state had been part of Mexico, but was forcibly annexed by the United States in the 1840s.

In this year's presidential elections, the 19 percent of Colorado voters who are Latino voted 60 percent to 38 percent for Democrat Barack Obama. This support provided a critical boost to his 6.8 percent margin over Republican John McCain, which gave the Democrat the state's nine electoral votes. In 2004, George W. Bush won the state from John Kerry by 4.7 percent.

Nationally, Bush won some 40 percent of Latino voters in 2004. This year, the Republican share of the Latino vote dropped to 31 percent, while the Democratic ticket took 66 percent.

An influx of newly registered young voters is another factor widely credited with swinging the victory to the Democratic ticket. And the Democratic nominating convention was held in Denver, the state's capital and biggest city, which gave the candidates high visibility here.

Immigration is among the most important issues to many Latino citizens, according to polls. Even though Senator McCain was co-sponsor of a comprehensive immigration reform bill that died in Congress in 2006, he took a harder line on the issue during the campaign.

Many Latinos blame conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives, such as Tom Tancredo, who represents the Denver suburbs, for sinking the bill and pushing for criminalization and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

Raids by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, including one on a Colorado meatpacking plant, swept up U.S. citizens along with undocumented workers in their dragnet. Lydia DeLaRosa, a Latino community leader in Grand Junction, told the Washington Post: "Even Mexicans who were born here were put on a bus and taken away."

Heading south from Denver on Interstate 25, the pale gold grass on the undulating hills shows traces of green from the last rain. The Front Range of the Rocky Mountains thrusts up to the west and the Great Plains flatten out to the east.


Digg!    Share on facebook   submit to reddit    Bookmark on Delicious   Stumble This  

See more stories tagged with: immigration, obama, mexico, latinos, mccain

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Immigration! Sign up now »

Advertisement
Advertisement

 

Comments Turn comments off sitewide Give us feedback »
Comments closed.
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.
View:
REPUBLICANS are not conservative..?
Posted by: Brittanicus on Nov 12, 2008 11:11 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Most of the Problem is, Republicans are not Conservatives anymore. They have destroyed their own platform, by being in collusion with big corporations and businesses.

As an Independent, I had a choice. Vote for the usual indifferent party to Americans concerns, or vote for somebody who may change the financial landscape. Instead of the dribble of money to the lower ranks.

Let their be a fountain from the working people who are the ones, who make the money for the fat cats. In my eyes nobody can fault Lou Dobbs, because without his in-depth investigative journalism, THE PEOPLE would be left in the dark about most issues.

Since I have been watching LOU DOBBS, I have become an advocate for his ideology. The issues that concern me is the corruption that we face every day from Washington. That's why I took full membership in JUDICIAL WATCH.

They are a legal team an organization made up of lawyers, investigators, and concerned citizens." It was established in 1994 "to serve as an ethical and legal watchdog over our government, legal, and judicial systems.

This legal group is very pro-sovereignty, anti-illegal immigration and works to protect American workers and the legal population.

Take a trip to their website and read the positive lawsuits they have pending and won against corrupt politicians and the criminal element that surrounds us. JUDICIAL WATCH has brought ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION to the forefront, because they realize the substantial losses to the American people in trillions of dollars every year to accommodate the worlds poor.


That 'Sanctuary cities and state policies are killing millions of Americans every year, because they promote shielding illegal aliens. JUDICIAL WATCH knows the true number of illegal immigrants settled here, not the propaganda offered by the Liberal press.

Find the time to read the facts at www.judicialwatch.org,

Factual information can be found at www.numbersusa.com

YOU MUST DECIDE OUR COUNTRIES FUTURE?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I Passed A Highway Construction Site
Posted by: desidid on Nov 14, 2008 9:49 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
yesterday and as I looked at the workers it was obvious that a majority were Hispanic. Now I don't know their legal status, but I have to wonder if progressives are progressive why they don't find an abundance of one ethnic group working in this economy troubling? In post racial America that site should have had representatives from every hue and every gender. But I guess that is xenophobic thinking on my part.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]