It wasn’t until two months prior to the November election that 51-year-old Carlos Bailon made up his mind about which presidential candidate would get his vote.
Although he had voted for Barack Obama four years ago, Bailon would do so again reluctantly this time around.
A staunch supporter of public safety, economic development and civil rights, the El Centro resident said the last four years brought some disappointment, if not surprise, that not all of Obama’s campaign promises panned out.
“But we have to look on the bright side,” Bailon said, referring to the next four years. “He may do something good for Latinos.”
Considering the large number of Latino voters — 71 percent — who threw their support behind Obama, much political commentary centered on the role Latinos played in the victory. But just what Obama does for Latinos during his second term may depend less on what took place on Election Day than what happens next.
And what happens next depends a lot on the pressure Latino advocacy groups are able to direct at the administration.
“Nobody can sort of expect that their election support is going to lead to results,” said Kevin Johnson, dean of University of California, Davis School of Law.
“With any president you have to keep up the pressure if you want to see change.”
Yet there is a lot of hope that there will be more response from the administration about issues Latinos are concerned with, Johnson, also a Chicano studies professor, said. On the top of that list would be immigration reform and the Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for eligible Latinos who arrived in the U.S. as children.
For his part, Obama stated at a news conference a week after the election that immigration reform was a possibility and that it would take the shape of “previous efforts.”
Of the 23.7 million registered Latino voters, an estimated 12 million showed up to vote this election cycle, or 10 percent of all voters. That figure could nearly double by 2030, at which time 40 million Hispanics will be eligible to vote, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report released after the election. Hispanics will also comprise 40 percent of the growth in the eligible electorate between now and 2030, with nearly 800,000 eligible Latino voters turning 18 each year in the U.S., the report stated.
That potential explosion in political clout also spells trouble for the future aspirations of the Republican party, as many commentators would note not long after the polls closed.
In the wake of the election, the “unbending ideologues” that had used Latinos as “punching bags” could be seen rethinking and evolving their previous hardline stances on such issues as immigration, said National Institute for Latino Policy president Angelo Falcón.
Just this past Tuesday, three Republican U.S. senators introduced an alternative to the Dream Act that would allow young adults to apply for permanent residency if they have completed college or military service and have worked in the U.S. for more than four years. The bill, dubbed the Achieve Act, would grant visas to those younger than 28 who were brought to the U.S. before they were 14 years old, but would not provide a pathway to citizenship.
A day later, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus would reject the Achieve Act.
The “small window of opportunity” that comes with the acknowledgement of Latinos’ growing political influence also brings challenges, Falcón said.
To effect change, Latino advocacy groups must convince the general population that Hispanics are “not a special-interest group that is trying to empower themselves at the exclusion of the rest of American society.”
For example, immigration reform would not only benefit the economy and society as a whole, but millions of other non-Hispanics in the country illegally, Falcón said.
Not having a unified voice advocating for a particular issue of concern to the Latino community presents challenges as well.
He said he has yet to see the different sectors of the Latino community come together in a meaningful way to develop a cohesive strategy.
“We have the raw material but we haven’t figured out how to make it work for benefit of the community,” Falcón said. “I just don’t see that happening as much as it should be.”
Staff Writer, Copy Editor Julio Morales can be reached at 760-337-3415 or at jmorales@ivpressonline.com
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