Latinos For Texas Blog

Richard Raymond is running against Henry Cuellar for U.S. Congress in District 28 (including San Antonio and on down to Laredo). Here is his official website.

Now that AG Alberto Gonzalez is officially not a candidate for Supreme Court, is anyone else breathing a sigh of relief? I kind of liked his judicial record (within reason), but I loathe his policies of torture.

–Okay, I rescind the “officialness” of this post. We’ll see in about 2 1/2 hours.

Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler of Emerging Democratic Majority have crunched the numbers on the LA mayoral race in May wherein Antonio Villaraigosa beat James Hahn.

They report:

The question for Democratic strategists remains — what can be learned of Villaraigosa’s victory?

In our opinion, the primary lesson for Democrats is that they need to continue efforts to develop and support issue-oriented Hispanic candidates for office at all levels. Villaraigosa’s victory also does point out that progressive Democratic Latino candidates can win votes from all racial/ethnic groups — and that drawing support from non-Latino voters is critical for these candidacies.

But we also need to point out that because of the unique characteristics of this election, there really are not many lessons for Democrats to learn in terms of national strategy for winning Hispanic votes.

First, it is really hard to see how anyone can claim that voters in LA were excited or energized by the 2005 campaign — including Latino voters. Overall turnout in the mayoral runoff was extremely low, with only 34% of the city’s almost 1.5 million registered casting ballots for either candidate. In the 2001 runoff election, almost 38% of the city electorate voted. So the 2005 runoff election had a turnout rate that was 4% lower than in 2001!

It is remarkable to note that Villaraigosa only received about 289,000 votes in this election — about 25,000 more votes than he received in 2001. In another perspective on this same point, Villaraigosa picked up votes from only about 20% of the city’s registered voters in 2005. Again, these hardly seem like the sort of numbers we would expect to see from an energized or excited electorate. Quite the opposite, as to us these numbers indicate a relatively apathetic or uninterested electorate.

Second, not only is it hard to see how someone can argue that Villaraigosa energized or excited the overall electorate, it is also difficult to see how pundits and the media have concluded that he energized the Latino electorate in Los Angeles. In the 2001 mayoral runoff election (which Villaraigosa lost to Jim Hahn), the Los Angeles Times Exit Poll estimated that 22% of the electorate was Latino and that Villaraigosa picked up 82% of the Latino vote. In the 2005 runoff, the Los Angeles Times Exit Poll estimated that 25% of the electorate was Latino and that Villaraigosa got 84% of that vote. We fail to see the logic that would lead anyone to think that as the Latino electorate increased by 3%, and that Villaraigosa’s Latino vote increased by 2%, there was a stunning transformation of Latino politics in Los Angeles.

Third, many pundits seem to either be unaware or dismissive of the unique context of Los Angeles mayoral elections…

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I love how journalists create an angle and then cherrypick some stats, or even invent some, to support their story. The most heinous example in the last year: the myth that “values” voters helped Bush win in 2004. In truth, it was all about being Commander-in-Chief. Wanna argue? I wrote my MA thesis on the performance of war leadership in the 2004 election.