The poll found that Obama leads slightly even among Latinos who voted for McCain four years ago.
That much erosion takes really hard work — and Romney clearly has been up to the task: Unlike Bush and McCain, he’s staunchly opposed to the Dream Act, which provides avenues for citizenship for folks who entered the country illegally as minors.
Romney recently named
Pete Wilson
, despised among Latinos for pushing an anti-immigrant law as governor of California, honorary chair of his campaign in that state.
Kansas Secretary of State
Kris Kobach
, who helped write tough anti-immigration laws for Alabama and Arizona — which Romney called a “model” — is a Romney adviser.
Kobach has opined: “If you want to create a job for a U.S. citizen tomorrow, deport an illegal alien today.” Guaranteed to drive Latinos away.
Arizona Gov.
Jan Brewer
, about as popular with Latinos as the Devil, endorsed Romney last month. (Maricopa County Sheriff
Joe Arpaio
, now off on a wacky birther riff, hasn’t endorsed Romney this time, but he did in 2008.)
Romney’s diligent efforts may be helping him secure the GOP nomination. But he may have turned Arizona (with 11 electoral votes), which since 1952 has only voted once for a Democratic candidate (Bill Clinton in 1996), into a battleground state this year.
Loop Fans may remember that the Obama team briefly considered a push in Arizona in 2008 but backed off. Native son McCain had the state locked up.
And McCain won Arizona by a solid 8.5 points, getting 41 percent of the Latino vote. But if Obama had campaigned and won the Latino vote — then about 18 percent of the state’s eligible voters — by an 80-20 margin, McCain’s win might have been more like a squeaker.
In addition, the Latino turnout there in 2008 was only 36 percent — compared with a national average among Latino registered voters of 44.9, according to data compiled by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
Turnout, Arizona pollster and political analyst Mike O’Neil told the Loop, “is the entirety of the political equation.” The question has always been “can anyone wake up this sleeping giant” of the Latino vote, he added. “I’ve heard it over and over and it’s never happened.”
Some Democrats are looking to former Pima County deputy sheriff
Richard Carmona
to be the alarm clock. Carmona is running in the Democratic primary for an open Senate seat.
If he gets the Democratic nomination, Carmona, a Green Beret, winner of two Purple Hearts in Vietnam and George W. Bush’s surgeon general, may boost Latino turnout. And Obama campaign workers are now in Arizona big-time, opening their fifth office later this month.
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