This article misstated the title of Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli. She is the director of Hispanic communications for the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, not the communications director.
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Clinton, Obama Target Latinos, Northern Virginia
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The D.C. Latino Political Action Committee, a 300-member group created a few years ago, had three candidate surrogates -- two for Clinton, one for Obama -- at its endorsement meeting Friday night.
"When they want to come talk to a small group like ours, that shows me how important the Latino vote is and how important every vote is," said committee co-founder Ted Loza. His group endorsed Obama.
The week before, Obama supporters swept through the heavily populated Latino neighborhoods of Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights in a caravan with a live salsa band performing from the back of a truck and distributed bilingual campaign materials.
Temo Figueroa, the national Hispanic field director for the Obama campaign, said no group of voters is insignificant in such a tight race for the presidential nomination. "For Barack Obama to win, he has to get these communities that are considered small," he said.
Clinton's campaign efforts among Hispanics generally began a year ago and specifically in the Washington area in September, organizers said.
"This campaign has been very aware of the importance of the Latino vote, and Hillary Clinton herself has had a long relationship with the Latino community dating back 35 years, when she was in south Texas registering voters," Rodriguez-Ciampoli said.
Friday's editions of three major Spanish-language newspapers contained full-page ads from the Clinton campaign declaring "Con Hillary, Nuestras Familias Tendr¿n una Vida Mejor" ("With Hillary, Our Families Will Have a Better Life"). Clinton was endorsed by El Comercio, a Manassas-based paper, and her campaign started ads on Spanish-language radio Friday.
Catherine M. Pino and Ingrid M. Duran, who run a small consulting company from their Falls Church home and were making calls to voters, said they had been hoping for years that Clinton would run. "She has not taken us for granted. . . . The fact that she had a Hispanic outreach team in place from Day One speaks volumes," said Duran, 42.
In Maryland, the Obama campaign is working with the Service Employees International Union on a phone bank to reach Latinos, said Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA of Maryland and an Obama state coordinator.
Two local Maryland elected officials were scheduled to speak today at churches in Montgomery and Prince George's counties for Obama. Of Obama's three scheduled appearances in Maryland tomorrow, one is to be at a Latino restaurant in Montgomery with Hispanic officials and activists "for him to discuss his real-life experience with the community," said Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D), a co-chairman of the state Obama campaign.
"We want to highlight his appeal in the Latino community, because we think there's a lot of room to grow there," Gansler said.
Eduardo Lopez, producer of "Linea Directa," a weekly Spanish-language public affairs TV show that has been on the air for 18 years, agreed.
"This presidential election is very important to the Latino community in the Washington metropolitan area because it's part of the maturation process we've seen in our community in the last 10 years," he said. "We now have elected Latino officials in important posts. And these elections will definitely change the course we've seen in the last few years of an increasingly negative tone not only against immigrants but Latinos in particular."
Although Clinton won two-thirds of the Hispanic vote in California and 73 percent of Latinos in New York on Super Tuesday, there were signs that Obama has made inroads, with near-even showings among Hispanics in Connecticut, Arizona and Illinois.
"What's new is that we're looking at sharper variations in Latino support than we were earlier in the process," said Luis Clemmens, editor of CandidatoUSA. "It's an uphill climb, but in some places he has . . . managed to narrow the gap."
There was evidence of that divide last week when Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Montgomery), Maryland's first Latino elected official and a Clinton supporter, was preparing an endorsement letter, adding the names of other Hispanic officials, only to run into a mini-rebellion.
"Ana Sol Gutierrez is sort of the grand dame of Latino elected officials here," said Montgomery Board of Education President Nancy Navarro, the only other signer. "The younger generation is not as predictable."
Indeed, Dels. Joseline A. Pe¿a-Melnyk and Victor R. Ramirez of Prince George's and Edmonston Mayor Adam Ortiz went public as founding members of "Maryland Latinos for Obama."
