Obama Has Lead Among Hispanics

A crowd packs a Denver park last weekend to hear Barack Obama speak. Hispanics make up 12 percent of Colorado's voters, and their vote may be decisive. (By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)
Buy Photo

Beyond the economy, many at the poker tables here attribute that to the bruising immigration debate in which Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo -- who represents a suburban Denver district -- was among the loudest proponents of deportation. Lydia DeLaRosa, a leader of the Latin-Anglo Alliance, says the immigration raids on a big meatpacking plant 200 miles away in Greeley still infuriate her.

"Even Mexicans who were born here were put on a bus and taken away," said the longtime Democrat.

Jerry Otero, a lawyer in Grand Junction whose Mexican American family has been in Colorado since the 1800s, said that in many ways Hispanic voters in this town of 48,000 are voting on the same issues as "Joe Blow Anglo down the street." Otero is a religious conservative who is drawn to Obama's campaign, but the Democrat's stance on abortion does not sit well with him.

"I just think it's terrible what's going on with some of that stuff," he said. "It's shocking to your conscience. Sometimes you can't vote what's economically your best choice. You have to vote the moral high ground."

But he hedges, saying that he also struggles with voting for McCain because he seems to be very "pro-wealthy" and that as a minority he would like to see Obama in office.

There is little talk of tension between blacks and Hispanics in this part of the state, which is predominantly Hispanic and white. After the Democratic primaries, when Clinton nearly swept the Latino vote in states such as California and Texas, pundits suggested that Latinos may not line up behind Obama because of tensions between their group and African Americans. But a recent Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Hispanics and 67 percent of blacks believe good relations exist between the groups.

Modesto Galvan, 55, a retired insurance agent in Grand Junction, is still disappointed that Clinton lost and considers himself a hesitant Obama supporter. "It took me awhile to vent," he said. "I voice my displeasure, but at the end of it I am a Democrat."

Even if he has lingering questions about Obama, Galvan said, "when people of color have to struggle so hard and so long, and you see someone aspiring to be the top person in this country, it is very difficult not to help them. We know how hard it is and how difficult it is. When we don't have people that look like us in positions of authority, we tend to lose."