NEW YORK TIMES
By Fernanda Santos
October 25, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/us/politics/for-latina-voters-the-issues-are-personal.html?_r=0
Fixing the economy ought to be a priority for the nation'’s next president: Alejandro Gonzalez and Cynthia Gallegos agree on that much. Yet they speak about the issue in very different ways. He is pragmatic, she is more emotional and personal.
And that, experts say, is the challenge campaigns face in appealing to Latinos, whose votes are crucial to President Obama and Mitt Romney. In dozens of interviews — here and in several suburbs, where the Hispanic population logged some of the steepest increases in the country over the past decade --— Latino men and women spoke of the nuances behind their votes, which could be decisive for the election in Colorado and other swing states.
The pocketbook may be driving many decisions this election, but the different ways men and women talk about the issues is forcing campaigns to tailor their messages.
Compared with other voters, Latinos tend to live in more traditional family settings, experts say, harking back to eras of the male breadwinner and the female homemaker. Robert R. Preuhs, a political science professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, called it the “"economy-versus-family divide.”"
“"Men are expected to be providers from a financial standpoint, while women have a much broader set of responsibilities at home,”" he said. “"To them, discussions about health care or education are taken very personally. They'’re very much about, how does it affect my children or my elderly parents?”"
What this has meant for the campaigns is that quite often, conversations with Hispanic women about the candidates’ positions on social issues are held in volunteers’ homes, around a dinner table or at a kitchen counter as a meal cooks on the stove. If the topic veers toward the economy, campaign officials say, the focus is always on the potential impact on the family’'s interests, like education or immigration.
In appeals to Hispanic men, economic discussions tend to be held in more formal, businesslike settings and generally are focused on the family’'s finances.
A poll by the Pew Research Center conducted Sept. 7 to Oct. 4 found that most Latino men and women are not so far apart on the issues: They give nearly equal importance to health care, jobs and education, and nearly half say the country is headed in the right direction. Both sexes tend to vote Democratic.
Mr. Gonzalez, 79, hewed to that pragmatic view. An Obama volunteer in Aurora, a Denver suburb, he said government must offer the same types of benefits that were available to him --— a Korean War veteran, he became a court reporter and went to law school on the G.I. Bill of Rights --— to foster economic stability.
"“Nobody can do it by themselves,”" Mr. Gonzalez said.
To Latinas, though, who are likely to have more caregiving responsibilities and less income than most other female voters, policy discussions are played closer to the heart.
"“I am who I am because a public school teacher helped me along the way, because I got grants to go to college,”" said Ms. Gallegos, 41, the executive director of Focus Points Family Resource Center, a Latino outreach organization in Denver.
A meet-and-greet on a recent Saturday in Ridgway, a rural outpost in southwestern Colorado where 5 percent of the population is Latino, attracted mostly women, many of whom carried their children. Rick Palacio, the chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party, which organized the event, said they were not there “to hear our positions on quote-unquote women’'s issues.”
They were there, instead, “to hear about stuff that affected the long-term growth and success of their families, whether that be college affordability or the sustainability of Social Security or the survival of health care,” he said. “That’'s what’'s driving their interest in this election.”
Sylvia Manzano, a senior analyst at Latino Decisions, which studies Latino voting trends, said the “personal element” gave immigration, particularly efforts to give immigrants smuggled across the border as children a path to legalization, a prominent role in their political discussions, even if it was not their top priority for the next president.
"“To them, immigration, health care, jobs, education, they’'re all part of the same nexus of ideas that defines the economic viability of their families, or of the people close to them,"” Ms. Manzano said.
"Hispanics know that we'’re not the only community of illegal immigrants,”" said Pauline Olvera, 46, a member of a grass-roots group called Colorado Hispanic Republicans, a Romney volunteer and a self-described “third-generation American.”
For Maria S. Young, who is from Mexico, it is the tough-on-illegal-immigrants' laws of recent years — in places like Arizona, where 30 percent of residents are Latino, and Alabama, which had the second-highest Latino growth rate in the nation between 2000 and 2010 --— that have driven the partisan wedge.
“"It has forced immigrants to pick a side, and it has made it a much easier decision,”" said Ms. Young, an Obama supporter who is the president of a company that helps high-skilled immigrants get professional accreditation in the United States.
Polly Baca, the first Hispanic woman elected to Colorado’'s State Senate, has organized a group called Catholic Women for Obama to drive religious Latinas to base their vote on what she described as the church'’s social-justice teachings —-- “"Compassion,"” Ms. Baca said, “"for the poor, for immigrants.”"
At the same time, the treasurer of the state’s' Republican Committee, Christine C. Mastin, whose mother is from Chile, said priests in some heavily Hispanic enclaves have been encouraging congregants to “vote your values,” which she celebrated as a veiled message against the mandate for employers to cover birth control under Mr. Obama'’s health care law.
Ms. Gallegos said she hoped this would be “the last election where people are going to try to squeeze us into ideological boxes,” adding, "“It does nothing to give us the type of civic education we need.”"
She went on, "“It'’s about jobs, it’'s about schools, it’'s about the economy, yes, but in the end, it’'s about making life better for all people, including people like me.”"
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