USA TODAY
By Ander Madhani
October 8, 2012
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2012/10/08/obama-announces-cesar-chavez-monument/1621245/
President Obama traveled to Southern California on Monday to announce the establishment of a national monument to the Mexican-American union organizer César Chávez, while offering Hispanic voters a subtle nudge less than a month before Election Day.
While the trip to Keene, Calif., to pay tribute to the founder of the United Farm Workers was technically official White House business, it also helped magnify Obama's outreach efforts to the Hispanic community. It is an important voting bloc whose turnout could be crucial to his chances in the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia.
Obama noted Chávez led a historic 300-mile farmworkers' march from Delano to the California state capitol in Sacramento and remembered Chávez's role in organizing a 1966 boycott of table grapes, which eventually drew 17 million supporters across the country and led to growers agreeing to among farm worker contracts in history.
The president also celebrated Chávez as a leader who strove to improve the lives of the next generation, a goal that Obama acknowledged the nation is currently struggling to achieve.
"Today, we have more work to do to fulfill that promise," Obama said. "The recession we're fighting our way back from is still taking a toll, especially in Latino communities, which already faced higher unemployment and poverty rates."
Before addressing thousands at the site of the national monument, Obama toured the grounds of La Paz, where Chávez is buried, and met privately with the late leader's wife, Helen Chávez and his son, Paul.
And while Obama didn't expressly ask for votes, others who spoke before the president at Monday's ceremony reminded voters that Obama has appointed two Latinos to cabinet positions — Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar — as well as the first Latina Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor. And they brought up the president's decision to defer deportation of young illegal immigrants who join the military or attend college.
The president was greeted with chants of "Four more years" by the friendly crowd. Obama derived his iconic 2008 slogan "Yes we can" from Chávez, who coined the phrase "Si se puede" during his efforts organizing migrant workers in the 1960s and 1970s.
Obama, who won the Latino vote by a better than 2-to-1 margin in 2008 over Sen. John McCain, is ahead of Romney nationally among that group 72%-to-21%, according to impreMedia-Latino Decisions poll published Monday.
Matt Barreto, a pollster with Latino Decisions, said what remains to be seen is whether Obama can turn out Hispanic voters at levels that could help him over the hump in critical swing states. Honoring Chávez is a smart move toward reminding voters of his record on issues important to the Hispanic community, he added.
"That sort of stuff is critical and it polls very well," Barreto said.
Results of polling in three battleground states — Florida, New Mexico and Virginia —show Obama and Romney are closer in the race for the Latino voters.
The two candidates are knotted at 47%-47% among Hispanics in Florida, while Obama holds a 58-26% edge in New Mexico and a 57%-42% lead in Virginia, according to polls conducted by Public Policy Polling on behalf of the left-leaning Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund and published Monday. Obama holds a 71%-20% lead among Hispanic voters in Nevada, another important state both candidates are vying for.
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