NBC News
By Suzanne Gamboa
September 11, 2015
As
Democrat Bernie Sanders has closed the gap with rival Hillary Clinton
in Iowa and according to some polls moved ahead, it is the face and
words of a Latina who is helping
to communicate his message in media.
Lilia
Chacon, a former press secretary to Chicago's city treasurer and former
television journalist, has been added to Sanders' political team as his
Iowa campaign for
the Democratic nomination has gained support.
The
U.S.-born daughter of immigrants, Chacon, 61, said her hiring reflects a
stepping-up by the campaign of its Hispanic outreach. Two other
staffers on the campaign are
Latino, she said.
"His
message is really going to resonate with the Hispanic community, with
(his platform of) income equality, with labor, with access to education,
with putting the brakes
on mass incarceration, which includes detention for deportation," said
Chacon, who is currently handling his Iowa media but also is in charge
of Latino media.
Chacon's
father is originally from Costa Rica and her mother from Guatemala. Her
father was educated at Columbia University. He returned to Costa Rica
after earning his
degree and met and married her mother. They later immigrated legally to
the U.S., back to New York. Chacon was born in Syracuse, New York.
Democrats have been aggressively chasing the Latino vote, hiring Latino staffers for outreach and other key positions.
NBC
News/Marist polls conducted in July showed Hillary Clinton maintaining
her lead over Sanders, a Vermont senator, but that Sanders has been
closing in on her. Other
polls since have showed him narrowing the gap or leading in Iowa and
New Hampshire.
Sanders
has made some efforts to reach out to Latinos. He spoke at the National
Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Conference
focusing on immigration.
He
has participated in the candidate question and answer series that the
U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has been holding, as has former
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.
Clinton has not yet done the one-on-one chamber forum.
Sanders
has backed immigration reform and a path to citizenship, but has
expressed concerns over the years about immigrants affecting the wages
and employment of U.S.
workers.
Gallup
polling conducted in July and August found that Hillary Clinton is most
familiar to Hispanics and only about of quarter of Hispanics knew of
Sanders. Sanders had
a +5 favorability score with nearly as many viewing him unfavorably as
favorably.
About
6 percent of Iowa's population of 3 million is Latino, but the state is
often a focal point of the immigration issue because of the many Latino
immigrants who work
there in agriculture. It also is home state of Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa,
who has said immigrants have canteloupe-sized calves because they are
drug mules and of Chuck Laudner, an adviser to GOP frontrunner Donald
Trump's campaign and a former chief of staff
to King.
Although
he skipped a recent forum in western Iowa on immigration reform,
Sanders held a roundtable with Latino community members last week in
Muscatine, Iowa, where he
said undocumented immigrants did not cause the greed on Wall Street,
according to WQAD in Illinois.
Members
of the Latino community are working to increase Latino turnout at the
Iowa Caucuses to at least 10 percent of overall turnout. The state's
caucuses are scheduled
for February.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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