The Hill
By Amie Parnes
February 23, 2016
The battle for Hispanic voters in the Democratic presidential primary is just getting started.
Hillary
Clinton’s presidential campaign says the strong support it received
from Hispanics in Nevada on Saturday will translate to other parts of
the country and help
her win the Democratic nomination. But Team Sanders isn’t ceding any
ground, knowing that it must win more minority voters to beat Clinton.
Despite
entrance-exit polls in Nevada that indicated Bernie Sanders won the
sought-after voting bloc, Clinton aides claim otherwise. They point to
the final results, which
show that Clinton won Clark County — a heavily Hispanic community — by
11 points. It›s not possible, they say, that she lost the Hispanic vote
but still won the state by a relatively comfortable margin. They also
note that Clinton won all the at-large voting
sites on the Las Vegas strip.
The
Hispanic vote is particularly important in Super Tuesday states such as
Texas, Colorado and Virginia, where voters will cast their ballots on
March 1, as well as in
states such as Florida, which vote later in the month.
“I
think the support from Latinos proved what we have been saying all
along,” said one former Clinton aide. “The support from that community
is very real.”
But
Sanders, who pummeled Clinton in the predominantly white state of New
Hampshire, is vying hard for Hispanic support. And his aides say Clinton
has a problem with the
demographic.
“What
we learned today is that Hillary Clinton’s firewall with Latino voters
is a myth,” said Arturo Carmona, the deputy political director for the
Sanders campaign, in
a statement Saturday. “The Latino community responded strongly to
Bernie Sanders’s message of immigration reform and creating an economy
that works for all families."
Clinton
aide Nick Merrill didn’t hold back in his response to that statement,
calling it “complete and utter bullshit” on Twitter.
The
Sanders campaign has vowed to continue to lure Hispanic voters to its
column in states such as Colorado, Arizona, Texas and California. And
one Democratic strategist
said the fact that the poll numbers are in dispute “says everything we
need to know … it was competitive.”
Still,
Eric Herzik, a professor of political science at the University of
Nevada-Reno, said if the Silver State were any indication, Clinton would
do well with Hispanic
communities across the country.
“She
won among Latinos,” Herzik said, adding that Clinton was better
organized on the ground and her message was “far clearer and much better
focused than Sanders,” particularly
in the final days, when she went from casino to casino on the Las Vegas
Strip and spent time with workers there.
And
when it came to immigration reform, Clinton was also effective in
sending a message of “I can get it done. I will do this,” Herzik said.
“She came across as more believable
than Sanders.”
Herzik
pointed to the final town hall, which aired on MSNBC two days before
the caucuses, where Clinton’s message appeared to resonate with
caucusgoers. He also highlighted
a campaign ad that aired in the final week and shows a teary-eyed
10-year-old girl at a campaign event who tells Clinton she’s afraid her
parents will be deported.
Clinton called the girl “really brave” and tells her “not to worry too much.”
“Let
me do the worrying. I’ll do all the worrying. Is that a deal?” she says
before giving the girl a hug and telling her she promises to do
everything she can to help.
Democratic
strategist Lynda Tran said Clinton has an “extraordinarily strong
record on immigration reform, including supporting the effort and
standing with so-called
Dreamers.” But one lesson from the caucus, she said, “has to be
ensuring Hillary Clinton also makes the case to Latino and Hispanic
voters when it comes to economic issues and kitchen-table concerns that
are critically important to these communities.”
Tran
said Clinton also will “need to be clear how her vision for tackling
climate change and addressing student debt and other parts of her
platform are connected to both
job creation and improving economic opportunity for everyone —
including Latinos.”
Asked
what their plans were to keep Hispanics in their column, Clinton
campaign aides on Monday highlighted their Hispanic-to-Hispanic phone
banks where voters can interact
with one another. They also pointed to organized events including the
one in San Antonio, Texas, “that showed a tremendous amount of
excitement” for Clinton and her surrogates, including Democratic Reps.
Joaquín Castro (Texas) and Xavier Becerra (Calif.).
Rep.
Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), a Congressional Hispanic Caucus member who
backed then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) over Clinton in 2008, is now
backing the former secretary
of State. He has ripped Sanders’s record on immigration reform, most
recently calling it “troubling.” In a column written for Univision, the
congressman accused Sanders — who voted against comprehensive
immigration reform in 2006 — of breaking with Democrats
and standing with “the hard-line anti-immigrant wing of the Republican
Party.”
In explaining his vote, Sanders has noted that union officials had major concerns with that immigration reform measure.
The
Clinton campaign dispatched former President Bill Clinton to Colorado
over the weekend and to Texas on Monday, where he reinforced his wife’s
message.
“We
need to stop talking about sending 11 million immigrants home. We need
to stop talking about throwing these Dreamers out of college,” he said.
“If you really sent
all these people home and built a wall, it would have the dual benefit
of collapsing the economy and making everyone in Latin America furious.
“That
doesn’t seem to me like a really good strategy in an interdependent
world where we need to grow the economy and we need more partners and
fewer enemies. We need
to do this together.”
The
next Democratic primary is Saturday in South Carolina, where Clinton —
who enjoys strong support among African-Americans — is expected to
cruise to victory.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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