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Esta página no está disponible en español. National Journal The Manana Vote By James A. Barnes and Richard E. Cohen June 5, 2004 As the nation's Hispanic population surged in the second half of the 1990s, North Carolina led the way: By 2000, more than 42 percent of the Hispanics then living in the state had arrived -- from abroad or from elsewhere in this country -- in the previous five years. And North Carolina's largest metro areas -- Charlotte, Greensboro-Winston-Salem, and Raleigh-Durham, which had each begun the 1990s with fewer than 10,000 Hispanics -- turned into Latino magnets. Each saw its Hispanic population explode more than 600 percent during the decade. So, can we expect the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group to flex its political muscles in the Tar Heel State, perhaps determining the winner of the hard-fought Senate race pitting Republican Rep. Richard Burr against former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, or even deciding whether North Carolina's 15 electoral votes once again go to George W. Bush? Manana, North Carolina's Hispanic population might indeed grow to be influential enough to sway the outcome of statewide races, if current demographic trends continue. But that particular tomorrow is unlikely to arrive by November 2, 2004, because Hispanics have a serious translation problem: Their burgeoning population isn't yet translating into many actual votes. In 2000, North Carolina's population was 4.7 percent Hispanic, but just seven-tenths of 1 percent of the votes cast were Hispanic. Nationally, Hispanics were 12.5 percent of the population but just 5.6 percent of the vote, according to census figures. And the Hispanic vote is not expected to be significantly larger this year. In most states, Hispanics accounted for less than 2 percent of the vote in 2000. They were 10 percent or more of the vote in only five states. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics have been the nation's No. 1 minority group since 2000, when their population grew to 35.3 million, eclipsing the 34.7 million African-Americans. But in that year's elections, the black vote was twice the size of the Hispanic vote. By Election Day 2004, the Hispanic population will have jumped another 14 percent, according to an estimate by respected Brookings Institution and University of Michigan demographer William H. Frey. That's an increase of more than 5 million people, which will make the nation 13.9 percent Hispanic. (By comparison, the black population is expected to have risen 5.2 percent since 2000, or less than 2 million, and the non-Hispanic white population is forecast to inch up 1.1 percent, or about 2 million.) But Hispanic power at the ballot box continues to lag, largely because just 41 percent of Hispanics are U.S. voting-age citizens, compared with 76 percent of whites and 65 percent of blacks. Moreover, Hispanic citizens of voting age are less likely than other Americans to be registered voters -- and less likely to actually vote. In 2000, the turnout rate for Hispanics eligible to vote was just 45 percent, compared with 61 percent for other eligible adults. Hispanic leaders continue to struggle to enhance their community's political strength. But overall Hispanic influence remains less than the sum of its parts, both nationally and within most states. Hispanics of a particular nationality sometimes wield considerable influence in a particular geographical area or on a certain topic -- Cuban-Americans in Miami and on U.S. policy toward Fidel Castro, for example -- but those spheres of influence tend to be very limited. The U.S. Hispanic population, although about 60 percent Mexican-American, is anything but monolithic. And that makes targeting Hispanic voters -- or potential voters -- very complicated. "There are 10 different buttons that you have to push, depending on the [ethnic] community, the generations in America, the location, et cetera," said Kenneth McClintock, minority leader of the Puerto Rican Senate and a member of the Democratic National Committee. "What appeals politically to Mexican-Americans whose grandparents moved to Boston is very different from a Mexican who just crossed the border, so you have to push the button of each individual community." Demographic Dilemmas If demography is destiny, the shifts in Hispanic housing patterns in the last two decades could help explain why the Latino community's explosive growth has not produced greater political gains. Hispanics may have inadvertently delayed their political coming-of-age by spreading out from their traditional U.S. enclaves to settle in far-off suburbs. Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City have long been major gateways for Hispanics entering the United States. Like countless immigrants before them, wave after wave of Latinos passed through these portals. Leading social institutions in those cities -- from public schools to Catholic archdioceses to political committees -- adapted to accommodate the influx. And neighborhood organizations took root to provide support networks for Hispanic residents. But today's Hispanics are flocking to untraditional destinations. To be sure, these four metro areas are still home to roughly a quarter (some 9 million people) of the nation's Hispanics. But a 2002 study by Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, and Audrey Singer, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, found that the fastest-growing Hispanic communities were not traditional immigrant barrios but "new Latino destinations," a diverse assortment of 51 metropolitan areas spread across 35 states and every region. From Salt Lake City to Seattle, from Grand Rapids, Mich., to Greensboro, N.C., these metros saw their combined Hispanic populations rise 126 percent from 1990 to 2000. That growth was almost four times the rate of increase in 16 heavily Latino metro areas, including not only the traditional gateways but also places like Albuquerque, N.M.; Denver; El Paso, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; and Tucson, Ariz. Experts debate the impact of this dispersal on political assimilation. "I don't think anyone knows for sure," Suro said. But he added, "It seems fair to assume that the process of learning about the United States is different in the new settlement areas than when somebody lands in a place with a lot of robust institutions that have helped millions of prior immigrants go through the process." If there is any state where that infrastructure, or lack thereof, has been overwhelmed by rapid Hispanic population gains, it is North Carolina. During the 1990s, the Latino population in Raleigh-Durham grew by 631 percent, for example. In Charlotte, it grew 685 percent, and in Greensboro-Winston-Salem, the Hispanic population soared by 809 percent. But despite its extraordinary in-migration of Hispanics, North Carolina ranked dead last among the states in terms of Hispanic political participation in 2000, according to an analysis of census data undertaken by Frey for National Journal. Only 8.8 percent of the adult Hispanic citizens in the Tar Heel State were registered to vote, and only 6.2 percent actually went to the polls. Frey found a similar pattern of nonparticipation in Arkansas, Georgia, and Nevada, all states whose Hispanic population has surged in recent years. "Latinos go where the jobs are," noted Harry P. Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a Latino think tank affiliated with the University of Southern California. But enthusiasm for securing a living wage doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with a desire to participate in the American political process. States with high Hispanic in-migration rates tend to have the nation's lowest rates of citizenship, registration, and voting among Hispanics. "Recent Hispanic population gains are not directly transferring into voter participation," Frey noted. The Hispanic population in places like North Carolina is likely to continue to grow robustly, in part because of high birthrates, Frey added, but "it would appear that in these growing, 'new Sunbelt' states, the voting impact of Hispanics will be muted in the near term." And the "near term" could last many years. "In a generation, you are going to see a breadbasket of [Hispanic] votes in places like North Carolina, but it is going to take a generation," said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund. One reason for that time lag in North Carolina and other relatively new magnets is that the economic good times that attracted Hispanic workers also attracted non-Hispanics. As a result, in 2000, Hispanics constituted only 7 percent of the population in their 51 "new destination" metro areas. Another reason for the lag may be that "when you move somewhere, politics is not your main concern," said the Rivera Institute's Pachon. "Some of these working families have two jobs, and politics is not part of their everyday life. You think about your local school before you start thinking about your polling place." Also, the process of suburbanization is quite different for today's Hispanic arrivals than it was for previous immigrant groups. For example, when Italians came to the United States in large numbers in the early 1900s, many first settled in Manhattan's Little Italy, then, a generation or more later, moved across the East River to Queens, and still later, ended up on Long Island. Today, many Hispanics are skipping the first two steps -- and the political inculcation that accompanied them -- and heading directly to the suburbs. Major U.S. urban centers are not as attractive as they once were for new arrivals: The central cities no longer have abundant jobs, and the cost of housing is high. So, many Latino immigrants go directly to the suburbs, where employment opportunities are more plentiful, rents are less expensive, and the housing segregation barriers that once existed have crumbled. The Suro-Singer Brookings study found that by 2000, 54 percent of Hispanics in the nation's largest metro areas were living in suburbs. Moreover, during the preceding decade, while the Hispanic population in those metro areas' center cities climbed 47 percent, its numbers soared by 71 percent in their suburbs. The largest Hispanic growth spurts along the crabgrass frontier weren't in the established Hispanic communities in outer rings of metro areas such as Los Angeles, Miami, and San Antonio. Rather, they were in the new Latino destinations, places as varied as Atlanta, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Fla., and Portland, Ore., as well as in fast-growing Latino metropolitan hubs like Dallas, Houston, San Diego, and Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., which have larger Hispanic suburbs than most of the old immigrant magnets or the newest Hispanic destinations. While moving into the suburbs and up the socioeconomic ladder may have a conservative influence on some Hispanics, just as it had on other ethnic voting blocs, Republicans would probably be unwise to wager too much on that hypothesis, even though Bush received 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000 and Arnold Schwarzenegger drew 31 percent of the Hispanic turnout in California's gubernatorial recall election last year. Unlike the Little Italy-to-Queens-to-Long Island diaspora of old, the Hispanic advance into the suburbs is not primarily an upwardly mobile, multigenerational shift. Nor do Hispanics simply blend into the suburbs and shed their ethnic identity. Sometimes, suburban Hispanics congregate in high-density neighborhoods where the strip-mall storefront windows now boast signs in Spanish. Other times, they scatter through exurban townhouse developments where the dominant cultural symbol is the SUV. Because Hispanics aren't following traditional immigration patterns, it's not clear how long the Democratic Party can hold on to its advantage in recruiting them to its ranks. At the very least, the party will continually need to reintroduce itself -- and its accomplishments -- to new Hispanic voters. Foreign-born Hispanic citizens actually have higher voting rates than do U.S.-born Hispanic-Americans. According to census figures, 49.6 percent of the eligible foreign-borns voted in 2000, compared with 43.6 percent of the native-borns. The fact that the Democratic Party has its work cut out for it was brought home to Democratic pollster Sergio Bendixen when he conducted a focus group of 21 foreign-born registered Hispanic voters in Maryland last month. Bendixen showed the group a commercial, produced for the New Democratic Network, that featured Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. After watching the ad, the first thing that the foreign-born Hispanics wanted to know was why FDR was included in the mix. "None of them knew Roosevelt was a Democrat. There was even some question about Kennedy," Bendixen says. "This group has very little understanding of the difference between the parties, their histories, and leadership on major issues." Presidential Appeals Despite the complexities of appealing to Hispanic voters, both President Bush and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry are wooing the critical voting bloc. In this year's presidential election, almost three of five Hispanics (58 percent) live in California, Texas, or New York, states unlikely to be battlegrounds in the fall campaign. So far this year, Democrats and Republicans have targeted Spanish-language TV ads to only four states -- Arizona, Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico. Those states produced only one-sixth of the nation's Hispanic vote in 2000. Hispanic and non-Hispanic voters list the economy, the war in Iraq, and terrorism as the nation's top issues, polls show. The Kerry and Bush appeals to Hispanics are focused on issues of importance to all sorts of voters. The candidates are largely translating their standard pitches into Spanish, tweaking them just a bit to try to connect with Hispanics' special concerns. For instance, when Kerry stresses education, perhaps the top issue for Hispanics who dream of upward mobility for their children, he focuses on Latino students' high dropout rate, a problem he accuses Bush of ignoring. Kerry also charges Bush with failing to improve Hispanics' job opportunities and access to health care. Declaring he wants to help Hispanics improve their economic position, Kerry touts traditional Democratic positions, such as raising the minimum wage, expanding federal contract opportunities for minority-owned businesses, and protecting the right of workers to unionize. Bush, meanwhile, boasts that his No Child Left Behind Act will improve Latino children's schools. He also pushes his American Dream Downpayment Act, saying that by facilitating financing for first-time homebuyers, it improves housing opportunities for Hispanics; his tax credits for small businesses, including those owned by Hispanic entrepreneurs; his Medicare prescription drug legislation, which he says will help elderly Hispanics; and his efforts to expand trade with Latin America, such as through the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which was recently signed by Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Both the Bush and Kerry campaigns are vigorously reaching out to the Hispanic grassroots, by way of house parties and surrogate speakers. Following criticism from some Hispanic Democrats that they didn't have enough seats at Kerry's campaign table, the Massachusetts senator appointed Rep. Ed Pastor, a Hispanic from Arizona, as a co-chair of the Democratic National Committee. Democrats readily concede that, last time around, Bush's personal ease in reaching out to Hispanic voters, combined with his party's sophisticated advertising, was more effective than they had expected. Republicans "have really had a big opening with this group, communicating in Spanish with messages of hope and optimism," recalls Maria Cardona, director of the Hispanic Project at the New Democratic Network, a party advocacy group. "There was really no equal reaction from the Democratic side. We just assumed that if we got Latinos to the polls, they would vote for a Democrat. And what we have seen is, that is not the case." As a result, the New Democratic Network has launched an ambitious television advertising campaign with messages designed to be culturally sensitive to Hispanic voters, to remind them of the Democratic Party's long ties to them, and to emphasize optimistic themes. So far, Cardona said, her group has raised $3.5 million of its $5 million ad budget. Meanwhile, both presidential candidates have made missteps in trying to appeal to Hispanic voters. In April, Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., suggested that Kerry's lack of leadership on the future political status of Puerto Rico -- an issue of critical concern to his constituents in the Bronx -- was symptomatic of the senator's approach to Hispanics. "I want to hear from Kerry what he thinks about our issues," Serrano complained in an interview. "I was disappointed when he said recently that he would go along with whatever the Puerto Ricans want on the status of the island. It's not up to them. Puerto Ricans are ruled under the territory clause of the Constitution." More recently, Kerry perhaps lost ground with some Hispanics for calling for "open trade" with Latin America. Addressing the Teamsters on May 16, Kerry said that as president he would veto legislation implementing CAFTA in its current form because, in his view, it lacks sufficient protections for labor and for the environment. "That's a minus for Kerry," said Democratic pollster Bendixen. "Many [Latino] immigrants are small entrepreneurs, and they look forward to the day when they can trade with these countries." Bush, meanwhile, may have shaken the bedrock of GOP Hispanic politics, Florida's Cuban-Americans. Although that vociferous voting bloc despises Castro, its members are reluctant to see the United States do anything that might adversely affect their relatives in Cuba. A Bush administration policy unveiled this spring slashes the number of visits that Cuban-Americans may make to relatives on the island from one per year to just one every three years, and it would exclude aunts, uncles, and cousins from the definition of "relative." The new Bush rules also limit the luggage that U.S. travelers can take to Cuba and slash their per diem spending limit there from $164 to $50. While this new policy is welcomed by many hard-line anti-Castro Cuban-Americans, some Cuban-Americans brand the new restrictions anti-family. Miami banker Carlos Saladrigas, a lifelong Republican and chairman of the Cuba Study Group, a moderate Cuban-exile organization, recently told The Miami Herald: "We want to affect the Cuban government, not hurt the Cuban people, and these are absolutely and totally the wrong measures." Even Bush's former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Mel Martinez, who is running for the Republican Senate nomination in Florida, has questioned the new policy. Democrats, meanwhile, hope it will undermine Cuban-Americans' loyalty to the GOP. Both political parties believe that the delicate subject of immigration will play to their favor in this year's presidential election. A senior Bush operative, who insisted on anonymity, said the president's plan for a guest-worker program will have broad appeal to Hispanics and will help Bush increase his portion of the Hispanic vote, even if there is no legislative action on the proposal this year. But Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., who is a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee and has played an active role on immigration legislation, said that no one on Capitol Hill is taking Bush's plan seriously. "Not one member has introduced it," Berman noted. "It's the ultimate in bait and switch. Bush gave his principles [for the plan], but then the proposal disappeared.... Did they think that they would get support with a rhetorical flourish?" Berman believes that the GOP's legacy of then-Gov. Pete Wilson's attempt to deny social services to California's illegal immigrants and their children will keep Bush's Hispanic vote fairly low across the country. A Mosaic of Interests From a national perspective, Hispanics are united by a couple of key issues -- language and immigration. Most want at least the opportunity to preserve their Latin heritage and to maximize the number of newcomers legally entering the United States. Unlike with African-Americans, fighting discrimination has not always been a top Hispanic priority. In part, Puerto Rico's McClintock said, that's because of pockets across the nation where one Hispanic group or another is the dominant force: Mexicans in parts of Los Angeles; Cubans in Miami; and Puerto Ricans in the Bronx and, increasingly, in central Florida. In some respects, these subgroups share little more in common than the white ethnics who emigrated from Ireland did with immigrants from Italy. Indeed, the history of the American melting pot is that recent arrivals of different nationalities have competed with each other for power -- political, economic, and cultural -- in cities across the nation. "When I became chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus [in 1992], I made the mistake of referring to the views of Mexican-Americans on guns," said Rep. Serrano. "I learned that there were significant differences [among Hispanics] on gun control." The different Hispanic communities have tended to focus chiefly on their own interests. For mainland Puerto Ricans, for example, prime concerns are their island's governance and their own continuing internal clashes over whether to seek statehood. For Cuban-Americans, the overriding priority is their island's future after Castro, who has ruled for 45 years. Haitians worry about the political turmoil on their impoverished island. Mexican-Americans are especially concerned about U.S. border-control policies. Last year, 340 people died trying to cross illegally into this country from Mexico. Given these diverse interests, it's not surprising that no strong, unifying political figures have emerged from the Hispanic community. A few Hispanics have held great local sway -- such as former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, and United Farm Workers icon Cesar Chavez, who once wielded great influence in the California Legislature. But statewide clout has largely eluded Hispanics. Bill Richardson of New Mexico is the only Hispanic now holding a governorship. Although both of the Democratic Party's top Texas candidates were defeated in 2002, the party's African-American Senate nominee, former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, outpolled the party's Hispanic nominee for governor, businessman Tony Sanchez -- even though Sanchez spent $67 million on his campaign statewide. Kirk, who spent $9.4 million, even did better than Sanchez in some South Texas counties dominated by Mexican-American voters. Richardson's election as governor of New Mexico -- a state with a long Hispanic tradition and a 42 percent Hispanic population -- could herald the rise of a national Latino leader. A former secretary of Energy, he will take center stage as chairman of next month's Democratic convention. And he is often mentioned as a possible running mate for John Kerry. But as Puerto Rico's McClintock admitted, "We are still early in the growth of our political power." Republicans have had even less success in fielding Hispanic candidates with broad appeal. Their best-known figures in the national political arena are three Cuban-American House members from Florida, plus Rep. Henry Bonilla of Texas, whose San Antonio-based district was realigned by last year's redistricting so that Hispanics are no longer the dominant political force. (Coincidentally, those four members are from the states where brothers George and Jeb Bush successfully appealed to Hispanics in their gubernatorial campaigns.) But Republicans are finding that Hispanic-oriented appeals are effective in tapping corporate donors. When House Republican leaders last month held a Cinco de Mayo celebration on Capitol Hill, several major corporations sponsored the event. Sleeping Giant As Hispanic leaders struggle to gain political influence and a better working relationship with Bush and Kerry, their community still lacks any real clout on Capitol Hill, despite Hispanics' rapidly growing population: The House has only 22 Hispanics (18 Democrats, four Republicans) in contrast to 37 African-Americans, all of them Democrats. (There are no Hispanic or black senators at the moment.) Blacks are nearly certain to gain a House seat in Houston following the Democratic primary victory of challenger Al Green over first-term Rep. Chris Bell. Plus, black candidates are waging strong bids for open seats where white Democrats are retiring from very Democratic districts in Missouri and Wisconsin. By contrast, Hispanic lawmakers' efforts to increase their ranks on Capitol Hill have continually been frustrated. At the start of the most recent nationwide redistricting, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, who then chaired the Hispanic Caucus, promised a major political and fundraising effort to take advantage of Hispanic opportunities in several states. In 2001, he initially predicted six to 10 new Hispanic seats; by early 2002, he had scaled back his prediction to "five to seven new members next year." In the end, Democrats gained only two Hispanic House members in 2002: Raul Grijalva of Arizona, and Linda Sanchez of California both won open seats. In addition, Republican Mario Diaz-Balart won in a newly created district in Florida. During redistricting, Hispanic Democrats suffered several disappointments. In California and Texas, Hispanic activists were stifled by entrenched Anglo and black incumbents intent on preserving their own seats, despite the rapid growth of the Hispanic population. In the Los Angeles area, black population growth has been stagnant while Hispanic growth has been exploding. The three African-American incumbents in L.A. were left with districts where blacks represented 25 percent to 35 percent of the population; in each district, the Hispanic population was higher. But the black lawmakers benefited from incumbency, and Hispanics' influence was reduced because they constituted a smaller share of registered voters than blacks. Hispanics also complained that mapmakers carefully protected white incumbents in Southern California's urban areas that have large Hispanic populations. But Hispanic lawsuits challenging the new California map were dismissed. (On Capitol Hill, Hispanic Democratic lawmakers had agreed that redistricting should protect Democratic incumbents.) "The chief factor was that the percentage of Hispanics who were noncitizens was so much higher" than was the case with other groups, said Berman, who coordinated the House Democrats' redistricting efforts in California. But given the increase in Hispanics elected to local offices in his own district's San Fernando Valley, the 63-year-old Berman says, "I wouldn't be surprised if my successor is Hispanic." In Los Angeles, the unpredictable dynamics of Latino migration may also have contributed to the Hispanics' poor record on redistricting. Increasingly, Hispanics are leaving some of the very places where they might have expected to begin making significant political breakthroughs. According to a study by Frey, during the 1980s, 78 percent of the exodus from the pricey L.A. metropolitan area was made up of non-Hispanic whites; from 1995 to 2000, by contrast, Latinos made up 51 percent of the net out-migration, while whites represented just 35 percent of the outward-bound march. Indeed, whites were underrepresented in that flight compared with their overall share of the metro population, which was 41 percent in 1995. Elsewhere in new districts with substantial Hispanic population, Democratic primary voters in 2002 nominated Hispanics who were expected to have a good opportunity to prevail in contests for open seats. But two of those candidates proved to be major disappointments to their party: George Cordova of Arizona unexpectedly won the party primary, despite having what proved to be limited political skills; and Dario Herrera of Nevada was hounded by allegations of misconduct. Both lost. "Those problems were personal and were not a reflection of their ethnic background," insists House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. "When you really get down to it, you have to focus on people who are credible candidates." Democrats in the current election cycle are again making major bids for those two House seats. This time, however, they almost certainly will nominate Anglo candidates: well-known local official Paul Babbitt likely will oppose GOP Rep. Rick Renzi of Arizona, and wealthy former casino executive Tom Gallagher is running against Rep. Jon Porter of Nevada. "The Hispanic community would love to have more Hispanic representatives in Congress," said a House Democratic leadership aide. "But the most important thing is to have a candidate who is able to represent them, instead of a Republican who undermines their interests.... No doubt, there are strong local Hispanic Democrats, but you often need more than that to get elected." House Democratic Caucus Chairman Robert Menendez of New Jersey -- who holds the highest-ranking leadership position of any Hispanic lawmaker -- has argued within his party that Democrats must not take Hispanic support for granted. But speaking of Hispanic candidates, he adds, "We have to prove ourselves," and says that the party's overriding goal in the House must be to elect a Democratic majority. Ironically, the Hispanic candidate with perhaps the best chance of winning a House seat this year has been playing down his ethnic background. Colorado state Rep. John Salazar is the almost-certain Democratic nominee for the seat of retiring GOP Rep. Scott McInnis, whose mostly rural district is 22 percent Hispanic. Salazar's campaign slogan is "Send a farmer to Congress." (John Salazar's brother, Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar, has a good shot at winning both his party's nomination and the general election contest for his state's open Senate seat.) Hispanic Democrats have continually encountered problems in seeking high-profile local offices. In 2001, Democrats were excited about the prospects of Hispanics running for mayor in the nation's two largest cities: Fernando Ferrer in New York City and Antonio Villaraigosa in Los Angeles. But each lost his primary -- in large part because of racial divisions. After Ferrer lost a contentious primary to Mark Green, the intraparty bitterness helped to elect Republican Michael Bloomberg. In Los Angeles, white Democrat James Hahn won the contest with overwhelming black support because of his long history of working with the black community. While the seemingly inexorable growth of the Hispanic population shows few signs of abating, forecasts of when Hispanics will achieve political influence that matches their numbers are cloudy at best. Paradoxically, the migration patterns that have given Hispanics some visibility throughout much of the nation may have delayed their electoral gains by diluting Hispanic strength in their biggest strongholds. And unlike such Latin recording stars as Carlos Santana, Gloria Estefan, and Ricky Martin, who have demonstrated crossover appeal, Latino politicians have yet to effectively bridge the differences within their own communities, let alone generate broad-based support at the ballot box. And Hispanics have yet to prove that they're a nationwide voting bloc that non-Hispanic politicians ignore at their peril. Nationally, 5.6 percent of the vote on Election Day 2000 was Hispanic, but much of that vote was concentrated in a handful of states. In fact, the Hispanic proportion of the vote reached 5 percent in only a dozen states. And in just five of those -- Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas -- did it top 10 percent. In the majority of states (27), Hispanics cast less than 2 percent of the ballots. The Hispanic Portion of Each State's Ballots STATE VOTERS New Mexico 29.5 Texas 16.9 California 15.4 Arizona 11.5 Florida 10.2 Colorado 9.1 New York 8.3 Nevada 7.4 New Jersey 7.3 Hawaii 6.1 Connecticut 5.7 Illinois 5.7 Utah 3.6 Wyoming 3.5 Washington 3.4 Idaho 3.2 Rhode Island 3.0 Maryland 2.8 Kansas 2.6 Oregon 2.3 Virginia 2.3 Alaska 2.1 D.C. 2.1 Oklahoma 2.1 Nebraska 1.9 Massachusetts 1.9 Delaware 1.9 Indiana 1.5 Pennsylvania 1.5 Georgia 1.4 Michigan 1.3 Louisiana 1.3 Arkansas 1.2 Ohio 1.1 Wisconsin 1.1 Montana 1.1 Iowa 0.9 Minnesota 0.9 Missouri 0.9 South Carolina 0.8 Tennessee 0.8 North Carolina 0.7 New Hampshire 0.7 South Dakota 0.7 Mississippi 0.6 Alabama 0.6 Kentucky 0.6 North Dakota 0.5 Vermont 0.5 West Virginia 0.4 Maine 0.3 SOURCES: William H. Frey, Brookings Institution; Census Bureau California's Hispanic population -- 11 million strong -- dwarfs that of other states. Just nine states have at least a half-million Hispanic residents. HISPANIC POPULATION BY STATE California 11.0 Texas 6.7 New York 2.9 Florida 2.7 Illinois 1.5 Arizona 1.3 New Jersey 1.1 New Mexico 0.8 Colorado 0.7 SOURCES: William H. Frey, Brookings Institution; Census Bureau Nearly half of the nation's non-Hispanic white residents are participating voters. Just over one-third of black residents vote. But Hispanics have less than one voter per five residents. NON-HISPANIC WHITE Total Population: 194,552,774 Voting-Age Citizens: 147,768,945 Registered Voters: 105,762,342 Actual Voters: 91,346,980 HISPANIC Total Population: 35,305,818 Voting-Age Citizens: 14,300,581 Registered Voters: 8,200,637 Actual Voters: 6,448,792 BLACK Total Population: 34,658,190 Voting-Age Citizens: 22,614,559 Registered Voters: 15,254,615 Actual Voters: 12,838,406 SOURCES: William H. Frey, Brookings Institution; Census Bureau
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