Kerry's Low Profile May Cost Crucial Latino Votes

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-latinovotes3may03,1,2465379.story?coll=la-home-headlines


THE NATION
Kerry's Low Profile May Cost Crucial Latino Votes


By Michael Finnegan, Times Staff Writer


ALBUQUERQUE — At the New Mexico headquarters of President Bush's reelection campaign, maps cover the walls. One is a dense maze of color-coded pins tracking block-by-block recruitment of Bush precinct captains. For the six paid operatives who have worked here for weeks, the maps chart the battle to avert what happened to Bush in 2000: He lost New Mexico by 366 votes.

So far, it's an uneven fight. Two months after John F. Kerry in effect captured the Democratic presidential nomination, the Massachusetts senator has no staff or headquarters in New Mexico, the nation's most heavily Latino state.

In each of the three other battleground states where the Latino vote is pivotal — Arizona, Nevada and Florida — the same is true: Bush has staff and headquarters; Kerry does not. Bush also has run television ads in Spanish in each of those states; Kerry has not.

Kerry's slow start in appealing to Latinos has complicated his quest to keep Bush from making inroads with a voting bloc that's expected to play a key role this year in determining who wins the White House, according to Democratic strategists and Latino backers of Kerry.

-more-

effort in OH, which is the same strategy as in NM, apparently.

What it described was actually pretty encouraging for Dems. The people recruited by the Bush team sort of resented the people in DC managing them, the people in DC had contempt for the locals, and were clearly trying to run the show like a cult, and the people on the ground were Getting Out The Demcroatic Vote in the same proportion as they voted in 2000. (They were clearly registering a few Democrats.)

I thought you just read the Washington Times. Passive aggression is so cool.

In 2000 bush did not get the Hispanic vote in Fla. The Hispanic community in Fla. has been expanded by American Puerto Ricans moving out of NYC to Fla. American Puerto Ricans will never vote republican. bush counts on the cubanos, but the largest sect of cubanos are not Americans, and can't vote. In 2000, cubanos gave the vote to bush.

Let's not forget that Gore won Fla.

In Arizona we have a democrat governor (Janet Napolitano). Many democrats from other states have moved to Arizona, and they gave that win to Gov. Janet.

The article says crap. They just wanted the headline...'Kerry's Low Profile May Cost Crucial Latino Votes.' 'May' is far away from 'will.'

I can't believe people here keep repeating such lies from printed repig press.