Las Vegas/Hispanic Vote: "Campaigning here, Clinton goes over Culinary’s head"

Campaigning here, Clinton goes over Culinary’s head
The union backed Obama, but she’s pitching members, one by one

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Sen. Hillary Clinton campaigns Thursday in a largely Hispanic Las Vegas neighborhood represented by Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen, who is backing her.

By J. Patrick Coolican

Fri, Jan 11, 2008 (2 a.m.)


Just beneath the smiles and the hugs and the flash of cameras, Sen. Hillary Clinton played in-your-face politics in a visit to Las Vegas on Thursday.

A day after the 60,000-member Culinary Union endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for president, Clinton walked a northeast Las Vegas neighborhood heavy with Culinary workers and won the support of several.

Her campaign’s message: The endorsement means nothing and Culinary members should follow their conscience and not the order of union Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor. It was a political kick in the shins to Obama and the union, all delivered with the New York senator’s trademark wide grin.

Asked about this shrewd maneuver, a Clinton aide merely laughed and claimed ignorance.

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Clinton was making an appeal to Hispanic voters, who make up about 40 percent of Culinary membership. Obama and Clinton are fighting hard for Hispanic voters. Both have invested heavily in the effort, airing Spanish-language radio ads and hiring dozens of bilingual organizers between them.

Clinton’s walk through the neighborhood wasn’t exactly a spontaneous stroll. The homes Clinton visited were the same ones that Kihuen canvassed with a Sun reporter last month. Many of the neighborhood residents either weren’t citizens or weren’t registered.

Clinton must have been a bit baffled, for instance, when Kihuen took her to visit Esperanza Solorio, who’s not a citizen. Kihuen explained her importance: She is a community activist who can move voters.

Marhayra Bermudez, a Culinary member who works in the kitchen at Bally’s, said she’s ignoring the Obama endorsement and backing Clinton. Many of her co-workers are doing the same, she said. Clinton stopped at the home of Gilberto and Elizabeth Santana and their two young children. Elizabeth Santana is a housekeeper at Harrah’s who cleans 16 rooms during every eight-hour shift. She’s supporting the family because her husband was injured on the job and can’t work.

Gilberto Santana asked Clinton about immigration and said he hoped more of his friends and family could work in the country legally. Clinton explained her proposal to secure the border but provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, provided they pay a fine and back taxes, and try to learn English.

The event gave Clinton some pitch-perfect TV moments. Sitting on the Santana couch, looking concerned as Gilberto Santana explained the family’s financial difficulties, Clinton said, “If we don’t take care of our children, we don’t care of our future.” She was once on the board of directors for the Children’s Defense Fund.

And, Clinton managed to get some residents to sign caucus pledge cards. A caucus, which requires participants to show up at their precinct meeting at 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 19, requires the campaigns to produce committed supporters. The pledge cards allow the campaigns to count supporters, and people who sign them are 80 percent more likely to attend the caucus than those who don’t, according to data amassed during previous Iowa caucuses.

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Power of Culinary Union hangs in balance as its protege Kihuen tries to break Obama hold
By Jon Ralston

Fri, Jan 11, 2008 (2:10 a.m.)

The media surged forward, surrounding Sen. Hillary Clinton and Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen, as they walked along 22nd Street in eastern Las Vegas in a neighborhood dominated by Hispanics and heavily populated with Culinary Union workers.

An intense look on his face, an emphatic tone in his voice, Kihuen sought to reassure the presidential hopeful the union that had created him as a politician was not a potent, monolithic force that could destroy her chances here.

“I cannot emphasize to you enough, Senator, how the Hispanic workers in the Culinary are loyal to you,” Kihuen whispered. “They are loyal to the Culinary, but they will vote for you.”

In that brief moment, amid a spectacle never before seen in a valley neighborhood, on the first day of an unprecedented battle for Nevada, both the stakes and the ironies became clear.

Here was a presidential hopeful — who had lost the Democratic Party’s most important endorsement a day earlier to Sen. Barack Obama — alighting in the state and diving right into the heart of Culinary country for votes. And here was the definitive local rising Democratic star sending a message to a union that united to almost single-handedly elect him last cycle that he was intent on dividing that organization for the greater purpose of electing Clinton as president.

To see Kihuen stick a thumb in the eye of his patrons and begin an attempt to divide the Hispanic community — and split the subset of Latinos who work in the union — surely will produce wounds that could rip apart the core of the party here.

And yet this caucus, which could change the direction of the presidential race and one day be seen as the turning point, can’t be anything but salutary for the party’s registration and energy — despite the rifts created by the Cinton-Obama contest, with the seeds planted by the Clinton-Kihuen foray into Culinary country Thursday afternoon.

I have little doubt that when Culinary leaders read what Kihuen said to Clinton on that street, where his political dreams were realized in 2006, they will be furious and even more energized. But the tableau that played out on 22nd Street illustrates the question that will determine the outcome of the caucus:

Can the Culinary hold its membership to its Obama endorsement (and turn it out) by acknowledging members might support Clinton but urging them to put union loyalty above their candidate affinity?

~snip~