By STEVEN K. PAULSON – AP

DENVER (AP) — Hispanics should not have to live in fear of raids by immigration agents, Michelle Obama told a Hispanic caucus to the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday.

Her husband, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, wants to reform immigration policies and provide illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, she said.

“We would have an immigration policy that brings 12 million people out of the shadows,” she told cheering caucus members who shouted “Yes we can” in Spanish.

Hispanics are often the first to suffer in an economic downturn and the last to benefit during a recovery, she said.

She told the caucus that blacks and Hispanics share an interest in providing access to affordable health care, education and economic opportunities for all Americans, not just a select few.

“We all know our country’s journey toward equality isn’t finished yet. We have more work to do,” she said.

Hispanics could play a key role in the November election, especially in the West where the Obama campaign has been courting them.

Researchers say that although Hispanics make up about 15 percent of the U.S. population, about 9 percent of eligible Hispanic voters are registered to vote and only 6.5 percent do vote, a statistic Republicans and Democrats are trying to change.

Raymond Pedraza, a member of the Nevada Democratic Party’s executive committee, said Hispanics are flocking to Obama because they feel they share a similar heritage of economic and civil rights struggles.

“He’s our story. He has walked in our shoes and he has walked our mile,” Pedraza said.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Sensing an opening because of conservatives’ hardline approach to immigration, Democrats are increasing their efforts to reach Hispanic voters in key Southwest states, a move they hope will help propel Sen. Barack Obama to the White House.

Republicans, however, aren’t ceding the Hispanic vote. Arizona Sen. John McCain, who will accept the Republican presidential nomination next week, is also aggressively courting Hispanic voters, looking to build upon inroads into the voting bloc made by President Bush - a former Texas governor - and his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

However, Democrats think that Bush’s low approval ratings, the weakening of the Republican brand nationally, and a perception among some Hispanics that McCain has flip-flopped on comprehensive immigration reform, improve Obama’s chances with Hispanics in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. Hispanics make up about 12 percent of eligible voters in the Southwest - 37 percent in New Mexico.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who’s Hispanic, predicted at the Democratic convention Tuesday that Obama will get more than 70 percent of the national Hispanic vote, helped by big numbers in the Southwest.

To achieve their goals, Democrats and allied groups are bolstering their Hispanic voter-registration drives and increasing their radio and television advertising aimed at Hispanics, according to the Western Majority Project, a group formed by Democratic strategists to build upon electoral gains the party has made in the Southwest.

“What I’m seeing is a highly motivated and excited electorate eager to have their voices heard,” said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, which endorsed Obama. “Whether we come from Mexico, El Salvador, from Argentina, Panama or Puerto Rico, we all are united and understand that this election is about us, it’s about our families, our communities, and this is our chance to be heard.”

A survey done for the Western Majority Project found that Obama holds an overall 64 percent to 25 percent lead over McCain among Hispanics in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.

A recent poll by the non-partisan Pew Research Center found Obama leading McCain among Hispanics nationally by 66 percent to 23 percent, which seems to answer questions raised during the Democratic primaries about whether Obama could attract Hispanic votes.

But several Hispanic officials and organizations warn that Obama shouldn’t consider heavy Hispanic support a lock.

“The big, big question for Latino voters is not whether Democrats will get the Latino votes. The question is what the margin will be,” said Cecilia Munoz, senior vice president for policy for the National Council of La Raza, a nonprofit Hispanic organization that fights poverty and discrimination. “If McCain gets 40 percent (of the Latino vote), he can win. And Senator McCain, though he may be behind, is not giving up and is running very hard in the Latino community.”

McCain is looking to follow in Bush’s footsteps with Hispanic voters. The president captured between 32 percent and 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004; analysts’ estimates vary. Bush’s Texas ties and understanding of Hispanic culture attracted voters.

McCain’s Arizona offers a sizeable Hispanic population, but he faces a challenge with Hispanic voters because of a perceived shift in his position on immigration. He helped craft a failed immigration-overhaul bill that included a guest-worker program that critics blasted as amnesty for illegal immigrants, but this year on the campaign trail he stressed securing America’s borders.

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Popularity: 27% [?]

By HOLBROOK MOHR – AP

LAUREL, Miss. (AP) — A day after the largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history, Elizabeth Alegria was too scared to send her son to school and worried about when she’d see her husband again.

Nearly 600 immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally were detained, creating panic among dozens of families in this small southern Mississippi town.

Alegria, 26, a Mexican immigrant, was working at the Howard Industries transformer plant Monday when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stormed in. When they found out she has two sons, ages 4 and 9, she was fitted with a bracelet and told to appear in federal court next month. But her husband, Andres, wasn’t so lucky.

“I’m very traumatized because I don’t know if they are going to let my husband go and when I will see him,” Alegria said through a translator Tuesday as she returned to the Howard Industries parking lot to retrieve her sport utility vehicle.

The superintendent of the county school district said about half of approximately 160 Hispanic students were absent Tuesday.

Roberto Velez, pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Peniel, where an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the 200 parishioners were caught up in the raid, said parents were afraid immigration officials would take them.

“They didn’t send their kids to school today,” he said. “How scared is that?”

One worker caught in Monday’s sweep at the plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago.

Fabiola Pena, 21, cradled her 2-year-old daughter as she described a chaotic scene at the plant as the raid began, followed by clapping.

“I was crying the whole time. I didn’t know what to do,” Pena said. “We didn’t know what was happening because everyone started running. Some people thought it was a bomb but then we figured out it was immigration.”

About 100 of the 595 detained workers were released for humanitarian reasons, many of them mothers who were fitted with electronic monitoring bracelets and allowed to go home to their children, officials said.

About 475 other workers were transferred to an ICE facility in Jena, La. Nine who were under 18 were transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

John Foxworth, an attorney representing some of the immigrants, said eight appeared in federal court in Hattiesburg on Tuesday because they face criminal charges for allegedly using false Social Security and residency identification.

He said the raid was traumatic for families.

“There was no communication, an immediate loss of any kind of news and a lack of understanding of what’s happening to their loved ones,” he said. “A complete and utter feeling of helplessness.”

Those detained were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman.

“We have kids without dads and pregnant mothers who got their husbands taken away,” said Velez’s son, Robert, youth pastor at the church. “It was like a horror story. They got handled like they were criminals.”

Howard Industries is in Mississippi’s Pine Belt region, known for commercial timber growth and chicken processing plants. The tech company produces dozens of products ranging from electrical transformers to medical supplies, according to its Web site.

Gonzalez said agents had executed search warrants at both the plant and the company headquarters in nearby Ellisville. She said no company executives had been detained, but this was an “ongoing investigation and yesterday’s action was just the first part.”

A woman at the Ellisville headquarters told The Associated Press on Tuesday that no one was available to answer questions.

In a statement to the Laurel Leader-Call newspaper, Howard Industries said the company “runs every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants for its jobs.”

Gov. Haley Barbour recently signed a law requiring Mississippi employers to use a U.S. Homeland Security system to check new workers’ immigration status.

The law took effect July 1 for businesses with state contracts and takes effect Jan. 1 for other businesses. Mississippi lawmakers once used laptops made by Howard Industries, but it’s not clear whether the company has current state contracts.

Under the law, a company found guilty of employing illegal immigrants could lose public contracts for three years and the right to do business in Mississippi for a year.

The law also makes it a felony for an illegal immigrant to accept a job in Mississippi. A message was left with the district attorney’s office after hours seeking comment on whether he would use the law to bring state charges against Howard Industries or the workers.

The Mississippi raid is one of several nationwide in recent years.

On May 12, federal immigration officials swept into Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant, in Iowa. Nearly 400 workers were detained and dozens of fraudulent permanent resident alien cards were seized from the plant’s human resources department, according to court records. In December 2006, 1,297 were arrested at Swift meatpacking plants in Nebraska and five other states.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s speech Monday to the Hispanic caucus of the Democratic National Convention proved to be something of a bittersweet experience for her supporters. And she still has plenty of them among the caucus. They were the people wearing Hillary buttons. The men and women with tears in their eyes as she spoke. The California delegate named Bob Archuleta who sat next to me, still mourning.

They were people like labor leader icon Dolores Huerta and Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina and sitting behind me, state Sen. Paula Sandoval and former school board member Lucia Guzman. These women need no buttons. This community, as diverse as it is, is still small and its leaders few enough that their voices are magnified.

Once the primary ended, Huerta, Molina, Sandoval and Guzman shifted their support to Obama. This is true of Hispanic voters, in general, and, by the way, “in general,” should be required after every mention of Hispanic voters. Let us stipulate here that the Latino vote is complex. Diverse group. Diverse interests. Let us state the obvious: Once you reduce any group to one of its characteristics, such as, oh, I don’t know, ethnicity, you risk straying into caricature. The Latino community is both victim and perpetrator of such oversimplification.

By a margin of two-to-one, Latinos from across the country rushed to support Clinton’s presidential bid, never looking back at the young senator from Illinois because for many in this still-clannish community “up-and-comer” is another word for “stranger.” Now, even as polls show Obama has a comfortable lead over Republican John McCain among Hispanic voters, he remains a cipher to many.

We need Clinton here, Ramona Martinez, Hispanic caucus chair of the Democratic National Committee and a Colorado superdelegate, told me recently. “We need her to send the message it’s time to move on.”

Clinton did just that. Between the shouts of Hil-la-ry! Hil-la-ry! Between the calls of “thank you,” and “I love you,” from the audience.

It was a powerful speech in which the senator reaffirmed her long ties to the Latino community and her commitment to universal health care, immigration reform and economic opportunity.

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Popularity: 48% [?]

Marxavi Angel Martinez was a child of small-town North Carolina. She grew up here, in the rolling Piedmont region, and was a high school honor student and cheerleader before settling into a job at the Graham Public Library. At 23, she lived in a tidy white trailer at the Cedar Creek Mobile Home Park with her husband and 16-month-old son.

Her carefully tended life came crashing down in July when she was accused of using a phony Social Security number and lying on her job application.

Recent arrests of immigrants, Sharpe said, had “gotten out of control.”

The sheriff responded: “If you want to come here illegally and live in this country, do not violate any laws.”

An increased push in recent months to enforce the nation’s immigration laws has snared those, like Martinez, who were raised in the United States — as well as day laborers, repeat immigration offenders and other criminals.

Local law enforcement agencies also have been working with federal immigration agents under a program, known as 287(g), meant to focus on serious crimes, such as drug trafficking, gang activity and terrorism. The deputy who arrested Martinez at the library was assigned to such a task force.

A week after Martinez was jailed, the same deputy arrested her husband on the same charges at his job at a local Biscuitville restaurant. According to friends, Martinez’s parents then turned themselves in to federal authorities. All are being processed for deportation.

Martinez’s arrest followed a June 14 incident in which an Alamance County deputy arrested an undocumented Latino driver on Interstate 85. Local media reports said the deputy had left the woman’s children — ages 14, 10 and 6 — out on the highway at night to fend for themselves for eight hours.

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Popularity: 48% [?]

Latinos have emerged in this presidential campaign as one of the most sought-after voting “blocs” in the battleground states of Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

But earning their vote is no easy task.

The social and political diversity within the ethnic group is forcing campaigns to employ different and perhaps unfamiliar strategies.

“Campaigning among Hispanics is basically a new science,” said Sergio Bendixen, a Miami-based consultant who is a leader in Hispanic opinion polling. “Before 2000, no one had a Hispanic consultant or a wing of the campaign assigned to the Hispanic electorate.”

The political and demographic take on Hispanics in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico is not one story but many, and that diversity embodies the complexity of trying to win over a voting bloc that’s not really a bloc.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

In New Mexico, particularly in the northern part of the state, there are a lot of socially conservative Hispanics. Some have served in the military or have family members who have. National security generally is an important issue.

They come from families that have lived in the same region for hundreds of years and hold close to their Spanish ancestry.

They vote in impressive numbers, and are solidly rooted in the middle class. They have helped propel other Hispanics into elected offices.

When in New Mexico, call them Hispanics, not Latinos, or risk being pegged as someone unfamiliar with how they see themselves.

” ‘Latino’ is a term that people from California use when they come to New Mexico,” said Brian Sanderoff, president of Research and Polling, a New Mexico firm.

In Nevada, there are many newcomers in the construction and culinary industries. Of those Latinos eligible to vote, many don’t have a tradition of doing so. Their interests tend toward labor and economics.

There are few Latino elected officials in Nevada, though the state has seen huge increases in the Latino population. Many eligible Latino voters use Spanish as a primary language.

“Almost two-thirds of registered voters are immigrants, and Spanish-language television is the way to get them,” said Bendixen.

But bringing them to the polls is a tough assignment. Only 25 percent of Nevada Latinos eligible to vote went to the polls in the 2006 mid-term elections, according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey. In New Mexico, the number was 52 percent. In Colorado, it was 40 percent.

Those numbers illustrate how Colorado falls somewhere between New Mexico and Nevada on the continuum of assimilation and political participation. Most eligible Latino voters in Colorado are English-dominant, of Mexican descent and were born in the U.S. But they still have strong Latino cultural ties, and might listen to Spanish radio.

Rick Ridder, a Denver-based political consultant, said more than 90 percent of Latino voters prefer to be interviewed in English.

“It’s very much ‘I want to participate. I speak English,’ ” he said. “But as far as entertainment, they listen to Spanish radio.”

Arturo Jimenez, who successfully campaigned for a seat on Denver’s school board, said it’s best to reach Latino voters in person, not by approaching a handful of Latino civic leaders. He should know. He knocked on 3,000 doors in a heavily Latino district in the 2007 election.

Jimenez says it’s true that Latino senior citizens have many of the same concerns as non-Latino seniors. Same goes for 25-year-olds and other demographics.

“Many Latino voters don’t see themselves as a separate voting bloc,” he said. “But they like that they’re appreciated for being Latinos.”

Difficulty of ethnic politics

There comes a point where all campaigns courting the Latino vote will have to engage in the delicate dance of ethnic politics.

The difficulty comes in making entreaties to Hispanics because of who they are without appearing to offer special treatment, which might alienate other non-Hispanic voters.

Put another way, how do you keep an overture from looking like pandering?

Both campaigns have been quick to dismiss such talk by saying the concerns of Latinos are the same as the rest of the country. And that’s largely true.

“But in terms of strategies and mobilization, they’re not the same,” said Anna Sampaio, associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado Denver.

If you don’t target Latino votes, they get lost in the mix, she said. Sampaio said the biggest potential is with the unlikely voter — one who might be registered to vote but hasn’t voted in awhile.

“Getting to those folks is going to be harder,” Sampaio said.

Going door-to-door in low-income neighborhoods and telling people how to register and where to vote are the most successful strategies. Those efforts are being undertaken in parts of Colorado, she said.

Thus far, neither the campaigns of Sens. John McCain campaign nor Barack Obama have come close to the effort that Sen. Hillary Clinton made in cultivating the Hispanic vote in the primaries. She called the Clinton effort the “gold standard” for sophisticated Latino mobilization.

That standard was achieved, Sampaio said, by pulling together a multi-tiered operation early on that included professional political consultants, academics and activists.

Surely, the Obama campaign’s announcement last month of a $20 million effort to attract Latino voters is a step in the right direction for Democrats.

Polls have shown consistent Latino support for Obama over McCain by about a 2-to-1 margin. There is ground to be gained, however, in encouraging more Latino voters to go to the polls.

Playing field has changed

For the GOP, the challenge is complicated by other factors. President George W. Bush got a significant proportion of the Latino vote in 2004. Those estimates, which remain hotly disputed, range from 32 to 44 percent.

However, the inflammatory rhetoric on immigration issue has changed the playing field for Republicans. They must now find a way to overcome the vitriol they evoked during the debates in Congress if they want to get Latino votes.

It’s not that Latinos are necessarily opposed to all Republican policy positions on immigration, said Bendixen, the Miami pollster.

“They look at what happened in the immigration debate not as a policy issue, but as an attack on Hispanic people,” he said.

That puts a candidate like McCain, who has a moderate position on immigration, in a bad spot, particularly in a place like Nevada, said Eric Herzik, political science chairman at the University of Nevada-Reno.

Tensions over immigration are so high in Nevada that McCain risks alienating the Republican conservative base, which is largely anti-immigration, if he is seen reaching out to Latinos, Herzik said.

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Popularity: 49% [?]

A coalition of Hispanic groups offered its recommendations for both party’s platforms Thursday, including calls to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to John Trasvina, the chairman of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, 26 of the group’s recommendations are already in the Democratic National Committee’s draft platform.

In explaining his group’s war opposition, Trasvina said that Latinos “are overrepresented in the military; many are immigrants who are fighting for our country before it becomes their country.”

The 24-member coalition includes the National Council of La Raza, MANA, the Cuban American National Council and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.

The coalition is pressing the Republican National Committee platform writers as well, Trasvina said, and its members will attend both party conventions.

The Hispanic platform makes more than 100 recommendations on education, civil rights, immigration, the economy, health and government accountability. Among them:

_ Publicize the Census Bureau’s confidentiality policy so that Latinos — whether legal immigrants or not — will cooperate in the 2010 census.

_ Grant citizenship to the country’s 12 million undocumented workers.

_ Increase Hispanic participation in the federal work force.

_ Enhance health-care access for immigrants, especially along the U.S.-Mexico border.

_Continue No Child Left Behind with more emphasis on Latino students.

The coalition recommended that No Child Left Behind be used to combat the high dropout rates among Latino high school students. “Our 20-20 vision starts today, and that is that we will close our drop-out rate,” Trasvina said at the press briefing.

Both political parties have been courting Latinos, who participated strongly in the primaries, said Susan Minushkin, the deputy director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico, where the 2004 presidential election was close, have large Hispanic populations, making them hot spots again this election, Minushkin said.

“I would say this year there is much more of an interest in the Latino vote than there has been ever in the past,” Trasvina said. “The community is larger and in more states, and the voting participation is higher than it’s ever been. I think this year there will be more consequences if the Latino vote and the Latino leaders are not listened to.”

However, Andy Gomez, assistant provost at the University of Miami and senior fellow at the university’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, cautioned against assuming that Latinos — especially in the second- and third-generation — vote solely on the kinds of issues listed in the coalition’s report.

“The Hispanic community is looking to see which is the particular candidate that first and foremost addresses the immediate needs of the United States,” Gomez said in an interview.

Popularity: 52% [?]

If Mitt Romney has become John McCain’s ambassador to the West, the figure with more clout and credibility among the region’s voters than the candidate himself, it appears that Colorado’s Sen. Ken Salazar is quickly emerging to fill that role for Barack Obama.

Salazar has been riffing on why Obama is the right candidate for the West for weeks now, and that role has only grown with each day the Democratic National Convention in Denver draws closer.

Wednesday, Salazar appeared in two separate press availabilities, hitting McCain over his remarks about reopening the Colorado River Compact and assuring listeners that it would never happen in an Obama administration.

But he also has begun to link his own credibility in the region to Obama’s cause, highlighting the way the lives of the two men have intersected and calling himself and Obama products of the quintessential “American Dream.”

“When people get to know Barack in the way that I know him, they will support him,” Salazar said Wednesday.

Or, Republicans say, the reverse could be true. Salazar’s own credibility with Colorado voters could be endangered by linking himself too closely to Obama if things go badly.

“Sen. Salazar, who campaigned as a moderate and even in some cases a conservative in 2004, has now willingly put himself in the position of being a partisan point man for the Democratic Party,” said Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado GOP.

“When Obama goes down, Salazar is going to go down with him,” the Republican said.

There are certainly other candidates for the role of the Obama campaign’s Western frontman. Brian Schweit zer, the colorful, oft-quoted governor of Montana, for one. Others include New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter.

Each is more charismatic than Salazar, but Colorado’s junior senator is known among Democratic operatives as a political magician of sorts, the Democrat who more than any other has redrawn the state’s political map with his broad appeal among rural, independent and Latino voters.

Now there is an effort to get some of that magic to wear off on Obama, a young African-American from Chicago whose personality and style couldn’t be further from Salazar’s sure-and-steady political persona.

Salazar talked Wednesday about how in 2004, he and Obama were the only two freshmen Democratic senators and how for their first two years in Washington they lived on the same floor in the same building.

Salazar will speak to the convention Wednesday — the night Obama is officially nominated — and he said the speech will highlight how two men who, while on the face are so dissimilar, are very much alike after all.

“No one would have ever anticipated the unlikely ascent of Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States,” Salazar said. “No one would have anticipated that I would serve as a United States senator given the fact that we were so poor, (that we) didn’t have telephone or electricity on our farm.

“Those possibilities could only happen in this country. . . . That’s what makes for me personally this election so exciting,” he said.

Via Denver Post

Popularity: 58% [?]

Sen. Barack Obama moved this week to bolster his edge over Sen. John McCain in courting Latino voters, announcing a national Latino advisory council with heavyweights including Henry Cisneros, housing secretary under President Bill Clinton, and Clinton transportation secretary Federico Peña.

The move follows Obama’s announcement last month that he would spend an unprecedented $20 million to woo Latino votes - more than twice the $8 million spent by both parties in 2004. His efforts are mirrored by McCain’s outreach, especially with Latino military families and Cuban American voters, though the Arizona senator’s staff declined to say how much money his campaign would devote.

“It’s funny, they announced they’ll spend $20 million reaching out to Hispanic voters but when you go to Florida, the only Spanish ads are by John McCain,” said McCain spokeswoman Hessy Fernandez. “At the end of the day, John McCain doesn’t need an introduction with the Latino community. He has been working for more than two decades on the values, principles and issues Latino voters care about.”

McCain’s campaign has created Latino “leadership teams” in several states, including California. His Spanish-language Web site touts endorsements from several south Florida Hispanic Republicans, including Sen. Mel Martinez.

The Obama campaign plans to combine Latino-oriented advertising with outreach by high-profile Latino “surrogates” and aggressive field operations to mobilize Hispanic voters in closely contested states, especially Florida, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico.

“The interesting thing about these swing states in the Southwest is that they’re swing and the Latino vote is very strong,” said Obama adviser Maria Blanco, who directs the Earl Warren Institute at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. “It could make a difference.”

Word of Obama’s Latino advisory council set political analysts buzzing over what names were not on the list and raised questions about lingering tensions between the Obama campaign and some Latino leaders who had backed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential bid and helped turn out millions of Hispanic primary voters for her.

Cisneros and several other prominent Latinos who backed Clinton are now on the Obama advisory council. Others are notably absent, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta. Also not listed is New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who endorsed Obama over Clinton.

An Obama spokesman emphasized that Richardson and Villaraigosa are both actively stumping for the Democratic candidate and have top level access within the campaign. The group of 15 advisers was chosen for its geographic diversity and will serve as a sounding board inside the campaign on how best to address Latino voters, said spokesman Vince Casillas.

But a sense of sour grapes appears to linger for some established Latino leaders who were active Clinton backers who met with Obama in Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, shortly after she conceded in May.

“If I’ve spoken to 10 major people (who were at the meeting), nine of them, even up until mid-July were still unhappy with Latino access and status within the Obama campaign and his outreach,” said David Ayón, a senior research associate at the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University and a close observer of Latino political affairs. “The relationship has been riddled with problems.”

Yet if the country’s Latino Democratic leadership is divided over Obama, polls show Latino voters favor him by wide margins. A nationwide survey conducted in July by the Pew Hispanic Center showed Obama leading McCain 66 percent to 23 percent among Hispanic registered voters.

Latinos have turned out in growing numbers in recent years, with 8 to 10 million expected to vote this November.

The presidential election is likely to be decided by voters in a handful of battleground states - Latinos wield increasing electoral clout in several - and that’s where the campaigns are expected to pour the most resources.

McCain must reach beyond Latino business leaders in the Southwest to churches and other groups of Latino voters, according to UC Irvine political science Professor Louis DeSipio.

“So far as I can tell, he hasn’t established that layer of his outreach yet,” he said. “Can he get by without Latinos in Nevada? Probably. But he can’t get by without Latinos in New Mexico.”

McCain’s greatest Hispanic strength, outside his home state of Arizona, may be in Florida, where Cuban Americans are traditionally Republican. To compete with McCain’s base in Miami, Obama has been mobilizing new Latino voters in the Orlando area, much as Democrats did in 2000, said DeSipio.

Via San Francisco Chronicle

Popularity: 43% [?]

By GREG BISHOP
Published: August 19, 2008

BEIJING — The American flag landed on the scorer’s table, launched by a family member with exceptional aim. Henry Cejudo grabbed it from his coach and draped it around his body. He stood there for the longest time, fighting back tears, the son of illegal immigrants wrapped in stars and stripes.

After Cejudo had defeated Tomohiro Matsunaga of Japan to win the 121-pound freestyle wrestling final on Tuesday and after his family members had celebrated so loudly for so long that security threatened to kick them out, officials hung a gold medal around his neck. He promised never to remove it.

“I might just sleep with this,” Cejudo said. “It changed my life already.”

Fitting, because his is a story about change — for himself, for his family and maybe now for the USA Wrestling program, which trained the 21-year-old Cejudo to become the youngest gold medalist in United States wrestling history.

The gold medal, and his path to it, changed so many lives along the way.

Like his mother’s life. Nelly Rico, who came to the United States from Mexico as an illegal immigrant,, raised seven children by herself and left Los Angeles with them in the middle of the night to escape the criminal who was the father Cejudo never really knew.

Rico does not like flying, so she watched her son’s Olympics on a laptop back in Colorado Springs. She vomited three times — one for each period her son lost in the three matches leading to the finals.

His right eye bruised and darkened, Cejudo talked of all the hours his mom worked over the years, as a janitor and a construction worker, anything to put food on the table or to heat the house. He talked about all the times they moved, from Los Angeles to New Mexico to Phoenix to Colorado Springs, each time in search of a better life.

“I wish I could just give her the medal right now,” Cejudo said.

More lives changed, like those of all the people back in Phoenix. Frank Saenz, Cejudo’s coach at Maryvale High School, was the one who raised money for him to enter tournaments by knocking on doors and pleading for donations.

Tracy Greiff, another wrestling coach from the Phoenix area, was the one who had told Cejudo in seventh grade that he would win an Olympic gold medal. Greiff said he sold hundreds of tickets to travel here and sit in the rowdiest section this venue had ever seen.

Alonzo Cejudo, one of Henry’s older brothers, was the one who said that next to the birth of his children this ranked as the greatest moment of his life. He was the one who remembers how Rico called Henry her “little golden boy” from the moment of his birth. The one who listened to Angel, Henry’s brother and training partner, talk all week.

Angel told the family he had never seen Henry this strong, this focused, this tough or this prepared.

“Henry knew he was going to take it,” Alonzo said. “He just came to pick up what was already his.”

Angel’s life changed, too, for better and for worse. He was the first Cejudo brother to take to wrestling, the first to become a star. He won four state championships at Maryvale. He put together a 150-0 record.

When he went to Colorado Springs, Henry, as always, tagged along. When Henry won more matches, more tournaments, more medals, Angel became his toughest critic and best friend. When Henry wrapped himself in that flag on Tuesday, Angel watched from the stands with tears in his eyes.

“It’s not, Oh, it should have been me,” said Angel, a world-class wrestler in his own right. “Because if it should have been me, I would have been out there. I’m not going to be jealous of my brother.”

More change looms on the horizon, but this time, with a wider reach. Tucked into the Cejudo cheering section was Jake Deitchler, an 18-year-old who wrestled in the Greco Roman discipline at these Olympics. Deitchler had committed to Minnesota but told The New York Times on Tuesday that he would instead head to Colorado Springs.

“I want to go down the same path,” Deitchler said. “I want to be where he’s at, gold medal hanging around my neck.”

This is what Kevin Jackson, the national freestyle coach and a former gold medalist, has envisioned since Cejudo entered the program at the Olympic Training Center as a high school junior. Instead of going to college, where folk wrestling is the dominant style, Cejudo honed his considerable skills against the best freestyle wrestlers in the world.

The program pays for him to attend college if he wants,” Angel said. “In the interim, the benefit is going up against world-class athletes.”

Jackson ranks Cejudo among the best young United States wrestles ever, guys like John Smith, a world champion at 21, and Lee Kemp, a world champion at 22. Jackson hopes Cejudo’s success at these Olympics will prompt promising young wrestlers like Deitchler to follow down that path.

“He is the present, and he is the future,” Jackson said of Cejudo. “He has two more cycles in him. And he hasn’t come close to how good he can be.”

After the match, Jackson lofted Cejudo in the air, a freestyle wrestling tradition. Jackson watched Cejudo afterward and concluded he was the most emotional champion in recent memory.

Maybe that is because Cejudo’s medal meant so much to so many.

His family waited near the tunnel, and after Cejudo received his prize, he made wrestling’s version of the Lambeau Leap — right into the stands. His family embraced him, tousled his hair, wrapped seven pairs of arms around him.

They all wore or waved American flags, an entire family decked in the stars and stripes. A family that started with illegal immigrants and advanced to right here, this moment, their very own gold medalist resting in their lap.

“Only in America,” Cejudo said.

Via the New York Times

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