As Published in The Sacramento Bee

By Maria Elena Salinas:

I respectfully disagree with those who say that political conventions are not important. I sometimes wonder why some of my colleagues in the media are shooting themselves in the foot by questioning the validity of the conventions as they are covering them. It’s like saying: “Here I am wasting my time and yours, and getting paid to do so. Don’t watch our television shows, don’t listen to our radio programs, don’t read our newspaper articles that report on conventions.”

I say: If you can, watch the convention coverage wall to wall, listen to every radio show and read every article written about it. Better yet, go to C-SPAN or a webcast of the convention and listen to what each of the speakers has to say, unfiltered. If you want some perspective, then you can go to a news source that you trust and hear its take on it.

Some of the criticism is valid. Gone are the days when these huge party meetings held the mystery of who the presidential candidate would be and the excitement of having each state delegation argue for and against the issues.

Now, by the time the conventions come around, the presidential candidate and even his vice-presidential pick already have been decided, and the platform has been written by party officials and is merely ratified on the convention floor. Conventions have become a sort of crowning ceremony. It’s a four-day public-relations campaign.

But you see, that is part of the democratic process. The parties raise money and receive the government funds due to them by law to conduct their campaigns. The conventions play an important role in that campaign.

Too many voters feel disenfranchised, either because they don’t understand the system or are not interested in it. The conventions become the parties’ opportunity to try to catch the voters’ attention a couple of months before they have to make the crucial decision of whom to vote for. They are an opportunity for the parties to introduce themselves and their candidates to the voters and announce what they stand for.

The conventions also serve as a motivating factor for delegates and superdelegates, whose job it is not only to vote for the party ticket and its agenda, but to go out to their communities and campaign for their respective party.

In trying to attract a specific voter bloc, the parties need to show how diverse and inclusive they really are. In the Democratic Convention, there were more than 600 Hispanic delegates – a record number – and several Latino speakers went to the podium, including Federico Peña, who served in two Cabinet positions under President Clinton, and several members of Congress. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had a prime-time role on the last day of the convention.

As I was writing this, Republicans had not yet released the number of Hispanic delegates who would be attending their convention, but they had lined up Latino speakers such as Sen. Mel Martinez, former U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin and Miami Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Democrats have the upper hand when it comes to the Latino vote, with about 65 percent supporting Obama, according to the latest polls. In the most recent survey of Latino voters by the Pew Hispanic Center, 55 percent said that the Democratic Party “understands the concerns of their community,” while only 5 percent say Republicans do. Prove them wrong, Republicans.

The best thing that can happen in a democracy is that the voters are engaged and well-informed. It is the responsibility of the voters to get to know the candidates and listen to their positions on the issues that affect them, and to make up their own minds about whom to vote for. Take advantage of the conventions, because after the party is over, you’ll be bombarded with negative ads. And that is no way to elect a president.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Hispanic delegates accounted for only 12 percent of the Convention’s 4,400 delegates. While these numbers are up from 9 percent in 1996, they still fail to match Hispanics’ share in the general population at 15 percent.

Before a gathering of 80,000-plus Democrats, fans, well wishers, and curious spectators, Sen. Barack Obama accepted his party’s nomination as presidential nominee at Denver’s Mile High Stadium Thursday evening. His acceptance speech resonated with the theme “E Pluribus Unum,” which roughly translated means, “Out of many, we are united as one.” Sen. Obama declared that Americans walk many different paths in life and come from many varied lands, but the nation unites around a single shared set of values and ideals.

Not only did the convention rhetoric celebrate America’s origin in diversity, so did the faces of the official delegates. Yet, out of this diversity, how did Hispanics fare? Unfortunately, not well.

Hispanic delegates, according to data provided by the Democratic National Convention Committee, accounted for only 12 percent of the Convention’s 4,400 delegates. While such numbers are up from 9 percent in 1996, they still fail to match Hispanics’ share in the general population at 15 percent.

The DNCC statistics revealed that for the first time in history, women made up a majority of the delegates at 50.1 percent. In addition non-Hispanic whites saw their numbers reduced to about 2,495 or 56.7 percent, a decline from 66.7 percent 12 years prior in 1996.

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Popularity: 15% [?]

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: 25% [?]

The mile-high city of Denver in the Rocky Mountain state of Colorado and its large Hispanic population are bracing for next week’s historic presidential nomination of Barack Obama by the Democrats.

The drama is expected to flood convention site Denver with 50,000 out-of-towners as the centre-left party tries to unify the Democratic Party after bitter primary elections and to reinforce a strong public image for Senator Obama, 47.

Obama is the first black American to be nominated by a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national political scene.

The following week, Republicans will meet in St Paul, Minnesota, to nominate Senator John McCain, 71.

There’s little mystery about the convention outcomes after six months of state-by-state voting by party loyalists in the hottest US primary contest in decades. Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton hung on to the very last against Obama, falling short by about 200 votes of the 2,118 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.

But if the outcome is already decided, the convention that starts Monday will serve other purposes, beginning with its location in a region that has voted for Republican presidents for much of the past 40 years.

Democrats this year are specifically targeting the Hispanic vote in Colorado and nearby New Mexico and Nevada, where Latinos were credited with helping Republican President George W Bush - a former border state governor with Hispanic family ties - return to the White House in 2004.

In addition, the Mountain West region has seen 15 per cent population growth since 2000 and “the emergence of unaffiliated voters as the largest voting bloc,” holding out hope for the centre- left party, Colorado’s Democratic Senator Ken Salazar wrote in the Los Angeles Times this week.

Denver is known as the “mile-high” city for its exact altitude of 5,280 feet (1,609 metres). Anchoring the western edge of the Great Plains against the Rocky Mountains, the city of more than half a million is the region’s cultural capital.

Denver’s ethnic mix includes 50 per cent white, 11 per cent black and a variety of other identities. Most striking is the strong presence of Hispanics and Latinos of all races, who make up 35 per cent of the city’s population and 21 per cent of those who claim Spanish as their first language, census figures show.

Hispanics make up 15 per cent of the US population, but only 9 per cent of the eligible American electorate - a number kept low by the illegal status of many and the large number of children under voting age, according to the Pew Hispanic Centre.

But their presence exceeds the national 9 per cent average in Colorado, with 12 per cent of eligible voters; and in the region where New Mexico has 37 per cent; Nevada, with 12 per cent; and Florida, with 14 per cent.

Those numbers and those four states are especially interesting for Democrats and their 20-million-dollar campaign to target Hispanic voters because of the narrow outcomes in 2004.

That year, they were four of the six states that Bush carried by the narrow margin of 5 percentage points or less, according to the Pew Hispanic Centre, and Democrats are determined to wrestle them into their territory this November.

Polling results have given Democrats reason to hope. Hispanic voters prefer Obama over presumptive Republican nominee McCain by a nearly 3-to-1 margin, according to the Pew centre - a sharp reversal from the primary vote, when Hispanics threw their weight to Clinton.

On the last day of the convention, August 28, Obama plans to bask in his growing star power with an open-air acceptance speech before 75,000 people at Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium.

The date marks the 45th anniversary of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech, and also draws comparisons to the late John F Kennedy, the last presidential nominee to take his acceptance speech out of the limited confines of the convention hall to a larger venue in 1960.

The decision has created nightmares for security officials in Denver and intensified the scramble for already scarce hotel rooms as thousands learned at the last minute they had won a lottery for tickets.

Two-bedroom condominiums were renting for 5,000 dollars during convention week, and hotel rooms, if at all obtainable, started at 400 dollars a night.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee are expected to unveil a $20 million investment in Hispanic voter mobilization Tuesday that targets most major battleground states.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean said the sum is unprecedented for a presidential campaign and represents a show of Democratic confidence that Latino voters could prove pivotal in states including New Mexico and Michigan.

Although Republican rival John McCain represents Arizona, a state with a strong Hispanic presence, Dean cited a poll last week by the Pew Hispanic Center showing Obama’s approval rating with registered Latino voters at 66 percent nationwide, compared with 23 percent for McCain.

“We need to cement that,” Dean said of the Pew lead. “There’s enormous potential in the Latino population.”

Targets will include Florida; Western states such as Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico; and Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, industrial battlegrounds with sizable Hispanic populations. The money will be spent on niche advertising and other outreach, along with mobilization efforts aimed at identifying, registering and turning out new Democratic voters.

Over the weekend, the campaign held a training session in Las Vegas to teach local organizers how to canvass Hispanic communities. A similar forum will be held soon in Florida, Dean said, and sessions in other states are in the planning stages.

The investment is intended to benefit other Democratic candidates as well, including high-profile House and Senate races in Colorado, New Mexico and Florida.

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Popularity: 26% [?]