With the Hispanic vote potentially a deciding factor in key swing states, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama each aggressively courted the League of United Latin American Citizens at the group’s annual meeting Tuesday in Washington.
Although McCain is considered by many Latinos to be one of the most appealing Republican candidates inmemory because of his efforts to reform immigration policy, many are angry with him for backing away during the Republican primary from his promise to enact such reform as president.
Barack Obama sought to exploit the perceived disappointment among Hispanics in his address to the group, delivered four hours after McCain’s speech.
“We need a president who isn’t going to walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform when it becomes politically unpopular,” Obama said.
McCain was the major proponent of an immigration reform bill in the Senate that would provide a pathway to citizenship to people who illegally entered the country. In January he declared the plan not viable and said he would instead promote strengthening border security before addressing other immigration issues.
“He’s hurting himself by denying what he was for,” said LULAC delegate Jim Rahai, of Washington, D.C.
Obama, who leads among Hispanic voters in recent polls by a 2 to 1 margin, promised the LULAC crowd immigration reform, “by the end of my first term as president.”
But Obama’s position is hardly secure among Hispanics, who during the primary overwhelmingly supported his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Obama painted himself to the LULAC delegates as a longtime ally of Hispanics, beginning with his days as a community organizer in Chicago and extending to his work as a co-sponsor of immigration reform legislation in the Senate.
In an afternoon conference call, McCain supporter Rep. Lincoln Diaz Balart, R-Fla., said Obama was AWOL during the negotiations in Congress on the immigration reform bill and it is “absurd for him to try to take credit for this issue when he was nowhere to be seen.”
But McCain will have trouble matching Obama on an immigration reform package that will meet Latino approval — namely, one that provides illegals with a path to citizenship, said Cornell University government professor Michael Jones-Correa.
“McCain is in a bind,” Jones-Correa said. “He can’t say what he really believes because he has to keep his Republican base.”
But Jones-Correa said even if McCain can’t garner 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, as President Bush did in 2004, increasing his support over the 2-to-1 lead held by Obama could help him win such states as New Mexico and Colorado.
“All he needs is to shave off a few points,” Jones-Correa said.
