Hillary Clinton’s campaign intensified its already aggressive outreach to Northern Virginia Hispanics ahead of today’s hotly contested presidential primary, hoping to drive turnout among a voter bloc believed to favor the New York senator.
The campaign on Monday enlisted two Latina congresswomen to rally support at the Babylon Futbol Cafe, a soccer-themed sports bar in Falls Church, and this weekend rolled out dozens of prominent Hispanic supporters. Her Latino backers have also been doing door to door campaigning and working phone banks across the region.
Clinton has spent more time courting the community than her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, said Michel Zajur, president of the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, who nevertheless doesn’t believe “any one candidate has the Hispanic vote locked up.”
The bulk of Virginia’s Hispanic population is concentrated in Northern Virginia, and, according to Clinton’s campaign, makes up only about 4 percent of the state’s voter base. Virginia’s much larger number of black voters is expected to help carry Obama to victory not only in the commonwealth, but in primaries in Maryland and the District today.
Rita Aguilar, co-chairwoman of Clinton’s Virginia Hispanic Leadership Council, said the community is attracted to the senator through her focus on issues like education, health care and immigration, but also because she can address the “hate mongering” of local governments cracking down on illegal immigrants.
Clinton, however, risked upsetting Hispanic voters by replacing campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, whose parents emigrated from Mexico, following a series of losses over the weekend.
George Mason University political science professor Toni Travis doubted that the Hispanic population is large enough to swing the primary for Clinton. To win, she said Clinton must pull strongly in the rural south and southwest portions of the state. Those areas are overwhelmingly white. Other groups, too, could have a greater influence, she said.
“It still could be white women, who are working women, educated women up here, who could tip the state,” Travis said. “That may be the unknown.”
