This is the first in an occasional series of profiles of individual Latino voters. The profiles are meant to provide a glimpse into the life and politics of a given individual. None of these individuals are meant to be stand-ins for a specific class of Latino voters.

The format is “as told to” whereby the entire article consists of quotations from the person interviewed. This ensures the subject’s voice comes through loud and clear.

Today’s Latino Voter Profile is Javier Barajas, owner of the Lindo Michoacán restaurant in Las Vegas where last week Hillary Clinton held a campaign event. Most of the interview was conducted in Spanish.

As told to CandidatoUSA editor Luis Clemens by Javier Barajas:

“I must have been about 16 when I arrived in Las Vegas in 1976. I was traveling with an uncle of mine and we were planning on going to Indio, California, to pick grapes. We were traveling as illegals. The migra grabbed my uncle. I managed to get away. I got on a bus that was supposed to go to Los Angeles where a cousin was waiting for me.

“I don’t know how, maybe because I was so tired. But the only thing I remember about the bus ride is that I woke up in Las Vegas. The next day I started working at Terrible Herb’s Car Wash. I worked there for three years. I worked mornings at Terrible Herb and nights at Viva Zapata restaurant. I worked some fifteen, sixteen hours a day.

“I progressed from dishwasher to busboy. I eventually became the chef at the restaurant.

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A rival campaign tipped me off to the following statement by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, ”I say we ought to put a hiatus on people who come in
here … if they come from countries that sponsor and harbor terrorists.”

Such a move would presumably end immigration from Cuba, which is on the official State Department list of terrorism sponsors. And that would not sit well with the Cuban-American voters who represent a hefty percentage of likely Florida Republican primary voters. The U.S. government’s existing immigration quota of 20,000 visas a year for Cubans was created in 1994 to stem the dramatic flow of balseros from the island.

Here’s the first Clinton Spanish-language campaign commercial in Nevada.

The translation of the script is my own and not that of the campaign.

“The Voice of the Voiceless”

“Nevada Latinos want a better life for our families.

“This is the moment for our vote to become our voice.

“Let us support our friend Hillary Clinton. She favors universal health insurance and economic policies that will create millions of new jobs. And Hillary has said ‘Enough’ to anti-Hispanic demagoguery.

“Hillary is the voice of the voiceless.

“This Saturday, January 19th at 11am, let’s go out and vote for Hillary in order to have a better life.”

At the very end of the ad, Hillary Clinton says in English “I am Hillary Clinton candidate for president and I approve this message.”

Giuliani, Obama and Romney have all ended their Spanish-language ads actually saying “I approve this message” en español.

The Barack Obama campaign posted on YouTube a new thirty and sixty second Spanish-language television ad targeting Latino voters in Nevada. The thirty-second spot contains a grammatical mistake.

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What do Rudy Giuliani and a Miami grocery store chain have in common? Each is counting on America TeVe and other Spanish-language stations to deliver the goods: Cuban-Americans.

Tuesday marks the start of Rudy Giuliani’s second week of TV advertising in the crucial South Florida Spanish-language television market. Crucial, because whichever Republican presidential candidate draws the most Cuban-Americans to the polls for Florida’s January 29 primary is better positioned to win.

Cuban-Americans living in South Florida vote overwhelmingly Republican in presidential contests and turn out in high numbers. Political strategists say that in past GOP primaries for U.S. senate or governor’s races, when turnout is low elsewhere in the state, Cuban-Americans have comprised from 15 to 20 percent of voters statewide.

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In his autobiography, “Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life,” New Mexico governor Bill Richardson lists what he not so humbly calls “Richardson’s Rules.” One is “Aim big,” another is “Share the credit.” The former marked Richardson’s entrance into the 2008 presidential race and the latter marked his departure.

The man with the outsized appetite for foreign adventure and domestic campaigning (he holds the handshaking title in the “Guiness Book of World Records”) aimed as high as he could while already sitting atop an impressive resume.

He left the race a little under a year after joining it and without having inspired the passion of voters in either Iowa or New Hampshire. Polls did not augur different results in Nevada. Hence, the decision to get out and return to his day job.

During the speech announcing his withdrawal, Richardson thanked each of the Democratic presidential candidates by name and cited their respective achievements. In closing, he said “Gracias. Que Dios los bendiga (Thank you. May God bless you.)” It was a nod in the direction of the Latino voters who, outside his home state, never showed him the love the first major Hispanic presidential candidate hoped to receive. Aside, that is, from a number of high-profile Latino political endorsements such as that of former Clinton Administration Cabinet Secretary Henry Cisneros and Hispanic Republican marketing guru Lionel Sosa.

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Lionel Sosa, the dean of Latino political marketing, has worked on half a dozen Republican presidential campaigns. This time around, Sosa supported the candidacy of New Mexico Democrat Bill Richardson.

Sosa evaluates Richardson’s campaign efforts and discusses who might be the next Latino presidential candidate.

What went wrong? Why didn’t Bill Richardson’s candidacy ignite passions in Iowa and New Hampshire?

Unlike the Republicans that are really not together as to who they want as a nominee, I think the Democrats have a couple of extremely well-known people. We have, of course, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards who was a candidate before. And then Obama who has elicited so much popularity so quickly. So there were three big front-runners and Richardson’s campaign never really got traction. Even though he was the most qualified of them all. When you have three stars of that stature, it is very difficult to put up a fourth star.

Richardson could have raised more money to have reached out to more people because his name awareness was lower than anybody else’s. And when you start off with low name awareness and three stars ahead of you it is extremely difficult to ever catch up.

He never got the support he deserved because there weren’t enough Latinos that knew Richardson was a Latino.

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Former Clinton Administration Immigration and Naturalization Services commissioner Doris Meissner is now a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute. In an interview for this past Monday’s newsletter, Meissner spoke openly about her disappointment with some of the presidential candidates and about what has to be done on the immigration issue. Below is an excerpt of the interview:
Are you surprised by what the candidates are saying about immigration?

I think what I am really sorry about is that the candidates are doing such a poor job of really explaining what some of the choices are that we need to make as a society.

It is particularly regrettable with people like Rudy Giuliani who know this issue very well and who have been in their own political careers in many ways quite progressive on the issue but he is now completely walked away from it. Senator McCain, I think he is being very honest. He is saying ‘I’ve really provided leadership on this issue and I got really pushed down and I got badly defeated, and so I recognize that people are angry and there is going to have to be more enforcement done before we can come back to the bill, to a real solution, but I still believe in the broader solutions that I advocated.’ I mean, that’s being honest, people like Giuliani are not being honest at all.

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Spanish-language and English-language mainstream media coverage of the electoral race and politics is alike but different.

Take for example, this pretty standard article about the New Hampshire primary by Los Angeles-based daily La Opinión – it covers the same ground as dozens of other reports published today. The article is a straightforward account of the political horserace in New Hampshire. But, this other La Opinión item reports there are three Latino elected officials in New Hampshire. Latino voters, understandably, have not figured prominently in coverage by local or national media. This report describes, at some length, Senator John McCain’s stance on immigration and how his event in Concord was picketed by a small number of activists from NumbersUSA holding signs “Stop McCain’s Amnesty.” A search of Google News indicates the picketers didn’t warrant a mention from any English-language newspapers.

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Here’s an interview with Southern New Hampshire University political scientist Ernesto Sagás who talks about the Granite State primary, Super Duper Tuesday and whether it makes sense to talk about Latino voters as a bloc. Below is an excerpt from the interview:

Looking at Iowa and New Hampshire is there any measurable impact of Latino voters?

Not really. The thing about both Iowa and New Hampshire is that these are new frontiers for Latinos. These are not the traditional core of Latino states like the border states, like New York, like Florida. Most of these are new Latinos, new arrivals direct from Latin America.

There’s not much to talk about Latinos in New Hampshire.

Is Nevada the first place where Latino voters will count?

Could be. But, I would place it more in Florida. Nevada, even though it is called Nevada, most of the Latinos are recent arrivals. The other thing is that it is a very low-key election unlike for example Iowa or New Hampshire. I don’t think it is really until Florida where finally we are going to see an impact by Latinos.

Speaking of Nevada and Latinos, Bill Richardson if he is still in the race he could make some kind of a small comeback there. Not only because of the Latinos but because of the fact that he is governor of a neighboring state. He has spent some time campaigning in Nevada, he has name recognition there. It is not entirely due to the Latino vote. I think that Florida will be when we see Latinos coming into the fray.

But on the Democratic side there are no delegates coming out of Florida. Why would there be any impact?

It is more about the headlines. For example, Rudy Giuliani is already pandering to Cuban Americans in South Florida. He has been campaigning heavily with the Latinos.

It is like Iowa, you get only a handful of delegates but it is all about grabbing the headlines.

Looking ahead to Super Duper Tuesday – will the Latino vote have an impact?

It could be a moot point. Maybe by the time we get to Super Duper Tuesday this could have been decided by then. Right now, we have Barack Obama gaining momentum. Hillary has the money to go all the way to Super Duper Tuesday but we’ll have to wait and see.

In some of the states, the Latinos could have an impact. But, again, you see all these headlines “Is This The Year For Latinos?” and you get that every four years. This myth that Latinos represent a homogenous group and they are a cohesive voting bloc. If there is a group that is certainly a cohesive voting bloc it is African Americans who steadily vote upwards of 80 percent for the Democratic Party.

We’re going to have to wait and see. Every four years we tout this label ‘is this the year for Latinos.’ Well, in some states and in some counties yes they make a significant difference.

Particularly in the case of Florida when you talk about Cuban Americans and the Republican vote they are quite a cohesive voting bloc. But, even among Cuban Americans, the old, first-generation is dying off. The second generation they tend to be more heterogeneous when it comes to voting, at least at the state and local level.

I don’t want to get into this kind of labeling that Latinos are going to make a difference.

In terms of this issue of labeling – does it make sense to talk about Latino voters? Nevermind as a bloc but just as a group?

If anything, you can talk about the Cuban American voting bloc in South Florida. Or you can talk about the Puerto Rican vote in New York or the Chicano vote in Los Angeles. When you get more to the micro level than you can start making certain assumptions based on poll data. But just to tout a Latino voting bloc at a nationwide or maybe even a statewide level it doesn’t make any sense.

Latino Democrats heavily prefer Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. Why that gap?

I think it has to do with the Clinton mystique. Among Latino Democrats, the Clintons are seen as being friends of Latinos. There is name recognition. For most Latinos, Barack Obama is Barack Who?