May 22, 2005: Headlines: Figures: COS - Dominican Republic: Politics: Congress: Hispanic Issues: MSNBC: Chris Dodd calls to congratulate Antonio Villaraigosa, the newly elected mayor of Los Angeles. John Kerry's campaign botched its Hispanic outreach, according to many accounts. Latino operatives complained that the campaign leadership marginalized and undermined them at every turn.

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Dominican Republic: RPCV Chris Dodd (Dominican Republic) : RPCV Chris Dodd: Archived Stories: May 22, 2005: Headlines: Figures: COS - Dominican Republic: Politics: Congress: Hispanic Issues: MSNBC: Chris Dodd calls to congratulate Antonio Villaraigosa, the newly elected mayor of Los Angeles. John Kerry's campaign botched its Hispanic outreach, according to many accounts. Latino operatives complained that the campaign leadership marginalized and undermined them at every turn.

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-245-37.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.245.37) on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 5:14 pm: Edit Post

Chris Dodd calls to congratulate Antonio Villaraigosa, the newly elected mayor of Los Angeles. John Kerry's campaign botched its Hispanic outreach, according to many accounts. Latino operatives complained that the campaign leadership marginalized and undermined them at every turn.

Chris Dodd calls to congratulate Antonio Villaraigosa, the newly elected mayor of Los Angeles. John Kerry's campaign botched its Hispanic outreach, according to many accounts. Latino operatives complained that the campaign leadership marginalized and undermined them at every turn.

Chris Dodd calls to congratulate Antonio Villaraigosa, the newly elected mayor of Los Angeles. John Kerry's campaign botched its Hispanic outreach, according to many accounts. Latino operatives complained that the campaign leadership marginalized and undermined them at every turn.

A Latin Power Surge
A new mayor in L.A. A decisive showing in '04. Latinos are making their mark on politics as never before. Get used to it.
Villaraigosa on the campaign trail
Gilles Mingasson / Getty Images for Newsweek
Villaraigosa on the campaign trail

By Arian Campo-Flores and Howard Fineman
Newsweek

[Excerpt]

May 30 issue - Antonio Villaraigosa's cell phone was trilling incessantly. Every Democrat in the nation, it seemed, wanted a piece of the newly elected mayor of Los Angeles, the first Latino to win the office in 133 years. John Kerry phoned to congratulate him, as did John Edwards, Howard Dean, Al Gore and Sen. Chris Dodd. Driving to city hall last Friday as he spoke by phone with a news-week reporter, Villaraigosa interrupted the interview to field yet another call on a different phone. "Yes, I would like to speak to Senator Clinton," he said. "Can I call you back?" he told the reporter. Afterward, Villaraigosa recounted his exchange with Hillary: "She said that she and President Clinton were just elated with my victory," and "if they could be helpful in any way in the coming weeks and months," they were eager to do so. Villaraigosa said he had responded with a few admiring words of his own. She was "an example of what I need to do as mayor of the city of Los Angeles," he had told her. "Not get so caught up in all of the national attention and focus on my job."

Good luck. The stream of calls may well build into a deluge. Dashing and charismatic, with street smarts bred in the barrio, Villaraigosa accomplished what Democrats dream of doing nationwide: he energized Latino voters to turn out for him at historic levels and stitched together the sort of multiracial coalition that has often eluded less-gifted politicians. Though they won the Hispanic vote last November, Democrats lost ground to Republicans for the second straight presidential-election cycle. President George W. Bush captured roughly 40 percent (the exact figure remains in dispute) of the Hispanic vote, compared with 35 percent in 2000 and Bob Dole's 21 percent in 1996. For the Democrats, the set-back came in just the year that Latino voters, long considered a sleeping giant, stirred from their slumber. With turnout increasing from about 6 million in 2000 to an estimated 8 million last year, the Hispanic vote has become the El Dorado of American elections. To remain viable as a party, Democrats need to win Latinos back. At stake is nothing less than control of the presidency and Congress. If the GOP maintains its current share of the Latino vote, says Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network, "then the Democrats will never be the majority party again in our lifetimes."

How did things become so dire for the Democrats? For starters, John Kerry's campaign botched its Hispanic outreach, according to many accounts. Latino operatives complained that the campaign leadership marginalized and undermined them at every turn. The leadership's assumption, according to Paul Rivera, a senior political adviser on the campaign: that Latino votes would break down roughly as they did in 2000, as a Democracy Corps poll last July wrongly suggested. The Hispanic team struggled constantly for resources, the operatives say, and assurances of ad buys in battleground states often went unfulfilled, keeping Kerry off the Spanish-language airwaves for days at a time. "If the Kerry campaign had won Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico," all Latino-rich states, says Tom Castro, the campaign's deputy national finance chair, "John Kerry would be president right now."

Over at the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters, where Latino outreach was embraced zealously, a different world order prevailed. "We were sitting at the big kids' table," says Frank Guerra, a consultant on the national media team. He and Lionel Sosa—a Hispanic marketing guru and veteran of six presidential campaigns—joined weekly conference calls with campaign strategists and chimed in freely with suggestions for Hispanic ads and even general-market ones. A master of the softly lit spot saluting Hispanic heritage and patriotism, Sosa built his ads around a consistent theme: "Nos conocemos" ("We know each other"). As he puts it, "We have a great leader, a man of his word, a man that truly is close to us." But Sosa also cut attack ads, an infrequent tactic in Hispanic political marketing. For one series of spots, he dispatched a cameraman to a Latino neighborhood within miles of Kerry's Beacon Hill home in Boston. "Have you ever seen him here?" the interviewer asked people on the street. "Has he been to any fiesta?" (He hadn't.)

With Karl Rove, a direct-mail devotee, at the helm, Republicans tailored messages to particular segments of the Latino electorate—a strategy they hope will keep winning over converts on the road to 2008. They targeted first-generation Hispanics with Spanish-language ads and second- and third-generation Latinos with English-language spots. "The day of advertising simply in Spanish to reach the Hispanic voter is dead," says Guerra. The campaign also tweaked some messages to appeal to particular nationalities clustered in different regions—like Cuban-Americans in Miami or Mexican-Americans in the Southwest—using radio announcers who could summon an array of accents and local idioms. "You don't dare use one accent in the wrong place," says Blaise Underwood, a grass-roots organizer for the campaign.





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May 7, 2005: This Week's Top Stories Date: May 7 2005 No: 583 May 7, 2005: This Week's Top Stories
"Peace Corps Online" on recess until May 21 7 May
Carol Bellamy taking the reins at World Learning 7 May
Gopal Khanna appointed White House CFO 7 May
Clare Bastable named Conservationist of the Year 7 May
Director Gaddi Vasquez visits PCVs in Bulgaria 5 May
Abe Pena sets up scholarship fund 5 May
Peace Corps closes recruiting sites 4 May
Hill pessimistic over Korean nuclear program 4 May
Leslie Hawke says PC should split into two organizations 4 May
Peace Corps helps students find themselves 3 May
Kevin Griffith's Tsunami Assistance Project collects 50k 3 May
Tim Wright studied Quechua at UCLA 2 May
Doyle not worried about competition 2 May
Dodd discusses President's Social Security plan 1 May
Randy Mager works in Blue Moon Safaris 1 May
PCVs safe in Togo after disputed elections 30 Apr
Michael Sells teaches Islamic History and Literature 28 Apr

May 7, 2005:  Special Events Date: May 7 2005 No: 582 May 7, 2005: Special Events
"Iowa in Ghana" on exhibit in Waterloo through June 30
"American Taboo" author Phil Weiss in Maryland on June 18
Leland Foerster opens photo exhibition at Cal State
RPCV Writers scholarship in Baltimore - deadline June 1
Gary Edwards' music performed in Idaho on May 24
RPCVs: Post your stories or press releases here for inclusion next week.

Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000  strong Date: April 2 2005 No: 543 Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000 strong
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Story Source: MSNBC

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Figures; COS - Dominican Republic; Politics; Congress; Hispanic Issues

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