The Associated Press reports that Simon Rosenberg, founder and president of the centrist New Democrat Network says, "John Kerry did not compete adequately for Hispanic votes, period. If we don't reverse the gains that President Bush made, we can forget our hope of being a majority party again."
Rosenberg also complained that "the Kerry campaign and the DNC lacked a national strategy for Hispanics and did not spend enough money on advertising or enough time campaigning in Hispanic communities and did not employ enough people on the get-out-the-vote effort."
Exit polls indicated Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, up from 35 percent in 2000. Kerry won 53 percent, down from 62 percent four years ago for Democrat Al Gore.
I don't think Kerry took the Hispanic vote for granted. In July the Kerry campaign announced it would spend $1 million airing Spanish-language television ads in Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
That ad campaign may have been too little, too late. At the end of April the New York Times reported about concern among minority leaders that Kerry hadn't reached out to the Hispanic community:
"The reality is that we're entering May and the Kerry campaign has no message out there to the Hispanic community nor has there been any inkling of any reach-out effort in any state to the Hispanic electorate, at least with any perceivable sustainable strategy in mind," Alvaro Cifuentes, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee's Hispanic Caucus, said in an e-mail message to party leaders provided by a recipient who insisted on anonymity. "It is no secret that the word of mouth in the Beltway and beyond is not that he does not get it, it is that he does not care."
Separately, in a letter addressed to Mr. Kerry, Raul Yzaguirre, the president of the National Council of La Raza, denounced the "remarkable and unacceptable absence of Latinos in your campaign."
"Relegating all of your minority staff to the important but limited role of outreach only reinforces perceptions that your campaign views Hispanics as a voting constituency to be mobilized, but not as experts to be consulted in shaping policy," wrote Mr. Yzaguirre, whose group is among the oldest, largest and most influential representing Hispanics.
Maybe Kerry should have selected New Mexico's Hispanic Governor Richardson to be his running mate.
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