Page 10A
ELECTION 2016
East Oregonian
Saturday, August 6, 2016
DIVIDED AMERICA
Texas Hispanic voting bloc largely untapped
By WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press
HOUSTON — Diana
Villenas begins her pitch
in English, but switches to
Spanish if she gets blank
stares, which happens often.
It’s a tough sell in any
language.
“Are you registered to
vote?” asks the 21-year-old
environmental studies student
at St. Thomas University in
Houston. “Do you want to
be?”
“No, gracias,” the bearded
man in the black baseball
cap says. Another ambling
by with a cellphone to his
ear shakes his head, as does
a guy in a black-felt cowboy
hat and a woman wearing a
yellow blouse. The man in
an American lag T-shirt even
turns her down.
As brassy Banda music
blares from a nearby stage at
a sprawling Hispanic festival
adjacent to the Houston
Texans’ dome, Villenas and
other volunteers with Mi
Familia Vota, a nonpartisan
nonproit which encourages
Latino civic engagement,
exhort possible voters. They
ind most aren’t eligible to vote
because they’ve not yet turned
18 or are recent immigrants
who aren’t U.S. citizens.
Many others, though,
simply aren’t interested.
Texas is home to 10.2
million Hispanics, 19 percent
of the country’s Latino popu-
lation. Excluding noncitizens
and those under 18, about 5
million Texas Hispanics will
AP Photo/Eric Gay
Ranjana Martinez shows off her buttons supporting Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton during a Democratic National Convention watch party in
San Antonio on July 26. According to the 2015 U.S. Census, Texas is home to 19
percent of America’s entire Hispanic population.
be eligible to vote in the 2016
presidential election, but less
than half may register and
fewer still are likely to cast
ballots.
Consider
the
2014
midterm elections, when
less than 2.3 million Texas
Hispanics reported in U.S.
Census surveys that they
were registered to vote —
about 46 percent of the nearly
4.9 million that were eligible
and about 300,000 fewer than
reported being registered in
2012. Turnout in 2014 was
worse than 2012: 22 percent
of eligible Texas Hispanics
voted compared to 39 percent.
Nationwide, 48 percent of
Hispanics reported voting in
2012, which declined to 27
percent in 2014.
That untapped electorate
helps explain how, even
though a majority of the
state’s residents will be
Hispanic by around 2030,
Texas has grown increasingly
conservative. No Democrat
has won statewide ofice here
since 1994, the country’s
longest political losing streak.
Some Hispanics support
Texas conservative causes,
such as religious values
and opposing abortion, but
overall, Latinos statewide still
lean strongly Democratic, as
do their counterparts else-
where. Higher Latino turnout
won’t turn this red state blue
in November’s presidential
election, but given how much
the Hispanic population
is booming, even small
improvements could make a
big difference in the future.
The trick will be pulling that
off.
“We should know that
demography is not destiny,”
said Henry Munoz III, a long-
time San Antonio community
organizer who now serves
as the Democratic Party’s
National Finance Committee
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clin-
ton speaks at a rally at
Adams City High School
in Commerce City, Colo.
on Wednesday.
journalists.
The questions-and-an-
swer session Friday at a
joint meeting of the National
Association of Black Jour-
nalists and National Associ-
ation of Hispanic Journalists
marked the irst time she’s
talked about how that polit-
ical problem could impact
her future administration.
Clinton attempted to
“clarify and explain” a recent
statement on “Fox News
Sunday” that FBI Director
James Comey had said her
answers about her emails
practices were “truthful.”
“I may have short-cir-
cuited and for that I will try
to clarify,” she said. Comey
was speaking solely about
her responses in a closed-
door FBI interview, and not
her public comments on the
issue, which have included
inconsistencies.
of Texas, which leads voter
registration drives along
the Texas-Mexico border,
cautions that it might not
translate to higher turnout.
“There is frustration,”
Morales said. “We would just
like for more of the popula-
tion to come out to vote and
they’re just not.”
Because Texas is so
solidly Republican, neither
Trump
nor
Democrat
Hillary Clinton will focus
on it for November’s elec-
tion, meaning there’ll likely
be little excitement and
potentially fewer people
at the polls. Still, Crystal
Zermeno, the director of
special projects for the
Democratic ield organi-
zation Texas Organizing
Project, said Hispanic voter
outreach hasn’t been a top
priority for decades.
“Very little is spent on
the ield, going out there and
knocking on doors,” Zermeno
said. “And you have to have
real, authentic conversations
with people. Simply showing
up isn’t enough.”
A 2014 Gallup poll found
that Texas Hispanics prefer
Democrats to Republicans by
a 19 percentage-point margin.
Nationwide,
Democrats
enjoy a more comfortable 30
percentage-point advantage.
So, the state Republican
Party has staffers focused on
boosting minority turnout;
Ted Cruz became the irst
Hispanic elected to the U.S.
Senate from Texas in 2012,
despite his support for strict
immigration policies.
Trump attacks Clinton to build support
Clinton admits trust issues, blames GOP
WASHINGTON (AP)
— Hillary Clinton acknowl-
edged Friday the challenge
she’d face leading a country
where most Americans don’t
trust her, saying she takes
“seriously” the work she
must do to build conidence
in her character.
But the Democratic
presidential nominee also
claimed that a broad electoral
victory over Donald Trump
in November would give her
the capital needed to push
her plans through Congress
with Republican support
and appeared to blame her
political opponents for her
low approval ratings.
Clinton
pointed
to
the high ratings she won
as secretary of state and
as a senator from New
York, arguing that voters
like her more when she’s
working than when she’s
campaigning — something
she attributed to campaign
attacks on her character.
“Were 67 percent of the
people in New York wrong?
Were 66 percent of the
American public wrong?”
Clinton said. “Just maybe,
when I’m actually running
for a job, there is a real
beneit to those on the other
side with trying to stir up as
much trouble as possible.”
Clinton’s
trustworthi-
ness has emerged as her
biggest weakness in the fall
campaign, one worsened by
her responses to questions
about her use of private
emails servers as secretary
of state and her reluctance to
take regular questions from
Chair.
Hispanic voting habits are
like church attendance, said
Mario Salinas, Mi Familia
Vota’s deputy Texas director.
“If you grow up in a house
where mom and dad go to
church, you’ll go too as an
adult. If they don’t, you prob-
ably won’t,” Salinas said. “If
parents don’t vote, the kids
won’t.”
Texas ranks near the
bottom nationally in total
voter turnout, due in part to a
heavily-under-30 population,
which tends to vote less than
elder counterparts.
Count Lesley Resendiz,
a 20-year-old from Houston,
among them. She is regis-
tered and said she knows how
important it is for Hispanics
to embrace voting, but that
her work schedule kept her
from doing so in the March
primary.
“A lot of people I know
use social media to talk about
politics,” Resendiz said.
“But they don’t vote because
it’s not as easy as just going
online.”
Across the country, natu-
ralization applications are
up 14 percent in the last six
months of 2015 compared
with the same period the
previous year. That has
fueled speculation that many
Hispanics are anxious to
vote against Donald Trump,
fearful of the Republican
nominee’s harsh immigration
rhetoric.
But Alberto Morales,
project coordinator for the
Advocacy Alliance Center
DES MOINES, Iowa
(AP) — Donald Trump
faced an all-too-clear sign
of GOP divisions Friday in
Midwestern battlegrounds,
embraced by party leaders
in one state but ignored in
another. He unleashed a
scathing attack on Hillary
Clinton’s character as he
tried to overcome deepening
concerns about his presiden-
tial candidacy.
Iowa’s Republican Gov.
Terry Branstad appeared with
the celebrity businessman at
an afternoon rally, his third
appearance in the swing state
over the past two weeks. But
in neighboring Wisconsin,
a state Trump insists he can
win, the state’s best-known
Republicans said they were
too busy to attend an evening
event.
House Speaker Paul Ryan
cited a scheduling conlict,
while Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker said he’d attend an
all-you-can-eat
spaghetti
dinner instead of appearing
with his party’s standard
bearer.
“Welcome to Wisconsin,
Mr. Trump, but let’s get
something straight,” Wiscon-
sin’s Assembly Speaker
Robin Vos wrote in an open
letter to his GOP colleagues
ahead of Trump’s arrival.
“We are Ryan Republicans
here in Wisconsin, not
Trump Republicans.”
Clinton has claimed
she never sent or received
anything marked classiied.
In reviewing the FBI’s
investigation, Comey said
seven e-mail chains dealt
with matters that were
“that were classiied at the
Top Secret/Special Access
Program level when they
were sent and received.”
During the short ques-
tion-and-answer
session,
Clinton also detailed some of
her plans should she win the
White House, promising to
make an overhaul of Amer-
ica’s immigration system a
“clear, high priority.”
She argued that a broad
victory, one that included
Democrats winning control
of the Senate and tightening
their margin in the House,
would put pressure on
Republicans to come along.
“There’s nothing like
winning to change minds,”
she said. “I view the political
landscape as increasingly
favorable to us making this
happen.”
That logic would depend
on Republicans changing
the political calculus they’ve
made over the past eight
years. Even when President
Barack Obama held major-
ities in both the Senate and
House during his irst term,
he was still unable to ind
widespread
Republican
support for his plans.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Republican presidential
candidate Donald Trump
speaks during a cam-
paign rally at Jacksonville
Veterans Memorial Arena,
Wednesday in Jackson-
ville, Fla.
The tale of two states
underscores
Trump’s
mounting challenges during
one of the most tumultuous
weeks of his unorthodox
campaign. He has skipped
from one misstep to the next,
sparking a fresh wave of
Republican defections among
longtime party loyalists who
refuse to support their presi-
dential nominee — including
some who even publicly
support for Democrat Clinton.
Eager to change their
minds, Trump unleashed a
slew of insults at Clinton
during his Iowa rally.
“If
Hillary
Clinton
becomes president,” he said,
“you will have really, in my
opinion, the destruction of
this country from within.”
Trump called his Demo-
cratic opponent “a dangerous
liar,” “an unbalanced person,”
“pretty close to unhinged,”
“totally unit to lead,” and
lacking “the judgment,
temperament and moral
character to lead the country.”
Yet Trump’s own gaffes
have largely overshadowed
Clinton’s problems as the
Democrats work to recover
from a bruising primary
election season.
Complicating the Repub-
lican Party’s 2016 challenge
are fresh signs the nation’s
economy is strengthening
under a Democratic presi-
dent.
The Labor Department
reported Friday that U.S.
employers added a healthy
255,000 jobs in July, a sign
of conidence that could
point to a resilient economy.
Trump’s approach to
national security came under
ire Friday as well, with
former CIA Director Michael
Morell
contending
the
Republican nominee would
make “a poor, even dangerous
commander in chief.”
Morell, outlining his
views in The New York
Times, also questioned
Trump’s unusual praise of
Russian President Vladimir
Putin
“Country Scenes &
Children’s Dreams”
August 17-21, 2016
FAIR: www.morrowcountyoregon.com/fair
Wednesday, Aug. 17 th
Dr. Solar Magic Show
Kid Fun Zone
The Junebugs
RODEO: www.morrowcountyoregon.com/fair/rodeo
Thursday, Aug. 18 th
Friday, Aug. 19 th
Dr. Solar Magic Show Dr. Solar Magic Show
Kid Fun Zone
Old Time Fiddlers
Ice Cream Social
Talent Show
FFA Floral Design
Murray's Wine Tasting
Featuring:
Joe Lindsay
Nate Bosford
4-H Food Contest
4-H/FFA Small Animal
Showmanship
Watermelon Contest
Pet Show for the
Public
4-H Fashion Show
RDO Tractor Pull
OTPR NPRA SLACK
THANK YOU TO ALL
OUR SPONSORS!
Kid Fun Zone
OMSI
4-H/FFA
Showmanship
Master Showmanship
OTPR/NPRA Rodeo
After Rodeo Band:
Jessie Leigh
Saturday, Aug. 20 th
Dr. Solar Magic Show
Kid Fun Zone
Parade
FFA Awards
Buyers Luncheon
Livestock Auction
OTPR/NPRA Rodeo
After Rodeo Band:
Jessie Leigh
Sunday, Aug. 21 st
All Exhibits Released
Morrow County Rodeo
www.facebook.com/oregontrailprorodeo
www.facebook.com/morrowcountyfairheppneroregon