From Voter Turnout to Building Power Outside the Electoral System

October 29, 2010

The 2010 midterm elections are on Tuesday. This year’s races have been fiery, to say the least. PolitiFact.com, a website which rates the truthfulness of campaign ads, has awarded a record number of Barely True and False ratings to ads across the country. The rhetoric is hot and loud. This week, we’re exploring where things really stand for Latino voters, candidates, and activists.

Our guide to the numbers and the people behind them is Louis DeSipio, an expert in Latino Studies and Political Science at the University of California Irvine. DeSipio has extensively studied how and for whom Latinos vote, and he tells us how Latinos will effect Tuesday’s election and the elections in years to come.

Maria Hinojosa also spent time on the ground in East LA with a group called Innercity Struggle, who have spent this election season trying to register, educate, and motivate Latino voters.

A vintage campaign sign. (Photo: jbcurio on Flickr)

Another keen observer of Latinos and politics is Roberto Lovato. Recently, he’s been feeling the itch to get more involved in activism and advocacy for Latinos. Lovato sees all the trends out there: tea partiers, swelling Republican enthusiasm, Democratic dissatisfaction with the current administration. But what he really wants to know is how Latinos fit into all this; how their concerns can be addressed not just in the short term, but well into the future. He spoke with Maria about this campaign season, and how Latinos can make long-term gains in or out of politics.

A unique character among Latino politicians is San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. Castro is from a family of politicos — his twin brother is in the Texas House, his mother Rosie is a longtime political activist. And he may well be the kind of Latino politician we’ll see more of as the demographics of the U.S. continue to change. He talks with Maria about identity politics and ethnicity.

Maria profiled Mayor Julian Castro for BBC World News America on Monday 1 November. Watch the segment here.

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To many, it seems like every election season just gets odder and odder. This year is no exception. Tea Party Republican Clayton Trotter is running for Congress, seeking to represent Texas’s 20th District. His opponent is incumbent Democrat Charlie Gonzalez. Trotter’s been attacking Gonzalez, saying that Gonzalez doesn’t represent traditional Hispanic values of life and family. (Gonzalez opposes abortion restrictions and the definition of marriage as one man and one woman.) And Trotter’s been billing himself as the “Anglo with the Hispanic heart.” But it gets more interesting–Trotter’s enlisted entertainer and Tea Party activist Pat Boone to appear in a campaign ad.

To find out why, we spoke with Angelo Falcón, President of the National Institute for Latino Policy.

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