Thread: Study dissects Salazars' winning ways, Brothers downplay His

http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/local/ ... 06,00.html

Study dissects Salazars' winning ways
Brothers downplay Hispanic ethnicity, CU professors note

By Fernando Quintero, Rocky Mountain News
May 30, 2005

How did Democrats Ken and John Salazar, Hispanic brothers from the San Luis Valley, win tightly contested elections in a state that went for President Bush by more than 100,000 votes?

According to preliminary findings of new study by two University of Colorado political scientists, the Salazars each ran a different kind of campaign - "a de-racialized campaign," as professor Anna Sampaio put it.

The campaigns "de-emphasized their standing as Latino candidates. They reconstructed themselves as farmers and businessmen," said Sampaio, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado at Denver.

The Salazars were able to galvanize Hispanic voters while appealing to a large number of non-Hispanics, just as Antonio Villaraigosa did in Los Angeles recently to become the city's first Hispanic mayor in more than a century.

In Villaraigosa's case, he brought to his side a multiracial coalition of voters. For the Salazars, it was the conversion of a large number of conservative, mostly white voters, say the study's authors.

Ken Salazar beat his Republican opponent in the U.S. Senate race, brewery executive Pete Coors, with more than 52 percent of the vote. John Salazar defeated former state natural resources director Greg Walcher, of Palisade, for the 3rd Congressional District seat that represents all or part of 29 counties in western and south-central Colorado. He won by about 13,000 votes - a considerable margin in a district in which Republicans hold a narrow plurality.

Sampaio and co-author Eric Gonzales-Juenke, a political scientist at CU-Boulder, looked at the percent of the vote for each candidate to see how Hispanic and non-Hispanic voters played a role in the Salazars' elections.

"Look at how Ken represented himself. Nothing in his bio said he is Latino. This was also reflected in the issues he presented positions on. He packages himself as a more mainstream candidate. John Salazar does the same thing: 'Send a farmer to Congress,' not send a Latino farmer to Congress. What becomes salient is his role as a farmer," said Sampaio.

As further proof of Ken Salazar's ethnic-neutral campaign, Sampaio points to his campaign Web site. His stance on immigration - an inherently Hispanic issue - is the last bulleted item on a page reached only by clicking "Other Issues" on his homepage.

John Salazar's campaign Web site outlines his position on themes such as improving public education, the war in Iraq and protecting Colorado's water.

"John Salazar succeeded because he connected with the rural values of his district - strong family bonds, deep faith, hard work - and he never turned his back on his farm roots," said Jim Merlino, the congressman's former campaign manager.

"For Ken's campaign, we worked hard to put together an urban-suburban-rural coalition," said Jim Carpenter, Ken Salazar's former campaign manager. "In politics, you go where the numbers are. While Colorado has seen a significant increase in Latino voters, and the Latino vote is a very important piece of the pie, they still represent about 10 percent of the voter population."

As with Villaraigosa, Ken Salazar didn't play up or downplay his Hispanic background, "it was just there," said Rodolfo de la Garza, a political scientist at Columbia University.

De la Garza is editor of a book published after every major election, which will include the findings of Sampaio and Gonzales-Juenke in addition to those of other Hispanic political scientists nationwide.

He pointed to U.S. Census figures released Thursday that showed that while turnout among young voters in Colorado nearly tripled in last year's presidential election, less than 30 percent of Hispanic adults in the state went to the polls in November. Many were unable to vote because their weren't U.S. citizens or not registered.

"Ken comes from a state where there are relatively few Latino voters. He would have lost much more than he had to gain by emphasizing his Latino background," said de la Garza. "The size of the population dictates that he not run a campaign emphasizing his Latino-ness."

Sampaio and Gonzales-Juenke believe the race-neutral approach to political campaigns establishes a new model for Hispanic candidates running for office in areas with modest numbers of registered Hispanic voters.

But Louis Desipio, associate professor of political science at University of California-Irvine who followed Villaraigosa's race, said this strategy is nothing new.

"African-American candidates have been doing this for 20 years," he said. Desipio pointed to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, as "a prime recent example."

"He is clearly African-American, but he appealed to nonblack voters with his success both in the Democratic primary and the general election."

While redistricting strategies have helped minority candidates win where their race or ethnicity is overwhelmingly represented, those who want to move beyond mayoral and statewide offices increasingly will have to build multiethnic coalitions of support.

"The coalition-building, de-racialized campaign isn't a new model," said de la Garza. "It's the new political reality."

We voters can be such suckers. Look at what we conservative Republicans got when we elected and then re-elected Bush. He would rather chase tin horn tyrants a half a world away in the name of national security than to guard our own borders. In a word, pathetic. We have to be careful. We need to start giving these policitians a litmus test they cannot side step.

Ask them if they are for securing our borders and deporting all illegal aliens. If they waffle, look somewhere else - assuming there is somewhere else to look!

We voters can be such suckers. Look at what we conservative Republicans got when we elected and then re-elected Bush

I understand how you feel SCARECROW, but the truth is that if Kerry had gotten into the WH we'd be in the WORLD COURT by now and would have had an INCREASE in MONEY GIVEN TO THE UN............not to mention our troops being tried internationally. He'd have been bending backwards to help Iran destroy us along with China and would have put the Israeli/Palestinian situation in even more grave danger.

Much worse would have been our lot. We'd have lost even more ground.

Sadly, we've NOT had a decent presidential candidate in my lifetime.

2ndamendsis, you nailed it. We voters were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. I am just not sure which we got.

I am a deeply traditional conservative Republican, not one of these so called neo-cons, that parades as a conservative but are really big government globalists (like Bush). What bothers me about Bush is that he parades as one of us, but then goes on to suck up to the illegals, create some of the biggest spending programs (medicare prescription payment) and generally warm up to the vilest of our enemies, such as Saudi Arabia and Mexico. Saddam was at least "what you see is what you get." The Saudis and the Mexicans have one hand extended in friendship and the other in our wallets, or with a knife at our backs.

The ironic thing is that Kerry would probably have had to be more cautious in his dealings with the illegal lobby. He would have been lining himself up for re-election and he would not have wanted the heat from the right. Mr. Bush doesn't have that problem. He is not facing re-election and he is the darling of some on the right (Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh). So he has cover and will act accordingly.

Unfortunately, in this election we could not win. Now if Pat Buchanan had been the Rep Candidate.....