Getting out the Latino vote
A trio of Latino Vote Project workers is pounding the sidewalks six days a week in a mobilization effort never before seen in Yakima County

by Pat Muir
Yakima Herald-Republic
KRIS HOLLAND/Yakima Herald-Republic

YAKIMA — Getting out the Latino vote in Central Washington takes a lot of bottled water.

Latino Vote Project staffer Ivan Garcia has a couple of bottles in his backpack along with his stacks of Democratic Party door-hangers printed in both English and Spanish. It's a Sunday afternoon, and he'll be walking Yakima's neighborhoods for hours. So even though it's a "cool" 84 degrees, he knows he'll get thirsty.

"We needed it last month, when (the temperature) was in the 100s," Garcia says.

Hot summer afternoons notwithstanding, he and two other full-time Latino Vote Project workers spend four to six hours, six days a week pounding the streets.

Such a well-organized, paid Latino voter mobilization effort is unprecedented in Yakima County, according to state project director Carlos Lugo. The project opened up shop last month in Yakima and the Tri-Cities. It is backed by $95,000.

The goal of the project is to get potential voters registered for November's general election and to ensure they vote.

"We're doing something that hasn't been done before in Washington," Lugo said before the project's official kickoff. "Sending mailers out doesn't work. Phone calls somewhat work. But what is really needed is that personal contact, repeatedly."

Garcia, a 21-year-old who graduated this year from Yakima Valley Community College, is out on this particular day with 14th District state House candidate Vickie Ybarra, a Yakima Democrat.

Working from a list of Latinos who are registered but didn't vote in the last election, they walk a northeast Yakima neighborhood where Mexican music wafts from apartment buildings and people greet each other with "buenos tardes."

Meanwhile, the project's two other paid staffers, 26-year-old Jason Aguilar and 21-year-old Vanessa Sanchez, split off and work two other neighborhoods, using similar targeted lists.

Ybarra and Garcia are joined by project volunteer Felicia Hernández, 23, who is five months pregnant and taking time off from YVCC.

Ybarra, who speaks conversational Spanish but isn't fluent, is happy to have Garcia and Hernández with her.

"It's wonderful to talk directly to voters, to hear their concerns," Ybarra says.

That sort of face-to-face outreach within the Latino community is critical to successful get-out-the-vote campaigns, said Mike Barreto, a University of Washington political science professor who researches political participation of minorities. It has worked in places like Texas and California, which have been about 10 years ahead of Washington in mobilizing Latino voters, he said.

"In every other place where there has been targeted Latino-to-Latino outreach ... that has always had a significant effect on increasing Latino turnout," Barreto said in a telephone interview.

But the effort has to be consistent and sustained, he said. That's one thing Latino Vote Project workers say makes their efforts different than previous Latino-targeted political movements in the Yakima area.

In 2004, the Southwest Voter Education Project targeted Latino voters in Central Washington and registered about 4,000 new voters. Volunteers followed up with phone calls, but repeated in-person contact wasn't a part of the effort.

That's not the case this time around, as Garcia and the other two paid staffers already have been to homes multiple times.

"People already recognize our faces, which is kind of cool," he says.

They register voters, they show voters how to fill out ballots, they check back to see whether the ballots have been returned -- they even deliver ballots to the Yakima County Auditor's Office for people who have them filled out but haven't mailed them yet.

First-time voters can be intimidated by the ballot and the process, Ybarra says, walking from one front porch to the next.

"You've got to fold it here and sign it there and mark it a certain way," she says.

If nothing else, the Latino Vote Project efforts should result in increased participation among people who are registered to vote but haven't cast ballots because they weren't encouraged to or because they were confused by the ballot, Ybarra says.

Yakima County is about 40 percent Hispanic or Latino, according to 2006 Census estimates. That's obviously a significant voting bloc for whichever party can mobilize it. The problem, so far, is that neither really has.

Although there is no concrete data reflecting percentages of Latino election participation, it certainly is lower in Washington than in states like Nevada, California and Texas where studies have shown that Latinos vote at a higher rate than non-Latinos, Barreto said.

"Historically the two parties have ignored the Latino vote, because they felt that they were not great voters," he said. "It created a cycle of neglect."

Successful efforts in other states have disproved that thinking, and now both state parties are beginning to recognize the power of the Latino vote, he said.

Democrats have a built-in advantage in the battle for that vote. According to the 2006 Latino National Survey, which polled 400 Latinos in Washington state about their political preference, 53 percent said Democrat, compared with 22 percent Republican and 25 percent independent.

That result stems from several factors, Barreto said. Latinos associate the Democratic Party with advancing the interests of minority groups through the civil rights movement and farmworker legislation. They also have turned away in droves from the Republican Party because Republicans tend to be seen as more heavy-handed on immigration issues in recent years, he said.

So when Garcia and his fellow Latino Vote Project workers hit the streets in Yakima County, targeting Latino voters, they're confident that the bulk who vote will vote Democratic.

Staffers aren't worried about bringing out voters for the other side.

"Our efforts basically support every Democratic candidate here in the Valley," Garcia says.

It also helps the Democratic Party that its side is the one with the high-profile Latino candidates for this year's election, Barreto said.

In addition to Ybarra, Chris Ramirez is running for another 14th District state House seat and Jesse Farias is running for the District 2 seat on the Yakima County Commission. They all have gone doorbelling with the Latino Vote Project, as has Democratic U.S. House candidate George Fearing, a non-Latino.

"(Latino candidates) have a role in helping to mobilize the community," Barreto said.

Republicans don't have the equivalent of the Democrats' Latino Vote Project, but they aren't conceding the Latino vote either.

Tony Benegas, a West Richland councilman and Washington state chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, said when he talks to individual Latinos, they say their values are conservative and traditional-family oriented.

He points to a 2005 survey by the Latino Coalition and Hispanic Business Roundtable showing that while 45 percent of Latinos polled said they were Democrats, compared with 18 percent Republican and 17 percent independent, only 23 percent considered themselves liberal, compared with 28 percent moderate and 33 conservative.

Like Barreto, Benegas said many Latinos have been scared away from the GOP by the heated conservative rhetoric in the immigration debate. The other side of that story though, is that President Bush was pushing a pragmatic, bipartisan immigration reform plan and has a record of Hispanic appointments unmatched by previous presidents.

Even as a Republican, Benegas said he's pleased with the Latino Vote Project's efforts. Getting people to vote is always a good thing, he said. But he's worried that the Democrats have co-opted what he sees as a Republican value of strong families.

"There needs to be more education about what each party stands for," Benegas said.

But with the Latino population now representing the largest ethnic minority in the United States and still growing, the race for its votes is on.

"No one can deny the Census figures and how important the growing Hispanic population will be to both parties," Benegas said.
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