Analysis: Hispanics, northern NM key for Obama
By BARRY MASSEY AP Political Writer
Article Launched: 09/16/2008 02:32:49 PM MDT


SANTA FE, N.M.—The road to a presidential victory for Democrat Barack Obama leads through the heavily Hispanic areas of northern New Mexico.
Obama stands an excellent chance of winning New Mexico's five electoral votes in the November general election if he carries those historically reliable Democratic counties—such as Rio Arriba and San Miguel counties—by big margins and sparks a better-than-average turnout of Hispanic voters.

That will be part of the mission when Obama visits Espanola on Thursday—the first time he's made a campaign stop north of Santa Fe.

"New Mexico is absolutely critical to our path to victory," Obama's national campaign manager, David Plouffe, said Tuesday. "We think it's one of the Bush states from 2004 that's most likely to flip to Sen. Obama."

In the 2004 presidential race, Democrat John Kerry fell short in Rio Arriba, San Miguel, Mora and Guadalupe counties—mostly rural areas in which Hispanics account for more than 70 percent of the voting age population. Kerry won there but not by the margins that Democrats can achieve. Kerry did much better in Santa Fe and Taos counties, where white, non-Hispanics—a group called often called "Anglos"—helped boost his numbers.
President Bush narrowly carried New Mexico by siphoning off a significant share of Hispanic voters and winning margins of 2-to-1 or more in GOP strongholds in southern, eastern and northwestern parts of the state. Voter turnout averaged 69 percent in the 21 counties that Bush carried. He won 4-to-1 in Lea County, for example, and beat Kerry 3-to-1 in Curry County.

In contrast, Kerry carried Rio Arriba County—home to Espanola—with 65 percent of vote. That's not quite a 2-to-1 margin and only 60 percent of the county's voters cast ballots.

Democrat Bill Richardson ran five percentage points stronger in Rio Arriba County in his 2002 race for governor and turnout was 70 percent. Richardson won re-election four years later with 81 percent of the vote in the county.

"Obama has to regain the Hispanic voting bloc in order to win New Mexico," says Brian Sanderoff, an Albuquerque pollster. "For years the Democrats could count on a high percentage of the Hispanic vote to behave as a voting bloc. In presidential politics, the Democrats have been slipping as of late."

Republican John McCain doesn't have to win the Hispanic vote in New Mexico but needs to make inroads like Bush did four years ago. His campaign has targeted Hispanics, such as in a television ad launched in July. The ad featured remarks from a GOP presidential primary debate in which McCain talked about Hispanics serving in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For Obama, Hispanic voter turnout is critical.

"We've got to get our Hispanics to participate," says House Speaker Ben Lujan, a Santa Fe area Democrat. "We know that for whatever reason that our percentage of getting to the polls is very low."

Plouffe predicts a strong turnout of voters in New Mexico because of what he describes as an unprecedented grass-roots organization and "what we've got is highly enthusiastic supporters, people who are really hungry for a change and realize this is a big election with big stakes."

"We think we can exceed the 2004 presidential turnout in every battleground state on the Democratic side. The question for McCain is he has to not just match Bush's turnout in '04, but he is going to have to grow it too. We think we have got more room to grow in terms of growing the electorate. We spend a lot of time on that," says Plouffe.

----

EDITOR'S NOTE: Barry Massey has covered politics and state government for The Associated Press in New Mexico since 1993.

http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_10479455