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Hispanic Advisers Played Key Roles in U.S. Elections

Dec. 5, 2008
Cecilia Figueroa--EFE

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The presidential campaigns for the recent elections engaged in a tireless battle for the most besieged constituency of all time -- the Hispanic vote.

"This campaign has been the most productive in the history of presidential elections and was carried out with absolute integrity," Freddy Balsera, Hispanic communications adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, told Efe.

Latino support that would enable Obama to win the presidency was decisive, given that in the recent elections more than 90 percent of the nation's registered Hispanic voters cast their ballots, according to a survey by Impremedia and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, or NALEO.

Elsewhere, a study by the Pew Hispanic Center showed that 66 percent of Latino voters supported the Democrat Obama, while 32 percent backed the Republican John McCain.

Balsera, founder and managing partner of Balsera Communications in Miami, together with his team, spent hours and nights creating advertising campaigns that exclusively targeted Latino voters.

"We didn't do translations of advertising from English to Spanish. Every piece was done originally for the Latino market," he said.

He also said that several commercials on radio or television had a special touch aimed at the audience in each region.

"In the announcements we adjusted the style of communication depending on the region. For example, we used voices with a Caribbean accent in Florida and with a southwestern accent that was more Mexican to identify with the voters of that area," he said.

Obama himself even spoke Spanish in his commercial "El Sue??o Americano" (The American Dream).

Ads in Spanish were concentrated in battleground states like Colorado, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia and New Mexico.

Latinos represent almost 40 percent of the vote in New Mexico, 14 percent in Florida, 12 percent in Nevada and Colorado.

"This election has changed how the country perceives the Hispanic electorate while giving momentum to the Hispanic community. The great challenge is to use that momentum to seek reforms, make progress and continue establishing that respect," the adviser said.

For her part, Andeliz Castillo, media director for the National Republican Committee who worked on the Hispanic campaigns for McCain, said that her strategies to win the Hispanic vote were successful based on their portrayal of the presidential candidate's integrity and values that they set out to reflect.

"Many Hispanic advertisements dealt with the issues of immigration reform, support for a free trade agreement (with Colombia), the economy, employment, and subjects that Sen. McCain understands well and supports on behalf of the Latino community," she said.

By the same token, she said that the frequent presentations by Republican leaders and politicos on Hispanic networks also made a difference in the presidential campaign.

"We worked a lot with radio commercials in Spanish, always trying to have someone every day on the radio giving interviews and projecting the candidate's message," she said.

She also mentioned the opening of victory centers, tours, events and meetings held in key states where a number of Republican elected officials took part, local leaders of Hispanic communities who supported McCain.

One of these groups was "Latinas por McCain" organized in Virginia and Nevada, where women leaders mobilized to visit stores and businesses and met with businessmen to take the candidate's message to those Hispanic communities.