Lone star state slowing turning blue?

By EUNICE MOSCOSO
Cox News Service

Friday, November 21, 2008

WASHINGTON — It's all in the numbers. If current trends continue and Republicans do not fare better with Latinos, Texas will become a swing state within a few election cycles, political experts say.

Latinos are the fastest growing sector of the electorate and are increasingly trending Democratic.

In the latest election, President-elect Barack Obama won 67 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide, a significant increase for Democrats from 2004, when Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts received about 55 percent of Latino votes.

In Texas, 63 percent of Latinos voted for Obama, according to exit polls. Among young Hispanics, 18 to 29 years old, 67 percent voted Democratic.

Kerry won about half of the Latino vote in Texas in 2004.

Alan Abromowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University who studies party re-alignment, said that Texas could become a swing state "within a decade or so" if the GOP does not improve its standing among Latinos and young people.

Thomas Mann, a Congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that Texas could become a swing state if Latinos maintain their current level of support for Democrats and if young Latinos' embrace of the Democratic party becomes long-lasting.

However, he said it is too early to call the strong Hispanic vote for Obama a permanent shift.

"This will depend on whether Obama succeeds in governing, how he deals with the immigration issue, and whether the Republicans continue to be dominated by restrictionists," Mann said.

Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, a veteran of the Clinton administration, said that Republicans have alienated Latinos largely because of the immigration issue. Rosenberg is the founder and president of NDN, a Democratic think tank that studies immigration and other issues.

He said that Republican rhetoric surrounding recent immigration bills in Congress offended all Hispanics. A major measure that would have given illegal immigrants a path to citizenship failed last year after a revolt from conservatives, who denounced it as an amnesty for lawbreakers.

"If they do that again, it's going to be catastrophic for the Republican Party," he said.

Rosenberg said that Texas could become a swing state as early as 2012 depending on the level of Latino participation and whether the Democratic Party will continue to make investments in the community.

Some Republican strategists and politicians are alarmed by the strong Latino vote for Obama, fearing it could translate into a permanent bloc.

GOP vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, said in recent interviews that losing the Hispanic vote was a major reason Republicans lost the election.

Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, an immigrant from Cuba and former chair of the Republican National Committee, said this week that the GOP "had better figure out how to talk" to Latinos if they want to return to power.

Abromowitz said that Republicans are "trapped by their base" on the immigration issue.

"Any moves to appeal to Hispanic voters by taking a more moderate stance on immigration will meet with strong resistance from the current Republican base, which is overwhelmingly opposed to what they view as 'amnesty,'" he said. "They are caught between a changing electorate and a shrinking conservative base."

This is a major dilemma, experts say, because the Latino population is growing rapidly.

It is expected to triple in size by 2050 and become 29 percent of the population, according to an analysis of Census data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a non-partisan research group in Washington.

Latinos were instrumental in delivering key states to Obama this year, including three that President George W. Bush won in 2004 -- Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

In Florida, a key swing state that Bush won twice, Obama received 57 percent of the Hispanic vote and McCain received 42 percent. In 2004, Bush took 56 percent of the Hispanic vote in Florida.

However, it is unclear whether Latinos voted strongly Democratic this year as a rebuke to Bush and out of economic concerns or whether it is a permanent change in party identification, experts say.