Texas Hispanics Face a Tough Choice in Primary

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Texas Hispanics Face a Tough Choice in Primary
By GINGER THOMPSON
Published: February 25, 2008

....Here in the heart of Hispanic Texas, voters like (Rudy) Davila are being pulled hard from both directions. It is hard to interview a Clinton supporter at a coffee shop or taco joint without next running into someone supporting Mr. Obama. A P.T.A. meeting that started with polite applause during the presentation of the bilingual spelling bee awards ended in prickly political debate. Recent polls have found the same trend that foiled Mrs. Clinton in her string of recent losses has begun to play out in Texas. Her double-digit lead over Mr. Obama has plummeted to a virtual tie. Mr. Obama has a significant lead over Mrs. Clinton among blacks and white men. His support among white women is about even with hers. And although she still has an advantage among Latinos — an estimated 25 percent of the electorate and some of her most steadfast supporters — that gap has begun to narrow.

With the Texas primary just over a week away, political pundits are reluctant to predict how things would ultimately play out among Texas’ Latino voters. Still, there is endless hashing over how Mr. Obama has made considerable gains in such a short time with an electorate whose ties to Mrs. Clinton date to 1972, when she registered voters along the border with Mexico in support of George McGovern. But today’s Hispanic voters are a generally younger, more educated and more affluent electorate than they were two decades ago — qualities that make them impervious to Mrs. Clinton’s big-name endorsements.

For Hispanics in South Texas who live along the border, their ties to Mexico are little more than symbolic. Lydia Carrillo of the Southwest Voters Registration and Education Project said that most Hispanics here had been in this country for generations, and that they were just as concerned about issues involving education, the economy and health care as they were about an immigration overhaul. Veterans groups pointed out that Houston and San Antonio had suffered the second- and third-highest numbers of fatalities from the war in Iraq, after New York, so Mr. Obama’s opposition to the war from the beginning resonated strongly here....Other pundits and politicians echoed Mr. Davila, saying heart had less to do with Hispanic voters’ choices than hard-headed calculations about which Democratic candidate had the better chance of winning the White House....

Those who have managed statewide campaigns in Texas said the state had two important dividing lines: the one that marked the border with Mexico and the one marked by Interstate 10 from El Paso through San Antonio to Houston that divides North Texas from the south. North of the interstate are Texas’s prosperous, racially diverse economic capitals. The south is overwhelmingly Hispanic, and poorer, though the region has enjoyed some growth since the North American Free Trade Agreement turned the Rio Grande Valley into one of the most bustling commercial zones in the world. Political analysts said Mrs. Clinton’s base of support had been the south, and they added that she remained stronger than Mr. Obama here. But because of the complicated way Texas selects its presidential nominee — a contest that is part primary and part caucus, and which assigns delegates to state Senate districts according to turnout during the 2004 presidential contest — the regions with the largest numbers of delegates are in the north, where Mr. Obama is expected to receive significant support....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/us/politics/25texas.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print