Obama takes another step in Latino direction
Washington, DC,_ Armed with the knowledge that time waits for no candidate Barack Obama met earlier this week with Congressman Joe Baca and members of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus.
The meeting took place not a day too late as the Democratic camp will jump right into their efforts to move Latinos from Clinton to Obama and hold off seepage to the John McCain camp. The vacuum that exists in Obama’s Latino relationship has shown itself all primary season.
His existing team is expected to work closely with Latino members of congress and new hire Patty Solis Doyle. Former field director Temo Figueroa who moves over to Latino vote director also attended the closed door meeting. Reports are the meeting was cordial with Latino members expressing excitement as well as concern that the campaign spend appropriate resources on wooing Latino voters and that they and other surrogates get the right exposure and visibility in order to be assets to Obama’s effort. There was also some mention of needing to seriously coalesce the Latino experience from across the board, including and especially Hillary Clinton supporters, elected officials from all states and veteran Latino operatives with campaign experience, savvy and GOTV know how. The caucus and the veterans are all needed to move the markers in Obama’s direction. For his part Obama said, “What I emphasized was how important it’s going to be for me to be able to mobilize the Hispanic vote. I’m looking forward to the caucus members’ counsel and advice, and I think we’re going to be unified going forward.” Baca comments included, “He realizes the importance of reaching out to the Hispanic community. He’s reaching out to a lot of us,” All this was done in the aftermath of Obama’s having lost the Hispanic vote to Clinton in every state, for instance California where the former first lady took 70 percent of that demographic as she cruised to an easy victory.
