EthnicMajority

(Washington Post) Once thought to have a potential liability in appealing to Hispanics, Mitt Romney appears to have overcome his doubters.

One of Romney’s more remarkable turnarounds in the Florida primary between 2008 and 2012 was among the state’s many Hispanic voters. While he increased his vote share overall by 12 points, from 31 percent to 43 percent, he increased his performance among Hispanics by 40, from 14 percent in 2008 to 54 percent on Tuesday, according to exit polls.

That’s a pretty huge improvement, but how much does it mean going forward?

In reality, Romney’s tiny share of the Hispanic vote in 2008 seemed to be at least partially about who he was running against, versus any issues Hispanics had with him.

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(Huffington Post) The Republican Party is beefing up its minority outreach nationwide and preparing to put its rising Latino stars on the campaign trail amid concerns that tough immigration rhetoric in the presidential primary is taking on an increasingly anti-Hispanic tone.

But immigrant-rights groups and some political watchers say the damage may be irreversible. They argue that the GOP has severely hampered itself as it looks to woo the critical Latino voting bloc that could decide who wins key states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida next fall.

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(Boston Globe) President Obama is well positioned to repeat his strong performance with Hispanic voters one year before the 2012 election, according to a new Univision News/Latino Decisions poll.

In head-to-head matchups with the top three GOP presidential candidates, Obama holds substantial leads that exceed a two-to-one margin in every case. Latino voters prefer Obama 67 percent to 24 percent over Mitt Romney, 65 percent to 22 percent over Herman Cain, and 68 percent to 21 percent over Rick Perry.

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(Washington Post) Four years ago in Iowa, Republican caucus-goers chose illegal immigration as the most important issue facing the country. The issue of how to deal with more than 10 million unauthorized immigrants is not playing a central role in the 2012 GOP race. But fresh numbers from the Pew Hispanic Center reveal that Republicans have made little progress since 2008 in courting a fast-growing Hispanic voting bloc, two-thirds of whom voted for Barack Obama.

In their basic political party identification – the continental plates of American politics – 67 percent of Hispanics identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with 20 percent who lean toward Republicans. The 47-point Democratic advantage is larger than at any point in more than a decade of polls, including 2008, when 26 percent of Hispanics sided with the Republican Party. As we noted Thursday, Obama leads Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney by 68 to 23 percent among Hispanic voters in a hypothetical general election match-up.

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(Examiner.com) A survey released Wednesday, December 28 by Pew Hispanic Center shows that Latinos disapprove how President Obama has handled the deportation of illegal immigrants. However,  the poll also shows that they would vote to re-elect him.

According to Pew, deportations under Obama reached record levels, and rose to an annual average of nearly 400,000 since 2009; double the average of George W. Bush’s first term and 30% higher than his second term.

The record deportations came after president Obama promised an immigration reform and stating in an address in front of La Raza National Council that “communities are terrorize by ICE’s immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies,” when he was a candidate.

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(USAToday) A record number of Asian Americans are running for Congress next year, reflecting population gains and a growing sense of the need to flex political muscle.

Republican Ranjit "Ricky" Gill has already outraised Democratic incumbent Rep. Jerry McNerney in California's newly configured 9th District. In Illinois, two Democrats — Raja Krishnamoorthi and Tammy Duckworth — are vying in the new 8th District. And two current Asian-American officeholders — U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and state Rep. William Tong of Connecticut, both Democrats — are running for U.S. Senate seats.

In all, at least 19 Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) candidates have declared their bids for Congress so far in the 2012 election cycle, up from eight candidates in 2010.

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(The Hill) Democrats are counting on enthusiastic support from Hispanics to propel them to victory one year from now, even though a lack of progress on immigration reform under President Obama and increasingly harsh rhetoric from Republicans has left many Hispanics disenchanted with both parties.

Increasingly, no party or candidate with an eye toward Washington can afford not to appeal to this fastest-growing voter bloc in the country. Hispanics supported Obama by a two-to-one margin in the 2008 election over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), then set a record for midterm voter turnout in 2010 when 6.6 million Hispanics showed up to the polls, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Obama remains much more popular with Hispanics than he does with the overall population. A poll released Nov. 8 by Univision/Latino Decisions showed 48 percent of Americans overall approved of his job performance; among Hispanics, it’s 66 percent.

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(AP) Jeff Adachi says he grew up hearing the stories of his Japanese-American family's internment during World War II.

"They lost everything. But they taught me not to be bitter, to get an education and to stand up for what's right," Adachi, San Francisco's public defender, writes on the website devoted to his campaign for the city's mayor.

He's one of six Asian-Americans candidates who are drawing on their life stories of immigration, discrimination and empowerment as they try to become the first Asian-American elected mayor in the city's history.

San Francisco already has an Asian-American mayor in Ed Lee, who was appointed in January. But the Nov. 8 election is being seen as an historic moment in a city that has the largest percentage of Asian-Americans in the continental United States and boasts the nation's oldest Chinatown.

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(Hispanic Ohio, Ruben Navarrette) Latinos in the United States have been betting on the numbers – their numbers.

In the last three decades, I’ve heard politicos, academics, activists and others boast that a swelling population would eventually bring the Latino community power and respect.

They include President Barack Obama, who just last month told a group of Latino online journalists gathered at the White House that he was confident that he’d see a competitive Hispanic candidate running for president during his lifetime.

“Just look at the demographics,” Obama said. “With numbers comes political power.”

Not necessarily, Mr. President.

The assumption has been that, at some point, the Latino population would become so large and its influence on everything from business to sports to food to pop culture would be so profound that it would be impossible to ignore.

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(USAToday) As vice president of the Pocono Republican Hispanic Association, Friedman says she constantly battles a stigma that Republicans dislike Hispanics, and tries to show them how the party's ideals of self-reliance, limited government and family values line up with their views.

That's why Friedman cringes when she tunes in to Republican presidential debates, where the only mention of Hispanics is through the candidates' harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration, making her job of recruiting Hispanics that much harder.

"People don't even have electric fences around their homes," said Friedman, referring to a comment by Republican presidential contender Herman Cain that he would electrify a U.S.-Mexico border fence — a comment he would later call a joke. "They're all making comments and suggestions from a point of view that's very different from the Hispanic community. That's precisely why they need Hispanics who can help them with that."

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