Learning (more) from Nevada

Mon, January 21, 2008 - 11:39 AM

Nevada holds another lesson for us today when it comes to the politics of ethnicity.

Heading into caucuses there, Barack Obama held a prized endorsement of the heavily Latino casino workers union. But Hispanics strongly broke for Clinton on Saturday, according to CNN entrance polls.

Why? Hispanic voting expert Adam J. Segal points to confusion among the rank and file union members.

Segal, who runs the Hispanic Voter Project and The 2050 Group, a public relations firm with an ethnic marketing focus, was at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas in the final days before the caucus. Talking to one of the head groundskeepers, a Mexican-American with dual citizenship, Segal learned that many of the workers had been given cues weeks ago that the union would endorse Clinton.

Then, after Obama won Iowa, Segal says, the union leaders seemed to do a 180 to endorse Obama. Due to the earlier hints of a Clinton endorsement, Segal says the official endorsement could have seemed soft or backfired, as it may have looked like the union simply jumped on a frontrunner-of-the-moment bandwagon.

But there is another reason that Hispanic voters, who will play major roles in Florida and California in the coming weeks, went to Clinton by more than 60 percent.

Simply put, it is relationships. No matter how many people may vote for a candidate who looks like them or a candidate their union endorsed, it is hard to trump true-blue friendships that go beyond political IOUs.

After her Nevada victory, Clinton’s strength with big name Hispanics was front and center in Las Vegas’ Spanish-language newspaper, El Tiempo. There she was with her husband’s former housing secretary Henry Cisneros and her not so new friend, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, among other notable Hispanic leaders.

Viallaraigosa told the New Yorker magazine in early 2007, “I’m very much a relationship person. What kind of people they are is important to me. I make a lot of decisions from the heart. If you want to be president of the United States, you have to appeal to the heart.” The same profile mentioned the LA mayor was surprised by how much Clinton knew about him during their first encounter.

Now among blacks, it’s a different story. Obama won 83 percent of the black vote in Nevada, according to CNN entrance polls. And African-Americans will very much decide who wins the Democrats next contest in South Carolina.

--Neil H. Simon