NCLR chief: Latino voters face ‘dilemma’ in 2012

By Jordan Fabian
Channel: Politics

Latino voters face a “dilemma” over which party to support in the 2012 presidential elections, Janet Murguia, President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), said on Monday.

Murguia, who leads the nation’s largest Latino advocacy group, said that members of her group are frustrated with President Obama over the lack of progress on immigration reform, especially his refusal to use an executive order to bypass Congress and implements elements of reform.

“We know that it his his administration that is the key source of that pain,” she told reporters about Latinos who know people who have been deported. “He can use his authority to address this, somehow, and he ought to do it.”

But she also said that Republican presidential candidates have not made Latino voters a priority, depriving them of a viable alternative to Obama. Murguia said that all GOP presidential candidates invited to attend the NCLR’s annual conference declined to do so.

“That sends a signal that we are not a priority,” she said. “To not even show up and to look at the other option tied to that … I think that’s something that we’re very disappointed in.”

A conference organizer said that the organization invited former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), former U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)

Romney’s campaign said they don’t have an invitation on file. Pawlenty’s campaign said it had scheduling conflicts. Gingrich’s campaign said it has no record of an invitation. Huntsman’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite Latino voters’s frustration, they don’t appear ready to abandon Obama and the Democrats just yet.

According to a straw poll of 547 conference attendees, 78 percent said they will vote for Obama if the election was today.

Some political observers estimate that the Republican nominee would need to secure nearly 40 percent of the Latino vote, the number President George W. Bush won in 2004, to succeed in the 2012 elections.

By comparison, 67 percent voted for Obama over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president in 2008.

“I think there is a growing dilemma .. for many Latino voters. That is they are not satisfied that the president has not kept his promise” and the Republicans’s policy on immigration is “alarming,” said Murguia.

“We’ll have an opportunity to judge the president on his record and compare that to the Republican candidate.”