Claudia Peschiutta
BURBANK -- Local political candidates are looking for a little
"ayuda."
The support of Latino voters could be a deciding factor in the
November election, experts say, and office-seekers are hoping to tap into
the power of their numbers with Spanish-speaking volunteers, bilingual
mailers and targeted advertising.
The United Farm Workers is also seeking out Latinos in the area.
The union recently started a campaign to register eligible Latino
voters in the 21st State Senate District, which stretches from Los
Angeles to the San Gabriel Mountains and includes the several political
seats that represent Burbank. Union officials believe eligible Latino
voters in the district may number up to 100,000.
For those involved in the closely contested race between Rep. James
Rogan (R-Burbank and state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) for the 27th
Congressional District seat, Latino voters are a major concern.
"We think the Latino vote is going to be extremely critical," said Tim
Rosales, deputy campaign manager for Rogan. "They're going to have a
significant amount of power in this election."
The Rogan campaign said there are 41,582 registered Latino voters in
the congressional district. The Schiff campaign placed the number at
36,257.
But both camps' figures show that Democrats outnumber Republicans
among the area's Latino voters by about 3-to-1.
The Rogan campaign plans to target Latinos by adding a
Spanish-language section to its Web site, sending Spanish-speaking
volunteers out for door-to-door appeals and placing ads in
Spanish-language publications.
Parke Skelton, manager of the Schiff campaign, said a lot of work will
be done in the Latino community, but most of it will be in English
because few of those voters are predominantly Spanish-speaking.
Though there is a lot of diversity among Latino voters, the majority
vote Democrat, said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of
United Latin American Citizens, an advocacy group based in Washington,
D.C.
He attributed the trend to Republican support of measures such as
Propositions 227 and 187, voter-approved initiatives that sought to end
bilingual education and keep illegal immigrants from receiving public
services.
"I don't think Latinos are going to forget that any time soon," Wilkes
said.
Schiff said he opposed both 227 and 187 and instead worked on
legislation that would have allowed individual school districts to decide
how to move toward English-language immersion and prevented employers
