PUEBLO, Colo. – The air is thick with the aroma of dried chiles and the sound of applause as Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper delivers one of his last speeches in this year’s nail-biter gubernatorial election.
His message during his stop at a small Mexican restaurant called Papa Jose’s Union café in Pueblo, Colo.: Pueblo’s votes are needed to keep Democrats like him in office. Both his race against Republican challenger Bob Beauprez and Mark Udall’s battle to retain his Senate seat against Republican Cory Gardner, have been extremely close in the polls.
Several dozen supporters decked out with Hickenlooper buttons on Hickenlooper T-shirts are crowded into the dining room between the dull red tables, surrounded by Mexican wall hangings and brightly lit signs advertising cervezas frias.
It’s no surprise that Hickenlooper wanted to shore up support in Pueblo with three days to go before Election Day. About half of Pueblo’s 108,000 residents are Hispanic or Latino, according to the 2010 Census. As such, conventional wisdom holds that they should be reliable Democratic voters.
But conventional wisdom doesn’t always hold true.
“Pueblo used to be the most influential Democratic voting center in the state,” Hickenlooper said in an interview after his speech, “But over the last 10 or 15 years, it’s changed. The turnout hasn’t been as high as it used to be.”
“This year, turnout (in Pueblo) has been higher than just about anywhere else in the state for early voting. If that stays up, they are going to play a pivotal role in the election.”
But the Democrats aren’t the only ones trying to pivot Latino votes their way. Republicans with eyes toward 2016 and beyond want to be able to swing the swing state toward the R column, and some in the party believe that getting their message out to the Centennial State’s nearly 21 percent Hispanic population is the way to do it.
In this year’s election, Colorado stands out as the major tossup state with a large Hispanic population. When the electoral college comes into play in 2016, however, and the parties need to worry not just about their seats, but a multi-state path to the presidency, Latino communities in states around the country could be in for some serious wooing.
Perhaps the best symbol of Republican inroads into Hispanic Colorado is George Rivera, whose parents emigrated from Mexico. Rivera was elected as the state senator for Colorado’s 3rd District, which includes Pueblo, last year in a special recall election against state Sen. Angela Giron that was part of a backlash over stricter gun control laws in the wake of the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown, Connecticut.
But Rivera is up for election again this year, and he’s facing his rival, House Rep. Leroy Garcia, in a town where Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans.
In a phone interview, Rivera said that Hispanic voters have a lot in common with the GOP – similar attitudes on social issues, the importance of religion and family, and work ethic.
“The Republican party we see as a party of choice,” he said, “The choice to allow people to use their resources and talents for their own benefit.”
It may be the case that Latino voters could be wooed into a relationship with Republicans if the GOP put more effort into outreach. In a poll released in October by Latino voting group Latino Decisions, only 15 percent of Latino voters in Colorado said that the Republican Party is doing a good job reaching out to Latinos, and 17 percent said the party was hostile to Latinos. For the Democrats, 41 percent of Latinos thought the party was doing a good job with outreach, and only 3 percent considered the party hostile.
The same poll shows that while immigration reform is still important to Latino voters, it’s not a monolithic issue – in fact, slightly more Latinos listed job creation and fixing the economy (24 percent each) as their top priorities, more than those who listed immigration reform (23 percent). And in another Latino Decisions poll released in June, 61 percent of Latino voters said they would be open to listening to Republican ideas on other issues if it weren’t for immigration reform.
If Republicans like George Rivera succeed in reaching out to Hispanic voters with conservative ideology, which is possible, or if immigration reform is resolved, which is extremely unlikely, Republicans could make serious inroads with Latinos in states like Colorado. But for now, a Strategies 360 poll shows that Hickenlooper is enjoying a 61 percent to 25 percent lead among Hispanic voters over Republican challenger Bob Beauprez, and the numbers are similar for races all over the state.
One of Hickenlooper’s biggest applause lines at Papa Jose’s came when he told the crowd “Pueblo can decide it.”
If Republicans succeed in making inroads with Hispanic voters, that statement may get more and more true as time goes on.