Obama Woos Folks With "Funny Names"

A pro-Obama political action committee (PAC) just released a raft of television ads in New Mexico, a critical battleground state where one-in-three voters is Latino.

As Feet in 2 Worlds' Martina Guzman reported in her recent feature on WNYC New York Public Radio, the campaigns are increasingly targeting their multimillion dollar Latino voter outreach efforts to ever-smaller slivers of the electorate. Guzman noted that the McCain campaign is wooing older Latino votes, while the Obama campaign is focusing on young Latino voters via social-networking sites like Facebook and Mi Gente and ads aired on YouTube and the Spanish-language broadcast giant Univision.

The latest ad, produced in identical English and Spanish versions, focuses on establishing a connection between the spectrum of mostly young people featured on the screen and Obama, noting, "For Barack Obama, it doesn't matter if your name is hard to pronounce, or where you're from... what's important is working hard and getting a good education...."

The Obama campaign ad running in New Mexico also responds to market research (albeit most of it done by Univision or its partner Nielsen Media Research) that found 77% of KMEX (Los Angeles’ Univision outlet) and WXTV (the Univision outlet in the New York metropolitan area) viewers are bilingual.

Young or old, Univision clearly feels its viewers are hungry for more election-related information: the network announced yesterday that it will ‘deliver the most extensive multiplatform election coverage in the network’s history’, with special election-related segments and live daily reports from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

Eleven million Latinos are expected to vote in this year's presidential election (60% more than in the 2004 elections), and 3 million of them are young voters.

Read more at Feet In 2 Worlds, where this post originally appeared.

Comments

[UrbanInterloper]

Obama is much smarter than McCain is, to be targeting younger Latinos rather than older ones. Why? Because Latinos are on average considerably younger than other Americans. From the U.S. Census Bureau:

"The Hispanic population in 2007 had a median age of 27.6, compared with the population as a whole at 36.6. Almost 34 percent of the Hispanic population was younger than 18, compared with 25 percent of the total population­."

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/011910.html

[rosal]

As a Hispanic I am very pround to support O. He always had show respect for the Hispanic population, even when he was an organizer in Chicago, so this is not just pandering at the McNinehouses style. Is McFence going to tell Hispanics how he is going to protect the borders from all those Mexicans? Not to mention the fence that he likes so much and that also would protects us from "them" . This kind of rethoric paints Hispanics not as hard working people looking for a way to feed their children, but as monsters that should be avoided in this country.
And before every righty jumps all over the place, I know there are laws that should be enforced, just don't demonize people that comes with the same hopes millions have done for the last 300 years.

[Kwaayesnama]

My name is Kwaayesnama (Baby Eagle Girl) and this Arizona resident is definitely supporting Obama. Why? Let me tell you! Without question it is his lack of support for our state in Washington. McCain’s call to fame is that he is the only representative in Washington never to request any earmarks for his home state. What does that prove? To me it shows that in McCain’s mind Arizona is so wealthy that we do not need any assistance from Washington. It seems he is happy to see all the tax dollars that we send to DC go to other states. Wake up John McCain! Arizona has Indian Reservations with unemployment over 60%. We have beautiful rural areas that would greatly benefit from an increase in tourism. McCain’s lack of concern for Arizona shows that when John and Cindy fly over our state in their private plane that they do not pay attention to the people that live outside of Scottsdale. Let’s see if in November the citizens of Arizona will send him a message and not vote for him.

[barackobama4prez]

I love that he can speak fluent spanish.

[tds1273]

Hmm, I can think of another Demcorat with a funny name that has been on some lists recently..­..

Oh how I hope...

[tds1273]

*Democrat