Beyond the Barrio: Latinos in the 2004 Elections

4. Emerging Pattern or Unique Event? The Power of the Nonracial Campaign in Colorado

131 Chapter Four Emerging Pattern or Unique Event? The Power of the Nonracial Campaign in Colorado ER I C GONZALEZ JUENKE A ND A NNA CHRISTINA SAMPAIO In the end, it came down to two brothers from Colorado’s San Luis Valley. After all the talk of a tight presidential race, the power of the first time voters, 527 groups, Amendment 36, voter intimidation, and voter fraud, the story of the 2004 election in Colorado concerned two Latino farmers earning historic victories on Election Day. Ken Salazar and his older brother, John, became the first Latino senator and U.S. Representative, respectively, to be elected in the state of Colorado.1 That these victories took place in Colorado and not in states such as New Mexico or California that have larger bases of Latino voters and long records of electing Latinos to Congress creates new questions for those who study Latino politics. The answers to these questions may uncover the beginning of a new pattern in Latino politics, or they may simply reveal a blip on the screen, a unique event of no long-term consequence to Latinos in the United States. 132 Eric Gonzalez Juenke and Anna Christina Sampaio This chapter targets a number of puzzles regarding the condition of Latino politics in Colorado in 2004. The most intriguing question surrounds the ability of Ken and John Salazar, both Democrats, to win tightly contested elections in a moderately conservative state that supported George Bush by 9 percentage points (145,000 votes) in 2000. To be sure, John Kerry and the Democrats made some gains in the state, losing to Bush by only 5 percentage points (100,000 votes),2 but further analysis of the results reveals that Ken Salazar outgained Kerry (his statewide ticket partner) in sixty-two of Colorado’s sixty-four counties . This feat required the Salazars to run campaigns that differed from the typical Latino Democrat, campaigns that we label “nonracial.” Turning the tables on (or borrowing from) the Republican playbook to skim Latino voters from the Democrats, these candidates were able to appeal to Latino voters while converting a large number of nonLatinos . The successes of these campaigns, we argue, speak to some of the fundamental issues in Latino politics in the twenty-first century, making the Salazars a metaphor for the strategic fluidity of race and ethnicity in a changing national environment. Is the nonracial campaign the best way for Latinos to achieve descriptive representation in the new century? More specifically, is this the best strategy for electing Latinos to national and statewide seats in Republican-dominated areas? If so, what impact will these Latino elites have on policy? Are Latino voter preferences changing, and what does this mean for the two major parties at the national level? COLORADO LATINOS AND COLORADO POLITICS: ETHNICITY AND INFLUENCE It has been difficult to measure a consistent Latino impact in Colorado during the most recent national elections (Hero 1996; Hero and Jaramillo 2005; Hero, Jaramillo, and Halprin 1999). On the one hand, Latinos are a substantial part of Colorado’s fast-growing population. They represent about 17 percent of the total population (735,601 of 4,301,261 in 2000; U.S. Census Bureau 2000) and were responsible for about 31 percent of the population growth in the state from 1990 to 2000.3 Prior to 2004, however, their status as the state’s largest non- Emerging Pattern or Unique Event? 133 white population had not been translated into significant political in- fluence in statewide elections. True enough, Hero and Jaramillo (2005) predict a greater future role for Latino voters in their analysis of the 2000 elections. The authors demonstrated that greater Democratic outreach to Latinos may have played a role in flipping the state senate to the Democratic Party (Hero and Jaramillo 2005). Beyond this, however , the authors found that the majority of Colorado Latinos in 2000 had a great deal of potential but very little influence. Data from the Current Population Survey (CPS 2005) present a fairly clear picture of why Latinos in 2004 failed to turn their growing numbers into elite influence. U.S. citizenship continues to play a substantial role in dampening Latino influence. Whereas 98 percent of adult whites and 92 percent of adult blacks in Colorado are U.S. citizens , only 63 percent of Latinos who are eighteen or older are citizens...