Will Latinos Continue Moving Democratic?

By Roberto Lovato, Public Eye. Posted April 3, 2007.

Will Latinos keep turning away from the Right, furthering the momentum witnessed in last year's massive marches and during the off-year elections?

After last year's elections, Lionel Sosa watched the returns and saw more than 30 years of his life's work endangered. Sosa, the advertising executive who, along with close ally, Karl Rove ("we've been good friends a long, long time"), engineered the GOP's historic advance among Latinos in the 2004 elections, had warned party leaders of the consequences of the anti-immigrant policies of certain of its members.

Latino support for Republicans rose from 21 percent in 1996, to 31 percent in 2000, to between 40 to 44 percent in 2004 (the number is still being debated). In 2006, after the final results were tallied, less than 29 percent of Latinos voted Republican, and Sosa publicly "I told you so'd" the GOP with comments like, "We as a party got the spanking we needed." The much-vaunted rise of the Latino Right had reached, at the very least, a pause.