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“I am disappointed with both the Democratic and Republican parties because both failed to make an effort to do anything to further the cause of serious immigration reform,” says Romero.
On April 18, 2012, the Ohio Democrats “Latinos for Obama” held a media phone conference at which Anita López, Lucas County Auditor, was one of the speakers.
“We know that Latinos will be a deciding factor in this year’s election” and that this election will have a long-standing impact on Latinos, said López, who is widely rumored to be seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor of Toledo.
She stressed the need to increase the number of Latino volunteers in order to win in November.
López told the phone conference audience that the effort “begins today” and would highlight Latinos hosting house parties as well as a major voter registration effort planned for the weekend of April 28-29.
However, neither López nor the two following speakers provided specific details on the events.
“We need to spread the word by talking to friends, neighbors and families. These conversations can lead us to victory in November and empower us for years to come,” added López.
She was followed by Isabel Framer, the founder of Language Access Consultants and a member of the State Justice Institute. She, too, is an OCHLA commissioner.
“The Latino community has a lot on the line in this election. We need to protect the progress made for the Latino community,” Framer told listeners.
The final speaker was Jason Riveiro, the former director of the Ohio League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). He spoke about a door-to-door campaign that would begin that weekend, but did not provide specifics.
A follow-up request did result in information on that evening’s meeting at the Sofia Quintero Arts and Cultural Center in Toledo as well as events in Lorain and Cleveland.
However, one of the announced purposes of the 20-minute phone opportunity was heralded as being a media opportunity for the speakers who “will announce key members of Ohio’s Latino Council for the president’s re-elect” (SIC.)
But as of press time on April 23, spokesmen for the group still were not ready to release the list of names or details on the state-wide voter registration events.
The state-wide telephone conference was held on the same day that President Barack Obama was campaigning at the Lorain County Community College, but the two events were not coordinated, said Jessica Kershaw, Ohio Press Secretary for Obama for America – Ohio.
Obama then proceeded to Michigan for two private fundraising events that evening, one in Dearborn and the other in the posh Detroit suburb of Bingham Farms at the home of Denise Ilitch, before flying back to Washington, DC.
The next day, it was GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s turn to address an audience in Lorain, speaking at the closed National Gypsum plant to illustrate what he called the failure of Obama’s vision.
The importance of Ohio as a swing state could also be enormously impacted by the choice of Ohio’s U.S. Senator Robert Portman as Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate on the Republican ticket. Even while Cuban-born U.S. Senator Mario Rubio of Florida was appearing with Romney at a Pennsylvania campaign event, commentators on MSNBC and other cable news shows were discussing the Portman option as being the most likely scenario to unfold.
Adding to Portman’s impressive credentials is the fact that he is fluent in Spanish.
According to an article last week in the Boston Herald, the 2010 exit polls showed Republicans with 38 percent of the Latino vote “which is enough for a national majority since they carried whites by a record 60 to 37 percent.”
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