OLYMPIC GAMES: Do Latinos give US an edge, or just an excuse to gripe?

Over the course of the upcoming year, U.S. officials are going to be touting Chicago in their attempts to bring the 2016 summer Olympic Games to this country, and one of the factors they are using is the city’s multi-ethnic composition.

Specifically, they’re touting the fact that there’s so many Latinos in this city, and the figure will only go up.

OF COURSE, THAT argument quickly led to a side debate among those people who like to post anonymous comments on the Internet – is having a large Latino population something we ought to be proud of?

People interested in this debate ought to check out our sister weblog, The South Chicagoan, for more (http://www.southchicagoan.blogspot.com/) on these issues.


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Pilsen is anything but fashionable

My news chuckle for the day came from a New York Times account of the Pilsen neighborhood and Chicago’s other Hispanic influences. Specifically, I find humorous the reference in the story’s lede to Pilsen being the “fashionable Latino neighborhood.”

Trust me when I tell you that any person of Latin American ethnic background who chooses to live in a Spanish-oriented neighborhood (In reality, we are scattered across the Chicago area in all types of communities) is not the least bit concerned with being “fashionable.”

AS FOR THE artsy types who in recent years have moved there because of the perception of cheap rent (it’s nowhere near as cheap as it used to be a couple of decades ago), many of them probably view the Mexican orientation of Pilsen as a drawback overcome by its close proximity (about a 15-minute elevated train ride) to downtown Chicago.

Anyway, here’s the link (http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/travel/29next.html) to the story, which is an interesting account of a continuously evolving neighborhood continuing to evolve.

Seriously, Pilsen is a one-time Bohemian community (Did you think a bunch of crazy Mexicanos named their neighborhood for the one-time capital of West Bohemia?) that throughout the years has been home to just about every eastern European ethnicity when they were immigrants.

Now, it is a neighborhood oriented to newcomers from Mexico.

THE REAL QUESTION is to wonder if the neighborhood will retain a Spanish-speaking flavor, or will it continue to evolve with some new immigrant group? Or will those artists come in, price everything out of range of lower-income Latinos, and turn the neighborhood into an artsy community.

In short, will they turn it into something truly fashionable? And does that make “fashionable” synonymous with “dreadful?”

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Where have you gone Mayor Daley? Hispanics turn their eyes to you

It is encouraging to see the mayors of several of the largest cities in this country cooperating with a project to try to get the potential Latino voter bloc to actually show up at the polls on Election Day and cast ballots.

Univision Communications (which in Chicago has WGBO-TV, Ch. 66 as their affiliate) announced Tuesday it is organizing its “Ya es Hora (It’s Time) ad campaign, with help from the chief executives of Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco.

It is a noble effort, but there’s a question I have to ask – “Where’s Mayor Daley?”

Officials said they picked the mayors of cities with significant Hispanic populations. Certainly, Chicago qualifies on that count.

We are the city where roughly one of every six residents is specifically of Mexican ethnic background. More than one-quarter of the city’s people are Latino, and the growth in that sector is strong enough that by 2020, Chicago is expected to be a city of roughly one-third Latino, one-third black and one-third white backgrounds.

So what’s the story, Richard M.? Did you get overlooked, or did you blow off an invitation to participate in this project. I hope it’s not the latter, because the Latino voter bloc is a growing one. You probably are “Mayor for Life” – unless you start disrespecting the Hispanic population.

It would be sad if your days in politics came to an end because you couldn’t fully appreciate the changes in demographics of your home city.

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Obama overtakes Clinton (It's about time!)

The presidential backers of Hillary R. Clinton want to think that her dream of working in the Oval Office remains alive because of her recent victories in West Virginia and Kentucky – simply put, she kicked Barack Obama’s butt in those two Appalachian states.

Yet a look at the big picture (which is what the presidency is really all about) shows that it is the Obama camp that is gaining in support, which explains why the bulk of super-delegates across the country are finally making up their minds to back Barack when they travel to Denver for the Democratic National Convention in late August.

OBAMA AND CLINTON did the expected on Tuesday – she took Kentucky by almost as big a margin of victory as her 41 percent lead in West Virginia, while Obama appeared to have won the vote-by-mail Democratic primary in Oregon.

But the more interesting results may have come early in the day when the Gallup Organization (which admittedly is the same group that had us thinking Thomas Dewey would be our president in the 1948 election) released its latest results.

After showing earlier this week that Obama had gone from 49 percent of the Democratic vote and a slim 4 percent lead over Clinton at the beginning of May, the group showed Obama with a 16 percent lead and 55 percent of the Democratic vote (with only 39 percent staying with Clinton).

How was that shift possible?

AT LEAST ONE factor should have been expected. The Tuesday results showed 51 percent of Latino voters say they will back Obama, with only 44 percent supporting Clinton.

This is the first poll showing Obama taking a majority of the Latino vote, although previous polls (and common sense observations) have indicated that a significant portion of the Hispanic voter bloc resents being used as a piñata by Republican partisans wishing to score political points with social conservatives.

They had indicated a preference for a Democrat as president, regardless of who receives the party’s nomination. Republican John McCain has a long fight ahead of him if he wants to gain any significant support from Hispanic people.

Obama now supposedly has the lead (who knows how reliable any poll really is?) among people who never went to college (47 percent to 46 percent), women as a whole (49 percent to 46 percent) and people who live in the eastern U.S. (52 percent to 43 percent).

OBAMA REMAINS THE overwhelming favorite among African-American people, but the latest survey shows Clinton cannot claim to be the favorite of white voters (the two are tied at 47 percent apiece).

In fact, there’s really only one group that is remaining loyal to Camp Clinton – women 50 or older. She gets 52 percent of their support, according to Gallup. That, however, is a decline from the 55 percent she got just two weeks ago from those same older women who remember firsthand the fight for equality.

If anything, what these figures really mean is that a majority of the people who plan to vote and are not hostile to the concept of a Democrat as president are accepting the concept that Barack Obama has gained a slight majority of support nationwide, and they are coming around to the idea of voting for him.

It could mean that to Democrats, the so-called scandals that show Obama to be out-of-touch with U.S. society as a whole (retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright, one-time Weatherman-turned-educator Bill Ayers, his Ivy League educational background) don’t amount to much.

IT COULD ALSO mean that the people to whom these “issues” are of significance are people who likely are more conservative than the norm and more than likely were going to wind up voting for a Republican in the Nov. 4 elections. Obama never had their votes, so what did he really lose?

The one potential loss remains the continued support of older women, many of whom legitimately are upset that the notion of a first female president of the United States never turned Hillary Clinton into a symbolic gesture the way being potentially the first African-American president (even though he’s really bi-racial) helped enhance Obama’s image as a political “rock star.”

I can’t envision a lot of the women who consider themselves Democrats are going to turn around and back McCain for president. These women are among the base of people who desperately want the Republicans and anything that can be associated with George W. Bush out of the White House.

But could they “sit out” this election cycle? Anything is possible, and with this election likely to be as close as any election can be (a lot of people who won’t say anything in public will walk into that voting booth on Nov. 4 and suddenly realize they can’t support a black man for president), Obama needs every vote he can get.

HE IS GOING to have to reach out to gain the support of women in the coming weeks, and he had better go about showing some respect to Hillary Clinton (no, vice president for Hillary would be an insult, she deserves something better), and the political pontificators Tuesday night found traces of Obama reaching out to all people in his premature “victory” speech in Des Moines, Iowa.

There had better not be anything that resembles an act of political retribution against her, and she probably will have to receive something resembling a prominent cabinet post or a leadership spot in the U.S. Senate’s Democratic caucus.

But for those hard-core Hillary-ites who will argue that the potential loss of older women due to an Obama candidacy is enough reason to justify having the super-delegates give her the nomination instead, take this into account.

How would the African-American voter bloc (which usually gives about 90 percent of its support to Democratic presidential candidates, no matter which airhead the party has managed to come up with in recent years) respond to seeing their overwhelming preference rejected – not by voters, but by party bigwigs in a blatant political maneuver?

WHAT MAKES ANYONE think there wouldn’t be a massive sit-out by black voters if Hillary Clinton were the nominee? Even a Clinton/McCain political fight would be a close one, and the loss of a voter bloc as significant as the African-American one would be enough to cost Clinton the general election.

Democrats this year came up with at least two quality candidates (four, if one wants to go back a few months and count John Edwards and Bill Richardson) who ran in what is quite possibly the most competitive primary election of our lifetimes.

But once there is a nominee, that candidate has to show he can reach out to all people (or at least all who are not openly hostile – no one expects Obama to get the enthusiastic support of the ‘religious right’).

It’s called compromise, and it is a part of life (even though certain conservatives believe that it is what is wrong with modern-day electoral politics). A candidate who cannot compromise and reach a consensus on issues deserves to lose a general election because, in all likelihood, he would not be able to govern effectively.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Take a look for yourself at the Gallup Organization results that show (http://www.gallup.com/poll/107407/Obama-Surge-Fairly-BroadBased.aspx) the U.S. voters shifting support to Barack Obama.

It’s all about the delegate counts these days, and Obama is expected to be the winner in that aspect (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-campaign21-2008may21,0,3985203.story) in Tuesday’s elections in Oregon and Kentucky.

Race remains an issue in this campaign (even if you prefer to think that people who remind you of that fact are, “playing the race card”). Who else would seriously think a t-shirt comparing Obama to the children’s storybook monkey Curious George (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/race/2008/05/is-this-curious.html) is humorous?

What does Richardson give to Obama?

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s greatest support to the Barack Obama presidential campaign will come in the weeks following the Democratic convention in August. He could be the key to swaying the Hispanic vote to give Obama a chance come November.

For those interested in knowing more, details on this issue can be found in a commentary at The South Chicagoan (http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/), the Chicago Argus’ sister weblog.

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"Hispanic Hoosiers" who will visit New York are also representing Chicago Latinos

When Puerto Rican officials in New York City honor Indiana this summer, they are going to expose what has always been the state’s paradox.

In theory, Indiana’s primary city is also its capital city – Indianapolis ought to be the mecca of that rare breed of human being that willingly calls itself, “Hoosiers.” Yet the engine that in some ways provides what little significance Indiana offers comes from the northwest counties.

YOU KNOW, THE area on the South Side surrounding the Calumet River in Illinois that swings east across State Line Road to encompass a bi-state section known locally as the Calumet Region (the Region, for short).

The cynic in me would say the only part of Indiana that matters is the portion of the Chicago area that spills over the state line into Lake and Porter counties. With nearly 20 percent of the state’s overall population of 6.31 million, the area would be a hefty city in and of itself – if only the people of those counties had ever incorporated themselves into one municipality, rather than splitting themselves up into several small cities and towns.

The fact that Lake and Porter counties (Hammond, Gary and Valparaiso, for those who are more comfortable referring to cities instead of counties) are an extension of the Chicago area means, among other things, that the bulk of any Latino population in Indiana is to be found there.

Scenes like this woman wearing a dress in a Puerto Rican flag motif during the 2005 parade in New York are likely to be repeated in this year's parade June 8. Photograph provided by Puerto Rican Day Parade.

So when officials organizing the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York (it’s actually a several-days long series of events honoring Boricuan culture) decided to pay tribute to the state of Indiana as part of this year’s festivities, it turns out that the bulk of the delegation that will represent the state is really a batch of Chicago-area people.

THE PUERTO RICAN Parade and Cultural Organization of Northwest Indiana is taking the lead in organizing the state’s delegation, which will participate in the New York parade on June 8, then return to Indiana for their own parade this summer on July 20.

In a sense, New York gets to be a rehearsal for the Indiana version.

Personally, my first reaction to learning of the heavy Chicago-area presence to the Hoosier delegation for a Puerto Rican parade was to wonder why any Mexicans would be willing to participate.

Northwest Indiana’s Hispanic community is still predominantly Mexican-oriented and centered around East Chicago, Ind., where Mexican immigrants who decades ago worked in Chicago South Side and Gary, Ind., steel mills turned to the Illinois-Indiana border town for a place to find affordable housing.

THE TOWN REMAINS a hotbed for Latinos because it is a place where both Español y English are spoken. These days, 51.6 percent of the town’s total population of 31,366 people identify themselves as Hispanic.

Like many other aspects of life, Hispanic Hoosiers are becoming both larger and more diverse. One can no longer presume that the Spanish-speaking person who maintains an address in Indiana comes from places like Jalisco or Michoacan.

He could just as easily have his ties to San Juan and have concerns about whether his native island should someday be a state or remain a commonwealth (only the most delusional of Puerto Ricans seriously believe independence is the way to go).

In the Calumet Region, the Puerto Rican community became big enough to warrant its own group in 1996, and the local parade became an annual summer event shortly thereafter.

OTHER TOWNS IN Lake County, Ind., also have some Spanish-speaking populations, and the total is 13.9 percent Latino of the 494,202 total people who live there (almost 10 percent of the state’s population is in one county).

The state tribute is a regular part of the annual parade in New York. Although this is the first time Indiana was chosen, each year a state is singled out by parade organizers as a way of showing that Puerto Rican people are not restricted purely to a Spanish-speaking barrio in New York.

They’re everywhere.

That’s a good thing. All people need to realize the Latino population is going to be a significant part of the United States. Instead of trying to figure out how to deport it (that wouldn’t work for Puerto Ricans, since they are U.S. citizens by birth), we need to celebrate its contributions to the American Way of life.

AND IT IS not just inner city neighborhoods where Spanish is becoming an accepted second language. Even places like Indiana (which was once a hotbed for Ku Klux Klan activity outside of the South) are seeing increases in Latino populations.

Although the Latino populations in Indiana made up only 4.8 percent of the overall state as of 2006, that figure likely is obsolete. Between 1999 and 2004, the number of Hispanic people living in Marion County (Indianapolis and its suburbs) more than tripled from just over 13,500 to 47,000.

How accurate that figure is remains uncertain. Part of the problem is the fact that Latino populations can be hard to count in that some elements of the society aren’t particularly interested in being accounted for (in the past, many European ethnicities experienced the same dilemma). Indiana officials themselves concede that the official U.S. Census Bureau count of 214,000 Hispanic Hoosiers in 2000 is too low. They say 242,518 is probably a more honest figure.

But despite the growth (a nearly 350 percent boost in five years is tremendous), there’s no denying that the heart of the Hoosier Hispanic community is in the Calumet Region, where officials estimate there are just under 68,700 Latinos in Lake County, Ind., alone – about 30 percent of the state’s total.

THAT IS WHY it will be largely a Chicago-area contingent of people representing the Land of Quayle come parade time in New York City.

It will be interesting to see the Boricuan community as they represent both their home state and their regional home. Just because they live on the “wrong” side of State Line Road does not mean we should deny them their place among the areas that, when put together, comprise the Chicago metropolitan area.

State borders are not always absolute demarcations. Consider Illinois, where the St. Louis area crosses the Mississippi River to include Madison and St. Clair counties. Even outside of municipalities like Alton, Belleville and Brooklyn (the Illinois town, not the New York borough), there are life-long Illinois residents who associate themselves with the Missouri city rather than our own glorious metropolis.

Places like Gary, Ind., and East St. Louis, Ill., have always struck me as carbon copies of each other, and not just because both have seen better days in decades past. Both are small cities that have to look across a state line (in the case of Gary, they also have to squint through pollution caused by still-operating steel mills) to see the focal point of their metro existence.

IT ALSO WILL be good to see a Chicago-area presence in the New York Puerto Rican parade, which should not be thought of as just a day for the hired help to inconvenience the rest of us with their partying.

It is a day to celebrate yet another culture that is merging into the overall picture that makes up the modern-day American Way of life.

In that sense, the Puerto Rican Parade in New York (and similar events held across the country, including June 14 in Chicago) is a day when we can all be honorary Puerto Ricans.

It’s just like St. Patrick’s Day, only we don’t have to slosh our way through all that disgusting green-dyed beer.

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What point would there be to a parade if there weren't a few pretty ladies wearing sashes, tiaras and form-fitting gowns, such as these girls who participated in the 2006 parade. Photograph provided by Puerto Rican Day Parade.

EDITOR’S NOTES: Puerto Rican activists in the Indiana portion of the Chicago area have their own cultural festivities (http://www.officialpuertoricanparade.com/) scheduled for this summer.

“Hoosier” and “Hispanic” are not mutually exclusive terms anymore. The Latino population (http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/newsitem.asp?id=16567) in Indiana is rapidly rising.

Indiana state officials concede (http://www.in.gov/ichla/conference/population.html/) their Latino count is off by a few tens of thousands of people.

For those whose only knowledge of the Puerto Rican Day parade is the “Seinfeld” episode where Kramer wound up stomping all over a Puerto Rican flag to try to put out a fire, the event (http://www.nationalpuertoricandayparade.org/index.html) is much more involved than a single parade.

Obama needs strong debate performance more than Spanish radio ads to boost Latino votes

“Obama me está hablando a mi.”

That is the phrase Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama wants to have flowing from the lips of every person of Hispanic ethnic origin in Texas and the rest of the United States by the end of spring.

IT TRANSLATES TO, “Obama is speaking to me,” and it is the key phrase that is repeated three times in a new campaign broadcast spot that is airing on Spanish-language radio stations across Texas, where Barack hopes he can motivate the Tejano population of the Lone Star State in ways that he has failed to get the support of Latinos elsewhere in the United States.

On the one hand, it is good to see Obama take seriously his problem in letting Hispanic people know he really is sympathetic to their concerns. But he’s going to have to do better than just putting out a radio spot or two in the weeks prior to the March 4 Texas primary.

His real chance to sway the Latino voters of Texas – the only remaining state with a significant Latino population to have an upcoming primary election – is going to be the Hispanic issues debate scheduled for a week from Thursday.

This image, used by Obama supporters in San Antonio, is potentially dangerous for a candidate who wants the Hispanic vote. One wrong remark about the Alamo (which remains a sore spot for many Mexican-Americans), and Barack will make Hillary’s day by giving her the Latino vote for sure. Campaigning in Texas means Obama will have to dig up that Stetson. Illustration and photograph both provided by Texans for Obama.

It could be Obama’s last chance to put an end to the Latino trend – Hispanic people largely support Hillary R. Clinton because they already know her and Barack Obama has not done much to date to make Latinos think he is worth taking the time to get to know.

THE ONLY STATE thus far where Obama was able to take a majority of the Hispanic vote was his home state of Illinois. Even here, he barely (52 percent) won the support of Latinos overall, while losing in wards controlled by aldermen Ed Burke and Dick Mell. He lost those wards with growing Hispanic populations even though the aldermen publicly backed Obama.

People who are “simpático a Español” just aren’t swooning for Barack the way the Youth of America are. Obama would like to think his commercials will introduce him to Tejanos.

He could use their support in slashing back on the number of presidential delegates Clinton gets from the Texas primary, as the two are still running even in the delegate count. Even though Obama has been winning a streak of primaries in recent days, Hillary can’t be counted out because she got the big delegate counts in New York and California, and could take Texas too.

The only big state Obama has won thus far is right here in Illinois, which sadly enough is dwarfed by California, and still topped by the other two states. He’s not winning in the right places to put the Clinton campaign down for the count.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE the 2000 general election, where Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush won the right to live in the White House because he won the electors.

So all across Texas in the next few weeks, people in places like Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas and down near the border where the United States and Mexico blend into one multicultural region, their airwaves will be hearing a condensed version of the Obama story – the one the rest of us read in full if we bothered to buy or borrow a copy of, “Dreams from My Father.”

But the debate to be held Feb. 21 in Austin on the University of Texas campus (Jenna Bush’s alma mater) is more important.

It is an event that has significance to more people than just the Texas Legislature community that the late columnist Molly Ivins used to think of as a collection of all of Texas’ “village idiots.” Hispanic people across the United States will be paying attention to Austin that night – even those of us living in states where we already have cast our ballots.

MANY HISPANIC PEOPLE are going to be looking for THE moment where Obama slips up, if only to confirm our collective judgment that he is just a kid politico (a ‘politicito,’ in Spanglish?) and that “we” were right all along in backing the Hillary R. Clinton machine.

For those of us Latinos who actually cast ballots for Barack, we’ll be hoping for a moment where he slams Hillary down and we can gloat to our elders that they should have given Obama some attention early on. Our “padres y madres” and maybe our “Tio” Carlos will flip us a nasty look that implies “shut up,” but deep down they’ll know we’re right – so they won’t actually say it.

And for the roughly 26 percent of the Texas electorate that is Hispanic, the debate could be the moment that persuades them to join Illinois as the only state where Latinos preferred Obama. Taking the Latino vote the rest of the way through the primary season, when combined with his existing support from young voters, intellectuals and the African American population, could be what helps Obama stop the presidential nomination from being decided by the party bigwigs (officially known as, “the super delegates.”)

For Clinton, this debate could be her chance to cement her ties to Latinos. Any show of good faith that she has not forgotten us (even though her Mexican-American campaign chief recently had to take the blame and be fired for Hillary’s recent campaign failures) could be what ensures a majority of Latinos stay with her, and that the presidential primary remains a close one all the way to the Democratic National Convention this summer in Denver.

THIS IS NOT the first Hispanic oriented debate of the primary season. But the others were held so early in the process (does anyone care anymore about how people in Las Vegas voted?) that anything said back then hardly seems relevant.

I also still remember the first Hispanic debate where organizers went out of their way to provide interpreters for each candidate. That hurt New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (whose childhood was spent living in Mexico), who could have answered the questions directly in Spanish. Instead, questions asked by a Spanish-speaking moderator were translated into English for Richardson to answer “en Inglés” and have translated back into Spanish for the Spanish-speaking viewing audience.

Here’s hoping Univision officials have figured out a way to get around not giving any one candidate a lingual advantage, even though my understanding is that both Obama and Clinton have a rudimentary knowledge of the Spanish language. Obama’s language skills are good enough that he occasionally gives the Senate Democratic Spanish-language response to President Bush’s regular radio addresses.

These other Hispanic debates were confined to Spanish language television.

THIS TIME AROUND, CNN is getting into the act, which could be a sign that Anglo television news is catching on to the fact that the Hispanic population is an electoral force of some significance. (Or maybe they just want to sell us new HD televisions, now that our conventional TV sets will become worthless next year?)

CNN and its overseas operation, CNN International, will broadcast the event live and then repeat it again (likely in the middle of the night and in the early morning) for those people who didn’t get their fill the first time.

Only after the event is over will Univision affiliates across the country (in Chicago, that’s WGBO-TV, Ch. 66) broadcast the event.

I want to compare the ratings of the two broadcasts. How many people will decide to wait until the latter broadcast “en Español?” A Spanish-language newsperson is going to be more likely to catch the subtle nuances relevant to Latinos that an English language broadcaster might just totally miss.

PERSONALLY, I’LL TRY to watch both. That’s a lot of Hillary and Barack to have to endure in one evening.

But the event has the potential to be like ESPN’s broadcasts of international soccer tournaments. Anyone who knows anything about soccer knows that ESPN should stick to football and NASCAR and poker tournaments because Univision and Telemundo broadcasts make the English versions seem so dull and uninformed.

Will CNN do the same for Latino political empowerment?

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Barack Obama’s broadcast spots “en Español” can be heard either on radio stations across the Lone Star State, or on the Internet, if you don’t feel like taking a (http://obama.3cdn.net/a34e1ee2e966917261_bjm6bwuky.mp3) trip to Texas.

Obama’s efforts to win votes in Texas (http://blog.texansforobama.com/frontPage.do) are detailed here.

Obama in the past has been used by Democrats to respond in Spanish to President Bush’s (http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2006/02/_el_senador_obama_in_spanish_v.html) regular radio addresses.

Is Barack Obama’s comprehension of the Spanish language as weak as President Bush’s? This commentator (http://adage.com/bigtent/post?article_id=123134) thinks so.

CAM-PAINS: Is Clinton cut a Latino slight?

Did Hillary R. Clinton make a serious gaffe that could hurt her standing with Hispanic voters when she cut loose her campaign manager?

Clinton replaced her campaign’s chief, Patty Solis Doyle, with her former first lady chief of staff, Maggie Williams. The move came following Democratic opponent Barack Obama’s clean sweep of the weekend primaries and caucuses held in various states and the Virgin Islands, and just before the elections in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia – all of which Obama is favored to win.

Hillary felt the need to follow the lead of many a professional sports team after a crummy season – fire the manager and hope that someone new can put a spark in the same old team. Replacing a campaign manager is an easier and quicker move than having to re-tool the campaign.

But Doyle, the sister of Alderman Danny Solis, had her own benefit to the Clinton campaign – and one that could be put at risk if Hillary is not careful.

Doyle, who has been a supporter of the Clintons since Bill’s first presidential campaign in 1992, is of Mexican descent. Her existence in the campaign’s top spot was always cited by Latino activists as a key factor why so many Hispanic people prefer Hillary to Barack.

I’m not saying that Doyle should have been un-touchable because of her ethnicity. I’m not even claiming that Williams isn’t qualified to run a national campaign for president.

But if the Clinton campaign thinks that replacing Doyle will suddenly turn Hillary into a political juggernaut again, she is even more delusional than generations of baseball clubs that wore the uniform of the Chicago Cubs.

She had better hope that Latino voters do not suddenly see this as a slight against them. Because she still has the Texas primary to get through on March 4, along with primaries in states such as Ohio and Wisconsin that have cities with something resembling Hispanic populations.

If Clinton were to lose her dominance of the Latino vote and become solely the campaign preferred by older women, then we can start right now planning the Barack Obama victory party.

At least she waited until after the Illinois primary. Had Hillary fired Doyle before Feb. 5, it would have become an issue locally and Obama would have taken more than the 52 percent of the Latino vote that he gathered in Illinois.

For those of you who think this sounds petty, be honest. We live in a political world where petty circumstances become major catastrophes all too frequently. It could happen.

What other noteworthy issues are coming up on the campaign trail as we here in Illinois try to recover from our own elections?

GRAMMYS: Barack Obama received his second Grammy Award.

The audio version of “The Audacity of Hope” received honors for “best spoken-word recording,” and some reports are making an issue out of the fact that Obama beat out former President Bill Clinton in that category.

Personally, I have to wonder just how much Obama’s political celebrity status swayed the judges. I haven’t heard the recording, but I know the book itself can be vapid at points as Obama tries to lay out in detail his government philosophy – even though some might suspect he hasn’t fully developed that philosophy in his own mind.

I also know that the actual compact disc set for his first book, “Dreams from My Father,” is a long, long, long set (six discs that take up 7.5 hours of time). How many people have ever seriously listened to the whole thing?

Personally, I skipped straight to the end of the last disc, where as a bonus feature, Random House included audio of the roughly 20-minute speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention where Obama “made his bones” politically.

EDGAR ANTICS: Former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar wants Hillary Clinton to get the Democratic nomination for president. He figures that is John McCain’s best chance of uniting the various factions that comprise the Republican Party.

Obama presents too qualified a candidate, and one who might actually unite people instead of splitting them up. The government professional in Edgar, who is still with the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government & Public Affairs, respects Obama, but not enough to get him to switch political parties and vote Democrat.

Of course, the people who most are disgusted with McCain are also the types who thought Edgar was too moderate and “Chicago oriented” as governor, even though many politically oriented Chicagoans will always remember Edgar as “Gov. No” because he supposedly rejected everything they ever asked for from state government.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The Chicago Sun-Times included a copy of Doyle’s letter of resignation (http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/786992,sweet021008.article) along with their story about the switch.

Jim Edgar gave his plug to Obama as a government official and Clinton as a candidate (http://www.sj-r.com/news/election2008/2008/02/10/edgar_impressed_with_the_obamas/) during a speech last week at the Sangamo Club in Springfield, Ill.

Latinos choosing Hillary over Obama by default

Hillary R. Clinton may get a majority of Hispanic people to vote for her in this year’s presidential primary elections, but that is not evidence she has some natural affinity with those people whose ethnic roots tie them to a Latin American country.

The simple fact is that neither of the remaining Democrats who dream of being president is doing much to reach out for the support of Latinos. Hillary Clinton is the default choice for a group of people whose primary concerns focus around trying to assimilate into the political culture of the United States of America.

For those of the various ethnicities who comprise Hispanic people (or Latinos, if you prefer – I consider the two terms interchangeable), being able to vote is a sign that they have arrived in this country; that they truly belong.

THE LARGE NUMBERS of Hispanic/Latino people who are still immigrants cannot register to vote, so they are not a factor on Election Day. Until the percentage of Hispanics who can vote becomes more in line with their overall population Latinos are not going to lead any reforms of this country’s political set-up.

The reason more Hispanic people do not consider themselves Republican (59 percent identify themselves as Democrat, according to the Pew Hispanic Center) is that GOP officials are too quick to pander to xenophobic elements of society. So Latinos are becoming Democrats by default. But since Hispanics in a position to vote are largely people desiring to be a part of the establishment, they will back the establishment candidate. Hillary Clinton's presidential bid is more like a default vote for many Hispanic people. Photograph provided by Hillary Clinton for President.

That niche this time around is filled by Hillary Clinton, and that is why the roughly 9 percent of the overall electorate who are Hispanic (16 percent in Illinois) is giving a majority of its support to the former Arkansas and U.S. first lady.

You didn’t seriously think Latino people sincerely liked Hillary or her positions on the issues, did you?

THE DOMINANT FACTOR in this year’s presidential primary elections is the generation gap.

If Barack Obama is to win, it will be because he gets a groundswell of support from the youth of America – who largely think Hillary is a ‘60’s Child and the wave of the past, while Barack is here and now and what is really happening.

The older generation (generally, mid-30s and up) charitably sees Obama as a youthful politico who should wait his turn to run for the highest office in the land, while Clinton has the benefits of age and experience.

FOR HISPANIC PEOPLE, it is different.

Regardless of age, gender or education levels, Clinton is favored by those people with ethnic ties to places where “hablamos Español.” It applies for both those who have made it all the way through the immigration process to become citizens, and those actually born in the United States.

Hispanic people do NOT want to get caught on the losing side of an election. They want to be in support of the winner.

Many view the Obama campaign talk of change and reform as the political equivalent of childish babbling, particularly since they many are willing to believe the basic premise of political professionals – young people don’t vote.

SINCE THEY DON’T vote in significant numbers, many Latinos just do not believe Obama can win.

Even if they think he has a chance, many would still be more comfortable with an establishment Democrat like Clinton. Change (which is how they perceive Obama’s talk of government reform) is not their top priority – gaining a share of the spoils of politics is what matters. To people with this mindset, the Obama campaign is about esoteric concepts that don’t particularly interest them.

It is similar to the old Chicago political mindset that the late Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko mocked when he said the Chicago city motto should be changed from “Urbs in Horto” (“City in a Garden”) to “Ubi est Mea” (Latin for, “Where’s Mine?”), except for Hispanic people, it would be “¿Donde esta mio?”

It also doesn’t help Obama with Hispanic people that he was unknown outside of Illinois until 2004, and remained largely anonymous to the national public until last year.

PEOPLE WHO WANT to become a part of the establishment are not really interested in meeting anybody new. They want to know how to get an introduction to who controls power now. That is how they perceive Hillary Clinton – a candidate who along with her former president husband has a history of not being hostile (like some Republicans) to their interests.

For Obama to gain ground with these people, he’s going to have to push himself on them. He’s almost going to have to ram his ideas down their throats.

It is not a mistake that the only one of the two dozen states where elections took place Tuesday where Obama won a majority of the Hispanic population was his home state of Illinois. Exit polls showed Obama took 52 percent of the Hispanic vote in Illinois – much less than his 64 percent of the overall vote and 94 percent among African-Americans.

In Illinois, Obama is the incumbent U.S. senator who has been a very visible part of the government establishment that Hispanic people want to be a part of. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., was correct in telling WBBM-TV that the reason Illinois Hispanic people differed from their counterparts in other states is because, “we know Obama.”

IF OBAMA IS to get the same majority Hispanic support in remaining states with primary elections (Texas’ significant Latino population will vote March 4), he’s going to have to reach out to Hispanic people and make them feel as though they were a focal part of his vision.

Thus far, he hasn’t done that.

Admittedly, it’s not his fault. No one candidate can ever truly appeal to everybody. But in trying to gain the support of the Youth of America, the country’s more intellectual elements and bolster his support among African-American people (where Hillary Clinton once held a commanding edge), the Latino/Hispanic vote seems to be squeezed out.

The Obama camp’s liberal vision is flexible enough that it can be expanded to include Latinos, but that inclusion does not seem to be Barack’s priority. There are times when it seems his only outreach to Latinos is to provide a Spanish-language option for people who check out his website.

MANY HISPANIC PEOPLE figure they’re not going to make much of an effort to learn more about him, if he doesn’t seem to be reaching out to them.

Obama’s effort to increase his African-American support grates at some Hispanic people, particularly when they compare it to the lukewarm efforts the candidate has made to get the Latino vote. They feel like Barack has chosen someone else instead of them.

Now I know Latinos who have racial hang-ups (some are even my relatives). But it would be a mistake to let this devolve into an “us versus them” situation, which is what some people are trying to do.

Such talk plays into the hands of those people (mostly conservatives who want to view the world in terms of “us” and “them” – and generally think of all non-Anglo people as “them”) who want the Democratic primary elections to turn into a race war, of sorts, between the United States’ Latino and African-American populations.

WE NEED TO question the motivation of the people who bring this issue up.

Many of them want to label Hispanic people as some form of racists as a way of fracturing the Democratic party’s constituency, with the resulting strife giving a boost to the Nov. 4 election chances of whichever Republican wins the primary.

In reality, it is not African-American candidates whom Latino voters are opposed to. Our priority these days when we are in a voting booth is to cast ballots against the people who appear to be hostile toward our existence.

Even if the presidential bid of Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., had not collapsed early on (he quit campaigning weeks ago, but his name remained on the GOP primary ballot used in Tuesday’s Illinois elections), there would have been a serious effort to ensure that everybody with even the slightest touch of Latino blood in them would have voted for, “Anybody but Tom.”

LIKEWISE, IF DAIRY magnate (and now, Republican congressional nominee) James Oberweis ever follows through on the rumors that he will run for Illinois governor as a Republican after a term or two in Congress, he will get the “hostile” treatment if he ever tries to campaign in places like the South Chicago, Pilsen or Humboldt Park neighborhoods.

Latinos still remember how he pandered during his past campaigns (and even did a little in his most recent bid for the U.S. House seat being abandoned by retiring Rep. J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.) to the elements of our society who want to turn illegal immigration into some sort of problem caused by Hispanic people.

Hispanic people know who their political enemies really are.

Our “enemigo” is not Barack Obama. He just hasn’t done a good enough job of explaining that he really is our “amigo.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Moments like this 2007 on-air appearance on a Los Angeles radio station (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2007/08/10/sot.obama.singing.cnn) have the potential to make Obama look ridiculous for Hispanic voters, if he’s not careful.

A comparison of the Obama (http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/espanol) and Clinton (http://www.hillaryclinton.com/es/) Internet presences “en Español” can be made by checking out the sites.

Some people might think of Barack Obama as the latest version of "the Greatest," but he's got a ways to go before Latino voters think of him that way.

Who gets to say they're Latino?

Rich Bradley (left) is challenging Iris Martinez in the Feb. 5 elections for her seat in Springfield. Photographs provided by Illinois General Assembly

On the surface, it is just a Chicago neighborhood election for a seat in the Illinois Senate.

But the candidates wishing to go to Springfield to represent a set of Northwest Side neighborhoods have managed to touch on an issue that impacts Hispanic people across the United States. Namely, who exactly gets to use the label “Latino?”

Illinois state Rep. Rich Bradley, D-Chicago, a 12-year veteran of the Illinois House of Representatives, says he has decided to try to move up politically to a higher-ranking office. He has decided to run for a seat in the Illinois state Senate.

What is really happening here is that the daughter of Chicago Alderman Dick Mell has decided she wants to run for political office, and she has decided to run for the post now held by Bradley. To avert a political brawl with the family of a high-ranking Chicago alderman, Bradley decided it would be easier to knock off the incumbent state senator from his home neighborhood.

That would be state Sen. Iris Martinez, D-Chicago, who understandably has no desire to be dumped from electoral politics just because Bradley is being squeezed out of his incumbent position.

Martinez is appealing to the growing Spanish-speaking population in the neighborhoods represented by the legislative district, hoping to get them to comprehend that some “Anglo” guy is trying to knock one of their own out of a political post.

There’s only problem with this strategy.

It turns out Bradley has just as much right to claim the Hispanic/Latino label as Martinez. His mother’s side of the family comes from Mexico. His grandparents on his mother’s side of the family come from the Mexican state of Guanajuato (which also happens to be the state where my paternal grandfather was born).

If Bradley had been named in the Castilian Spanish tradition, he would be Ricardo Bradley Cerda.

His mother went so far last week as to have her son’s campaign distribute a prepared statement on her behalf demanding an apology from Martinez about her claims that Bradley is just another political white boy.

“As a woman proud of her 100 percent Mexican background, I was shocked and appalled to… read that Iris Martinez’ campaign had called my son the ‘non-Latino’ candidate,” Margaret Cerda said. “This is an insult to our family, who always took pride in their Latino heritage after moving to the United States from Mexico.”

For what it’s worth, Bradley has not kept his ethnic ties a secret. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund – which wants to elect as many Hispanic/Latino lawmakers as possible – made a special effort to ensure that political people who prepared the legislative district boundaries in 2001 were aware of Bradley’s Mexican ethnicity so that he would be given a “safe” district to run for office in.

Now I don’t expect Martinez -- who in 2003 became the first Latina/Hispanic woman elected to serve in the Illinois Senate – to get all concerned about hurting Rich Bradley’s feelings. I don’t expect her to issue an apology anytime soon to Margaret Cerda.

It doesn’t even surprise me to learn that candidates are taking verbal cheap shots against their political opponents. Electoral politics played by “Chicago rules” almost mandates such accusations – particularly in the lower level legislative races where about the only way to gain any attention from potential voters is to stir up some sort of trouble.

But dragging ethnicity issues into this political debate stinks.

I would hate to think that Hispanic/Latino people are going to have to start providing detailed genealogical studies in order to justify their use of the ethnic label. I wonder if, to people like Martinez, I need to start identifying myself as “Gregorio Tejeda Vargas,” just to reiterate that grandparents on both sides of my family came from Mexico.

I’m not comfortable bringing up degrees of ethnicity and trying to set standards about who qualifies and who does not. To my mindset, it reeks too much of the old racial standards by which people in this country were judged based on what percentage of “white” versus “black” blood they allegedly had coursing through their veins.

Bradley actually wouldn’t be the most prominent political victim of Hispanic confusion.

Aides to former Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson said their efforts to gain support among Latino/Hispanic voters would have been so much easier had their candidate had a Spanish last name.

Photograph provided by New Mexico governor's office

Would candidate Guillermo Richardson Lopez (that’s what his name would have been, had his Irish-American father and Mexican mother named him in the Castilian Spanish tradition) be running even with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in this year’s presidential race?

Who’s to say?

With his droll campaign style and lack of decent funding, Richardson might still be on his way back to Santa Fe to fulfill his duties as New Mexico governor. But there wouldn’t be so much confusion about his ethnic roots, even though to me one look at Richardson’s face makes me see his “mestizo” roots and realize that he is a “Mexicano” at heart.

Then, there’s my all-time favorite Hispanic/Latino guy who got stuck going through life with an Anglo name – the late actor Anthony Quinn.

He was born Antonio Quinn Oaxaca in Mexico, and the Irish Quinn portion of his name originated with his paternal grandfather, who married into a Mexican family and went native.

Be honest.

How many of you assumed after watching “Zorba the Greek” and seeing his skin tone, that Hollywood went out and got a real Greek guy to play a Greek part? They didn’t, although Quinn’s appearance there is not as ridiculous as the notion of Natalie Wood playing the female lead role of a Puerto Rican girl in the film version of “West Side Story.”

In Quinn’s case, he got the chance to play Mexican roles when he was more established in his career – particularly in the 1978 film “Children of Sanchez,” based on a 1950s sociological study of life in a Mexico City slum neighborhood, and 1995’s “A Walk in the Clouds.”

Getting back to Bradley, he is just as much a Mexican as an Irish guy. His half-Anglo roots should not be held against him. Nobody’s perfect.

Having the ethnicity issue brought up is just too low a blow, even in a city where a liberal Jewish guy once campaigned for mayor against a black man by urging voters to cast their ballots for him, “before it’s too late.” Besides, there are enough other issues for the two to run on. It’s not like Bradley and Martinez ought to be natural allies.

Bradley is a long-time supporter of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, whereas Martinez is allied with state Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, and has said publicly she sides with Gov. Rod Blagojevich in his political differences against Madigan.

I have no problem if the two of them want to turn their legislative campaigns into a surrogate brawl between the forces of Madigan and Blagojevich. That’s fair play. As writer Finley Peter Dunne’s ever-quotable Chicago bartender character Mr. Dooley often told us, “politics ain’t beanbag.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: To read the full letter Bradley’s campaign sent out on behalf of his mother, read here. http://bradleyforsenate.org/sbcc/personalinfo.php?page=biography&seq=7

Here are the official legislative biographies for state Rep. Rich Bradley (http://www.ilga.gov/house/rep.asp?MemberID=897) and state Sen. Iris Martinez (http://www.ilga.gov/senate/Senator.asp?GA=95&MemberID=1275)