Jaime Regalado quoted in the Los Angeles Daily News

Black, Latino voters helped Prop. 8 pass

Tony Castro
Staff Writer - Los Angeles Daily News
November 5, 2008

Latino and black voters whose record turnout helped carry Barack Obama to the presidency proved to be a double-edged sword for liberals in California, where the two groups were credited for the narrow victory of the gay marriage ban.

"Religion trumps politics," said pollster Mark DiCamillo of the Field Research Corp., who said exit polling data show that African-Americans and Latinos abandoned their traditional liberal Democratic coalition to support Proposition 8.

Seven out of 10 African- American voters and more than half of Latinos backed Proposition 8, according to Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, which conducted the exit polling used by the National Election Pool.

The measure, which constitutionally bans same-sex marriages, was approved by about 52 percent of California voters in Tuesday's election.

Ironically, the record turnout of African-Americans and Latinos helped push Obama to victory in such states as Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. Obama opposed Proposition 8, but not very strongly.

"Traditionally the liberal Democratic coalition consists of African-Americans and Latinos, and you see it in all of the initiatives locally ... all of those it passed with two-thirds (vote) requirement," said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

The outcome was feared by many opponents of Proposition 8, as polls showed the no votes'
commanding lead was quickly evaporating ahead of the vote.

"The fear of those who were against Proposition 8 that this could be the scenario turned out to come true," said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.

Proposition 8 overturns a May California Supreme Court decision legalizing gay nuptials and rewrites the state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Jaime Regalado quoted in the Los Angeles Daily News

Latinos Driving Growth in U.S.

Tony Castro
Staff Writer - Los Angeles Daily News
October 24, 2008

In a historic change with political and cultural implications for the nation's largest minority group, a baby boom has helped Hispanics account for just over half of the overall population growth in the United States since 2000, according to a report released Thursday.

Different from the past, the nation's Latino population growth in this decade has been more a product of birthrate than immigration, according to the report from the Pew Hispanic Center.

Since 2000, the nation's Latino population has increased by 10.2 million - 6 million from births in the United States and 4.2 million from immigration.

"What we are now seeing is the secondary impacts of Hispanic international migration from the '80s and '90s," said Richard Fry, a senior research associate at the center, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington, D.C. "Now fertility - natural increase - is driving Hispanic growth."

Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley are a microcosm of the phenomenon, with heavy immigration waves in the 1980s and 1990s leading to more American-born Latino children, Fry said.

Overall, the nation's Latino population has grown by nearly 30 percent, from about 35 million in 2000 to about 45 million in 2007, according to the Pew report. By comparison, the non-Hispanic U.S. population grew just 4 percent over the same period.

Los Angeles County, where the Latino population has increased by about 435,000 so far this decade, ranked first in the nation in Hispanic population, according to the report.
The Latino population growth so far this century is just a small part of the coming population explosion, demographers say.

California Budget Project researchers estimate that the state's Hispanic population will increase by 65 percent in the next 12 years while its non-Hispanic white population will grow by only 2.3 percent.

In California especially, the Latino population growth could change political power in electing more Hispanics and driving changes in public policy.

Already, U.S.-born children of Latino immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s are influencing change.
"There is a very large, young Hispanic second generation, and these are kids who were born to immigrants in the 1980s and '90s," Fry said. "In terms of California politics, now that these kids are all 18 and they can vote, I think about how they are going to influence the outcome in California."

Jaime Regalado, director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute at California State University, Los Angeles, agrees.

"What that means is that there is going to be an increasing demand on ramping up for a fair share and a far more level playing field virtually across the board," he said. "We've heard that in politics. We've heard that in higher education (and) in K-12, making the schools more balanced, parallel and equal.

"But we're going to be increasingly hearing that as well in business and economic pursuits, whether it's small business, whether it's hiring by corporations or in foundations, whether it's in the leadership of the labor movement."

Read more.

Jaime Regalado quoted in the Los Angeles Daily News

Both won, say supporters, but it was no JFK-Nixon game-changer

Tony Castro
Staff Writer - Los Angeles Daily News
October 16, 2008

The Kennedy-Nixon debates these weren't.

The final presidential debate of the campaign Wednesday night, like its two predecessors, likely won't be remembered as a game-changer.

Oh, the supporters of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain crowed about their respective candidate winning, especially here in the shadows of the entertainment industry where many San Fernando Valley residents witnessed it at television debate watching parties, which had the feel of mini campaign rallies.

"I thought John McCain won the debate," said Nancy Spero of Tarzana, co-chairwoman of the San Fernando Valley McCain campaign, who had a small get-together at her home. "I thought he scored well in telling Senator Obama that if he wanted to run against George Bush, he should have run four years ago."

"I thought it was the best debate, but all 30 of us here thought Obama won and that nothing will change," said Linda Fidell of Winnetka, a retired professor at California State University, Northridge, who hosted a party at her home. "McCain was just testy and irritable."

But in the end, even Republican Valerie Basham of Mission Hills admitted that she feared that McCain hadn't done enough in this last debate to cut into Obama's lead shown in most national polls.

"I wanted to see him come out with both guns blazing and take him down, but he didn't," said Basham.

Political experts agreed that this debate, like the previous two, had failed to change the dynamics of the campaign - that these debates had not altered the race the way the historic first nationally televised debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960 had.

"There haven't been many game-changers in the history of presidential debates," said Jaime Regalado, director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles. "For there to be a game-changer, somebody needs to hit a home run or commit a balk and neither candidate has done that.

"Everyone talks about JFK-Nixon and that's the mainstay of American politics. Kennedy got it right on the first debate. And even though Nixon did well in the next two debates, nobody remembers them.

"What they remember is a picture of Kennedy straight, unflinching, stoic and in command of issues. Nobody remembers what he said. They remember Nixon looking tired, unshaven with a five o'clock shadow and wearing a gray suit that didn't make him look good."

Read more.