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New Romney Ad Courts Hispanic Vote

Jackie Mansky |
May 20, 2012 | 2:39 a.m. PDT

Executive Producer

Mitt Romney, Courtesy of Creative Commons Flickr
Mitt Romney, Courtesy of Creative Commons Flickr
The Romney campaign is set to debut its first political ad since the end of the competitive republican primary season, called Día Uno or Day One in key states this week, in the hopes of attracting more Hispanic voters towards the Romney campaign.  

Only 31-seconds-long, the ad imagines the first day of a Romney presidency, touching on creating jobs, reforming taxes and getting rid of Obama Care and concluding with the tagline, "Soy Mitt Romney y apruebo este mensaje.”

While the content of the video is nothing new to the Romney campaign, the audience it is aimed at, Hispanic Americans, is a populace that Romney has not focused his attention on as much so far in the campaign, as the Huffington Post pointed out earlier this month.

During the Republican primary, Romney took a more conservative stance on issues like immigration to appeal to the base of the Republican Party, which distanced him from many Hispanic voters. That, along with Romney’s lack of support for the Dream Act, hurt him significantly among the Hispanic demographic, the New York Times reported.

However, now that the primary season is over, Romney can return to more moderate political stances which will appeal to a broader base, reported Politico.

The new ad shows the Romney campaign reaching out to the Hispanic base, working to regain some of the Hispanic vote that might have been lost in the Republican primary, the Guardian reported.

While President Obama traditionally has done well among Hispanic voters, carrying 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2008 election and in this election also polling favorably, it is possible that the president’s latest decision on gay marriage might distance him from some of those supporters, reported the Guardian. The Guardian added that Romney's campaign is working to pick them up by emphasizing the social conservative messages of the Republican party.

“Romney's campaign is keen to make inroads into the demographic group, often stressing socially conservative issues such as opposition to abortion and gay marriage that chime with the Republicans' traditional white base as well as often devoutly Roman Catholic Hispanics,” wrote Guardian reporter Paul Harris.

In another effort to court the Hispanic vote, it is also rumored that Romney may tap Cuban Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl) as his vice presidential running mate , the Los Angeles Times reported. However, the article emphasized that Sen. Rubio alone, would not be enough to unite Hispanic voters around Romney.

Rafael Fantauzzi, president of the National Puerto Rican Coalition in Washington, said that Hispanic voters, as any other voting group in America, would vote based on the candidate’s platform, not on their race.  

"The idea that Marco Rubio would galvanize a large segment of the Hispanic vote purely because he's Hispanic is a fallacy," Fantauzzi said, in the Los Angeles Times article.

However, with Hispanic voters currently the fastest and largest minority group in the United States, according to the U.S. Census as the general election continues, both campaigns will look to see how their party can appeal to the Hispanic vote because down the road, it could make the difference in crucial swing states, like Florida, which will decide the election.

Reach Executive Producer Jackie Mansky here.



 

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