Earlier this month, as the economy plummeted, Senator Barack Obama’s popularity seemed to soar. Last week as the economy circled the drain, Obama’s lead over Senator John McCain was in the double digits and media commentators had all but called the contest, even though there was still a month to go before the November 4 election.

This week’s polling numbers are closer, with just four points separating the Democratic and Republican tickets. We’ve heard scant mention of the Latino Vote of late, but now that the race looks closer, Latinos can expect to become the focus of attention once again.

Latinos, the ethnic group most likely to identify as independents, have long been an enigma for both parties. Documentary director Phillip Rodriguez argues that this unpredictability has placed Latinos in a powerful position, since both parties have a fair chance of attracting the Latino Vote. His new documentary, “Latino ‘08,” which examines the historic and contemporary context of Latino voting, will air on PBS throughout the remainder of the election season.

In a recent NPR interview, Rodriguez noted that the Latino Vote has been crucial in the past several presidential contests. President Bill Clinton was enormously popular with Latinos, as was his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton. And many pundits argue that President George Bush’s close victories in 2000 and 2004 were largely the result of his ability to sway a larger than average percentage of Latino voters - about 40 percent - away from the Democratic Party toward the GOP side of the ticket.

Recently, the prevailing wisdom said Barack Obama had the contest nearly won and it was assumed that the Latino Vote would play almost no part in this probable victory. Perhaps this is because it was assumed that Obama would not be able to keep loyal Hillary Clinton supporters from throwing their support to Senator John McCain.

However, even before the Democratic National Convention was held, and despite Latinos’ history of refusing to consistently identify with a single party, Latinos overwhelmingly identified themselves as Obama supporters, stating their intention of voting for him by a margin of 66 percent to 23 percent, in a poll conducted this summer by the Pew Hispanic Center. His support was even stronger among Clinton’s Latino supporters, with more than 75 percent expressing their support for Obama, compared to only 8 percent for McCain. In fact, Latinos who voted for Clinton are more likely to support Obama than are her white supporters. Many pundits had assumed that race accounted for Hillary Clinton’s popularity among Latino voters. It may be time to rethink this assumption.

As En mi opinion host Ilan Stavans noted in a recent interview (see podcast below), many Americans tend to vote “from the heart, especially Latinos, passionate as we are.” I would argue that loyalty alone may account for Latinos’ initial preference for Clinton over Obama, especially when so many of them noted that both candidates were extremely well qualified in countless interviews leading up to the Democratic National Convention, back when the Latino Vote was big news.

Another misconception is that immigration is the leading issue among Latino voters. In fact, immigration is a low-level concern for Latino voters, lagging behind crime and the war in Iraq, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Latino voters say they are far more concerned about education, the cost of living, jobs, and health care. However, it is the immigration issue that may have cost Senator McCain his traditional popularity among Hispanics in his own state and throughout the country.

McCain was once seen as a reformer in the realm of immigration and a defender of the rights of immigrants. That changed last year when, in an effort to appeal to the Republican base, he abandoned his former conciliatory rhetoric on immigration and seemed to veer toward a position that was closer to that espoused by anti-immigration extremists. Although, most Latino voters do not list immigration as the most important issue when polled, their support can be easily lost, according to pundits, if they believe a candidate is identifying too closely with extreme anti-immigrant activists whose rhetoric is often seen as code for anti-Latino sentiment. McCain in particular was seen by many as abandoning loyal Latino voters in favor of extremists who were pushing the immigration debate in an increasingly ugly direction.

As Obama pulls ahead in the polls, is there anything McCain can do to heal these wounds and close the gap? To have any chance of winning the White House, strategists say McCain needs to win back at least one-third of the Latino Vote in key swing states like Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina, all states that went Republican in recent presidential elections and all states with large Latino populations. If McCain wants to stay in this race, he needs to convince the Republican Party that the Latino Vote still matters; he needs to remind his strategists that Latinos are not just notoriously independent, they may just be the last voting block with a sizable number of undecideds left to convince. With this in mind, he needs to convince Latinos, who have supported him throughout much of his career, that he still cares about their concerns.

On the flip side, Obama has proved the pundits wrong. He’s tracking ahead, at least in part because Latinos, despite their seemingly unshakable loyalty for all candidates Clinton, have brushed aside their initial disappointment and rushed to support his side of the ticket. By not taking Latino voters for granted, especially in key swing states like New Mexico, he looks to be on track to keep them there.

For more information on Latinos and voting, see http://www.latinosvote.com/

And to listen in on a discussion about Latinos and their growing power in the political realm, check out the following podcast, where among many other topics, En mi opinion host Ilan Stavans and Greenwood’s Jessica Galan talk about the role Latinos are likely to play in upcoming and future elections.

http://lae.greenwood.com/mp3/ilan-stavans-voting.mp3

En mi opinion host Ilan Stavans’ newest book is a graphic novel from Soft Skull Press, illustrated by Roberto Weil. Mr. Spic Goes to Washington tells the story of Mr. Spic — Samuel Patricio Inocencio Cárdenas — as he rises from a his rough-and-tumble past to the mayor’s office of Los Angeles, then on to the U.S. Senate. Weaving humor with social commentary, the novel follows Mr. Spic as he uses his influence to confront corruption and promote pacifism and tolerance.

Scroll down to check out the cover and a scene depicting the solo walking tour of Washington Mr. Spic takes on his first day on the job as junior senator from California.

When my husband and I visited Puerto Rico in late February nearly everyone we spoke to wanted to talk about the island’s potentially pivotal role in determining the next Democratic nominee for President. Puerto Rico’s primary will be held this Sunday, and according to news reports from the island, the excitement has only mounted since we were there.

At the time of our visit the vote was scheduled to be held as a caucus, but back in March, as it became clear just how critical votes from Puerto Rican Democrats may turn out to be in the final delagate count, Roberto Prats, Puerto Rico’s Democratic chairman, decided to spend the extra funds to hold a primary.

There are eight superdelegates and 55 delegates at stake in Puerto Rico. Though many supporters of Senator Barack Obama contend he has enough delegates to win the nomination without Puerto Rico, he played it safe, arriving on the island last weekend on the heels of surrogates that included his wife and Gov. Bill Richardson. Senator Hillary Clinton arrived last Saturday, following on the momentum created by many visits to the island by her husband, President Bill Clinton, and by their daughter, Chelsea, who has become very popular with Puerto Ricans over the past few months, according to news accounts.

It’s an interesting situation given the unusual voting status of Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. territory, or Estado Libre Asociado (freely associated state) as Puerto Rico is often described in government agency documents when those documents are in Spanish. In official U.S. government documents, when those documents are in English, the island is referred to as a “Commonwealth,” but unlike citizens of the Commonwealths of Pennsylvania or Virginia, Puerto Ricans who happen to live on the island, U.S. citizens all, cannot vote in the general election for the President who will represent them.

Puerto Rican voters living on the island select Democratic and Republican presidential nominees every four years, traditionally by caucus. This year’s Republican caucus, held in February, drew fewer than 1,000 voters to caucus sites. Many of the people we talked to while we were on the island in February were not even aware that there was a Puerto Rican Republican Caucus or that they might have any role in any given election year in deciding who the Republican nominee for President might be. Clearly, the GOP hasn’t put much effort into reaching out to Puerto Ricans living on the island.

Puerto Ricans living on the island elect a non-voting representative to the U.S. House of Representatives, but they have no other elected representation in the U.S. government.

All this changes when a Puerto Rican moves to any state. Theoretically, a Puerto Rican citizen can move from San Juan to New York and the very next day register and vote for President or a voting member of Congress. If Puerto Rico were a state it would likely have at least eight representatives to the House of Representatives and two Senators.

Puerto Ricans living on the island elect their own legislative body, but they do not have a voting member of Congress to represent their interests in any number of federal governmental programs and policies that affect their daily lives. For example, there are more Puerto Ricans from the island fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan than the total number of military personnel serving in those conflicts from many more populous states.

Puerto Rico also elects a governor and when my husband and I were there this winter many people we talked to were proud to point out that the immediate past governor, Sila María Calderón, was a woman. Almost everyone we met said they were supporting Clinton, in part because Puerto Ricans were progressive enough to understand that a woman could run a government as well as a man. There was a sense that it was time to see how a woman might run things differently. To many, Calderón’s governorship was proof that Puerto Ricans do not hold to the traditional machismo attitudes they think mainlanders attribute to them. In almost the same breath, however, many Puerto Ricans told us they were supporting Hillary because it would take a woman and a mother to get the U.S. out of Iraq.

Though Clinton was the choice of nearly all the Puerto Ricans we talked to, they were quick to point out that both candidates were well qualified and that either would make a good president. Some were leaning toward Clinton, but said they planned to learn more about Obama in time for the vote and recent news reports show Obama gaining on Clinton among Puerto Rican voters. Everyone we met had such a sense of pride and excitement about their ability to affect the race. They cannot vote for or against Sen. John McCain in the general election, but they understood that deciding who he would face was a significant step in Puerto Rico’s post-1898 history.

Earlier this week, Junot Diaz became the second U.S. Latino to win a Pulitzer prize for fiction for his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The novel had already earned the 2007 National Books Critics Circle Award.

Diaz, 39, was born in the Dominican Republican, and arrived in the U.S. in 1974. He grew up in Old Bridge, New Jersey, and attended Rutgers University. Diaz has an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University and he is currently a creative writing professor at MIT.

While at Cornell, Diaz began work on his first collection of stories, Drown. Like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the stories from Drown focus on young contemporary protagonists simultaneously coming to terms with the family upheavals and cultural alienation often inherent in the contemporary immigration experience.

The last Latino novelist to earn the award was Oscar Hijuelos in 1989 for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

This year another Latino, Michael Ramirez of Investment Business Daily, won a Pulitzer for cartooning, his second.

Read En mi opinion blog host Ilan Stavans’ review of Diaz’s novel for the February-March 2008 issue of Primera Revista Latinoamericana de Libros:

https://www.revistaprl.com/review.php?article=33&edition=1-3

And read more about Diaz’s reaction to winning the coveted writing prize at the Star-Ledger of Newark:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/pulitzer_winner_stays_true_to.html

This afternoon I learned from Howard Rodriguez-Mori of Florida State University that Maria Chavez-Hernandez had passed away. I was scheduled to talk to her graduate students this evening about digital library services. I find it very hard to believe that she is not here and that I will not be talking with her this evening and in the days and months to come.

Dr. Chavez-Hernandez was one of the first librarians who agreed to become a board member for The Latino American Experience and I was incredibly indebted to her. She was generous, forthright, warm, kind, a perfect mentor. I remember meeting her for the first time at JCLC. She was immediately open and friendly. Eager to talk, laugh, eat, and to share her experience and enthusiasm for librarianship and Latino culture.

During the months leading up to the launch of the Latino American Experience in March 2007, I found myself depending on her often. When I would send out emails to the board marked “urgent” or “help,” I always knew Maria’s email would be the first in my inbox no matter how busy she was. And I knew her response would be thoughtful and detailed, that it would be strong and direct if she thought I was about to make a wrong turn, supportive and reassuring if I was on the right track.

I didn’t know her long but I felt like I had. I could speak to her candidly. She gave the best advice and the best hugs. Only now does it strike me as surprising that we became so close so fast. Work relationships are often conducted at an arm’s length. With Maria, this was never the case. I will miss her.

Her colleague, Howard Rodriguez-Mori, sent the following information earlier this afternoon:

Dr. Chavez-Hernandez was an active champion of library services and LIS education for minorities, and was recently honored by the Florida Library Association with an award bearing her name.

As posted in the College of Information website:

“The Florida Library Association (FLA) announced an award honoring Dr. Maria Chavez-Hernandez of the FSU College of Information last week (January 8). The “Maria Chavez-Hernandez Libraries Change Peoples Lives Award” will celebrate the “dynamic spirit of her work in expanding the opportunities of information access to under-served and immigrant populations” by recognizing librarians who have “made a demonstrably positive and big difference in the lives of Florida’s library users.”

Maria Chavez-Hernandez was a faculty member and administrator for Florida State University’s College of Information, where she earned her PhD. Prior to coming to the College of Information, she worked at Florida State University Strozier Library as an interlibrary loan unit head for nine years. During her tenure at Strozier Library, her unit was awarded the 1997 Davis Certificate award for quality service, process improvement, and streamlining workflow. Her teaching interests included collection management, organizational culture, and international information services. She also coordinated the school’s internship program. In 2007, The Florida Library Association created the Maria Chavez-Hernandez “Libraries Change Peoples’ Lives” Award in her honor to perpetuate the dynamic spirit of her work in expanding the opportunities of information access to underserved and immigrant populations.

This afternoon, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, the first Hispanic to seek the Democratic nomination for president, announced that he was ending his campaign. Gov. Richardson came in fourth in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary among a crowded field dominated by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards.

Richardson, whose mother is Mexican, was also a member of Congress, serving as Representative of New Mexico’s 3rd District. In addition, he is a two-term governor, a former Cabinet member, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Many political experts considered Richardson the most broadly qualified candidate in the field and he has been widely praised for his diplomatic skills. While running for President, Gov. Richardson negotiated a temporary cease-fire in Darfur. And during the exploratory phase of his candidacy, he negotiated the release of a Chicago Tribune reporter who had been charged with espionage by the Sudanese government.

Gov. Richardson’s run for President was a milestone in American pilitics and Latino history. Given his wide-ranging experience and diplomatic talents, he is likely to play an important role in the coming election, despite today’s announcement.