Texas Still Waiting for Latinos to Show Power at Polls

El Paso Times
by Matt Stiles and Zahira Torres,
July 26, 2010

Latinos are the "sleeping giant" of Texas politics — a phrase repeated so often that it has become a cliché.

Nearly 37 percent of the state's population of about 24.8 million people is Latino, but almost any political expert will tell you that the group does not fully exercise its strength in elections. Pinpointing if and when Latinos will begin wielding their voting power is a challenge.

“It's the $64,000 question,” says Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University. “If you're biblical, it's like the [coming of the] messiah.”

Politicians often speak of the Latino population as a mystical group that must be captured before it awakens. The prize is a massive number of votes for the person who can figure out how to move the group to the polls. Scores of candidates, political parties and interest groups spend millions of dollars each year trying to determine what would happen if the group decided to exercise its strength in the next election.

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(posted by Hanna Szymowska)