E-mail
Print
RSS
G-bookmarks
Live
TechnoratiGREELEY, Colo. – On Sunday mornings, Rose Chavez volunteers to greet people at New Hope Christian Fellowship Church, a Hispanic congregation that worships in the renovated former headquarters of a meatpacking company on the outskirts of town, surrounded by fields of cabbage and corn.
(Photo: AP Images / Will Powers)At the end of his sermon, Ezekiel Leija prays with the congregation of the New Hope Christian Fellowship Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008 in Greeley, Colo.
Far afield, yes, but also far from ignored by the major party presidential campaigns.
Like most Hispanic evangelical and Pentecostal voters, Chavez backed George W. Bush four years ago. She believed his values lined up with hers.
Now, with two weeks to another election, the 33-year-old is part of a Hispanic Protestant defection to Democrat Barack Obama, a shift that could prove key in battleground states with large Hispanic populations such as Colorado, Nevada, Florida and New Mexico.
"A lot of people say Obama doesn't have much experience, but bringing the troops home is a big issue," said Chavez, who works at an employment staffing agency. "They don't need to be there anymore. We were tricked into believing in Bush and his ways."
As the economy and sour mood of the country conspire against Republican John McCain, analysts point to other factors hurting him with Hispanic Protestants, who accounted for about one-third of all Hispanic voters in 2004.
The list includes an unpopular war, an inability to connect on a personal level with Hispanics as Bush did, the marginalization of social issues like abortion and gay marriage and simmering anger about Republican rhetoric on immigration.
A report in late July from the Pew Hispanic Center found Obama leading McCain two-to-one among non-Catholic Hispanics who affiliate with a religion — in other words, mostly evangelicals and Pentecostals.
Other numbers suggest a closer race. Gallup daily tracking polls from Sept. 1 through Friday show Obama leading McCain 47 percent to 43 percent among non-Catholic Hispanic Christians.
In 2004, exit polls showed 63 percent of Hispanic Protestants supported Bush. In 2000, that demographic group supported Democrat Al Gore by a similar margin. Hispanic Catholics have largely remained loyal to the Democratic Party, so evangelicals and Pentecostals are swinging the Hispanic vote.
"I find it powerfully refreshing, enforcing the reality that we're not going to be the white evangelical community," said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. "We're not the Christian right. We will not be the extension of one political party and we won't be exploited and used for victory and then ignored."
Rodriguez and others said the immigration debate that hit a fever pitch in 2006 caused the shift back to the Democrats.
"We blamed the Republican Party for the immigration reform debacle, and we blamed them for xenophobic rhetoric," said Rodriguez, who added that he will probably vote for McCain anyway because Obama is too liberal on abortion and marriage. "That pushed Hispanic evangelicals to look at ourselves."
Other factors are at work, as well. Hispanics remain conservative on abortion and gay rights but have shifted to the left since 2004 against the Iraq War and for increased government services and stricter environmental regulations, according to summer polling from John Green of the University of Akron's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics analyzed by the religion Web site Beliefnet.
The Rev. Wilfredo DeJesus, pastor of New Life Covenant church in Chicago, a Pentecostal Assemblies of God megachurch, voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. Now an Obama endorser and surrogate, DeJesus has promoted the candidate on a call-in radio show in Orlando, Fla., and met with pastors in Goshen, Ind.
"When you hear a Democratic candidate say that Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior, I don't remember the last time a Democrat spoke like that," DeJesus said. "For the Republican party to throw out one word — abortion ... I'm still pro-life, I believe in the sanctity of marriage ... but I'm not going to be put in a corner." Continue »
MandyMaria »
Agree: 
Disagree: 
