Obama invites Latinos to ‘walk together’ into White House

Carolyn Hileman - The Voice* | July 16, 2008

By Mary Anne Ostrom
Mercury News
SAN DIEGO - Just before the Fourth of July, John McCain began running ads in Spanish and English featuring his Latino roommate at the U.S. Naval Academy.

“This election, it seems to me that the other candidate has just discovered the importance of the Hispanic vote,” Frank Gamboa says. “I know for John it’s not political; it comes from the heart.”

It was an opening salvo designed to show predominantly Democratic Latinos that the presumptive Republican nominee closely identifies with their culture in an election year in which Latino voters, by virtue of their sizable numbers in several swing states, could shape the race’s outcome.

With an expected 10 million Latinos nationwide expected to cast ballots in November, the wooing is already nearing a fevered pitch.

In the first of back-to-back speeches from the two presumptive presidential nominees, Democrat Barack Obama on Sunday told more than 2,000 members of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group meeting in San Diego, that McCain “abandoned his courageous stance” of vocal support for a pathway to citizenship for illegal residents.

Obama on Sunday pitched his candidacy as a chance to “change the system in this country” that has rewarded the rich and powerful while Latinos have struggled.

“And if we get to the polls this November, then we will walk together through those White House doors - and we’re going to shake things up,” Obama said.

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