The Republican Party says it has its
largest-ever field of non-incumbent minorities seeking top offices this fall,
with party leaders touting 20 black and 39 Hispanic candidates in federal and
major state elections.
The political hopefuls
include candidates for Congress and for such statewide offices as governor and
secretary of state, and they come in a political season that will find blacks
and Hispanics with a strong voice in deciding the
winners.
"This is unprecedented, this kind of
effort from Republicans," said Larry Gonzalez, director of the Washington office
of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
"The Republicans seem to be building a farm
team to bring some of these candidates through the ranks, which is where it all
starts. They will eventually then have a large pool of candidates to choose from
for congressional races."
Among the more
prominent of the minority Republicans on the ballot this year are Michael
Steele, who is running for lieutenant governor of Maryland, and Mario
Diaz-Balart, brother of Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and a candidate in South
Florida's newly created 25th Congressional
District.
Democrats, though, continue to run
more black candidates, with 27 non-incumbents running for statewide and federal
offices. The Democratic Party has not tracked its overall number of minority
candidates this fall.
Figures for both parties
were provided this week. The numbers include all candidates who either have won
a primary or who are running in the 25 states that have yet to hold
primaries.
Included on the roster of prominent
minority Democrats running are former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who is seeking the
seat of retiring Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, and New York State Comptroller Carl
McCall, who is challenging incumbent Gov. George E.
Pataki.
Democrats and Republicans are courting
the country's blacks and Hispanics, which together account for almost 25 percent
of the population.
The traditional edge goes to
Democrats, who have long represented themselves as the party of minorities and
the downtrodden. President Bush received 8 percent of the black vote in 2000 in
the face of a massive black voter drive and negative ads by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People.
Despite an increase in minority
candidates, Republicans are going to have a hard time getting anything more than
that 8 percent, said David Bositis, executive director of the Center for Joint
Political and Economic Studies.
"Having more
black candidates won't help; having more black Republican voters will lead to
more black Republican candidates," said Mr. Bositis, whose group studies the
political and economic behavior of blacks.
"The
fact of the matter is that most of the black population supports black
Democratic candidates," he said.
That
allegiance, long trumpeted by the Democrats, tends to upset most dents
Republicans make in the minority electorate. Therefore, the Democratic Party
counts on tradition in every election.
"We
didn't get the dominant number of minority votes overnight," said Guillermo
Meneses, director of Hispanic media for the Democratic National
Committee.
In the Hispanic community, he said,
the party's ties date to the recent waves of Hispanic immigration, beginning in
the 1960s.
"These bonds run 10, 20, 30 years
deep," Mr. Meneses said. "The Latino community understands this, and that is why
they remain committed to us."
Nationally,
Hispanics hold 5,205 elected offices. Among those with listed partisan
affiliations, 1,474 of them are Democrats and 126 Republican, according to
figures compiled by Mr. Gonzalez's group. But Republicans view the Hispanic vote
as a more promising possibility than the black vote and hope to improve on the
35 percent showing Mr. Bush had in 2000.
"With
this president, we have made some inroads," said Sharon Castillo, a spokeswoman
for the Republican National Committee. "But it is important that we are now
recruiting viable minority candidates and develop that
pool."
The increase in minority candidates for
the Republicans can give a choice to minority voters in stronghold areas for
either party, said Pat Ahumada, a Hispanic Republican from South Texas who is
running for Congress.
"The more we run, the
more we can expand our party's base," said Mr. Ahumada, who is challenging
incumbent Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, a Democrat.