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Este informe no está disponible en español. THE NEW YORK TIMESBush Fighting For Hispanic Votersby The Associated PressApril 6, 2000 EL PASO, Texas (AP) -- He's the Hispanic mayor of a Texas Democratic stronghold, but Carlos Ramirez not only supports Republican George W. Bush for president, he even traveled to New Hampshire and California to campaign for him. He's just the kind of person Bush wants on his side. Democrat Al Gore, too. Both presidential candidates are vigorously courting local leaders like Ramirez this year, as well as Hispanics in general. The nation's fastest-growing group of voters, Hispanics are projected to account for 5.4 percent of the electorate this fall. Even more important, four states with large Hispanic populations -- Texas, California, New York and Florida -- hold 144 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. The country's Hispanic vote has gone overwhelmingly to the Democrats in the past two presidential elections. But Bush is running about even with Gore in national polling, and the Texas governor has said repeatedly he won't concede the Hispanic vote this year. And neither will the GOP. The Republican National Committee plans to spend $7 million to $10 million this year on a media campaign reaching out to Hispanics, including an ad unveiled Wednesday that is being tested in Fresno, Calif., which has a sizable Latino population. Both Bush and Gore, the Democratic vice president, use Spanish-language ads in targeted areas and switch quickly to Spanish when speaking to Hispanic crowds. Bush has touted his 1998 Texas re-election as evidence of his appeal. He captured as much as 49 percent of the Hispanic vote in Texas that year, according to some exit polling, though other polling put the figure lower. This year, one contest that might be instructive for the fall was California's primary, which included voters of all parties. Gore won a majority of Hispanics. Bush got about one in five Hispanic votes, poorer than his showing among non-Hispanics. John McCain won nearly as many Hispanics as Bush. Exit polls found Bush winning Hispanics in equally overwhelming majorities as non-Hispanics in Florida and Texas. In New York, the Hispanic vote, largely concentrated in New York City, tends to be Democratic. Bush could be helped by the Elian Gonzalez controversy in Florida. Cuban-Americans there, unlike a majority of Hispanics elsewhere in the country, tend to vote Republican. President Clinton and Gore won the state in their 1996 re-election, but Gore's recent comments on the Gonzalez case have not been well-received in the Miami area. Back home in Texas, in an exit poll conducted in El Paso on March 14, the day of the Texas presidential primary, 26 percent of Hispanics said they voted for Bush, while 67.5 percent said they voted for Gore, said Gregory Rocha, associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 5.5 percentage points. ``I don't think that Mr. Bush can just assume that because he did fairly well in the general election in '98 that this group is sold on him,'' Rocha said. Enter Ramirez. The two-term mayor of this border city, who identifies himself as a ``conservative Democrat,'' says the Bush camp solicited his help for the primaries. But Ramirez says, ``My support for him is because I have gotten to know him as a person. I have gotten to know his values. I know I can trust him.'' Ramirez is ``the kind of figure Mr. Bush can point to bolster his claim of representing the broad center as a `compassionate conservative,''' said Bruce Buchanan, political scientist at the University of Texas-Austin. Bush has split from fellow Republicans in ways that could help him with some Hispanics. While former California Gov. Pete Wilson backed measures such as Proposition 187, which sought to end government benefits for illegal immigrants, Bush advocated public education for undocumented immigrant children. He supports beefed-up border enforcement but believes in helping people already here. Bush also has made several trips to Mexico and supports the North American Free Trade Agreement.
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