Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine can speak Spanish. Do Latino voters care?

By Nigel Duara, Cindy Carcamo and Jazmine Ulloa

Aug. 1, 2016 3 AM PT

“I tell ya,” Tim Kaine said to the crowd in Miami, warming up to the part of his life story that took him to Central America, “my time in Honduras changed my life in so many ways.”

The cheering grew louder. The newly introduced Democratic nominee for vice president paused for half a second. Then Kaine launched into the Spanish-language part of his speech, telling listeners how he learned some of his lifelong values in the Honduran village he’d once called home.

“En Honduras aprendí los valores de mi pueblo,” he said, his Spanish inflected with the tones of the American Midwest.

The crowd roared. On his couch 2,000 miles away, Pete Rios smiled. Among the family gathered in his Dudleyville, Ariz., home, heads turned to the television, backs straightened and people clapped.

It is ancient political history now, but Rios was once at the forefront of the battle against English-only bills in reaction to an influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants in the 1980s. Now, Rios’ family was watching a white, English-speaking politician trying to appeal to voters like them in a language they once were threatened with punishment for using.

“It was just electric,” said Rios, a former state legislator and current county commissioner. “How amazing.”

Kaine’s Spanish has been sold as a draw to Latino voters in an election year in which the other major party’s nominee, Donald Trump, said a fellow candidate “speaks Mexican.”

But in interviews across the country, many Latinos said Kaine’s Spanish is less important to them than his positions on crucial issues: immigration reform, detention and deportation policies, jobs. If Spanish were the ticket to the Latino vote, some said, Republican Marco Rubio might be on the ballot in November.

Kaine hasn’t limited his Spanish to his reference to Honduras at the rally at Miami’s Florida International University, where Hillary Clinton introduced him as her running mate. His speech at the Democratic National Convention last week was salted liberally with Spanish.

“Somos Americanos todos,” the Virginia senator declared — “We’re all American.”

Fifteen years ago, Kaine’s somewhat halting facility with the language would have been a major draw, politicians and analysts said. Today, some are offended at his attempts to communicate with Latino voters in Spanish.

Felix Sanchez, a Democratic political strategist and co-founder of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, said Kaine’s speaking Spanish is simply unnecessary.

“It’s a political trope that has run its course,” he said. “I prefer to have candidates address issues, supply solutions and then see that they get it done, over scripted Spanish pablum.”

If Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, were serious about attracting Latino voters with a Spanish-speaking running mate, there were three Latinos being considered for vice president, Sanchez said: Rep. Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro and Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez.

“Becerra certainly is fluent and competent to hold the office. But if the argument is that Kaine was a better choice because he spoke better Spanish than Castro and Perez, well that certainly is a red-herring argument,” Sanchez said. “The truth is that Kaine is a strategic choice to win Virginia. Why not simply say that without making it seem like Latinos were also being thrown a penny because he speaks Spanish?”

Right-wing commentators were predictably unimpressed with Kaine’s Spanglish at the Democratic convention.

“Dems are enthralled by an American politician who can speak Spanish,” conservative political columnist S.E. Cupp wrote on Twitter. “Unless his name is Jeb or Marco.”

The notion of Kaine’s Spanish appealing to Latino voters is a fundamental misunderstanding of the electorate, said Nelson Flores, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

“We certainly don’t need a politician to use Spanish for us to understand his or her message,” Flores said. “To suggest that a politician’s Spanish proficiency is relevant to this equation is to ignore the overwhelming rejection by Latinos of politicians such as Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, who have also used Spanish as part of their electoral strategy.”

It wasn’t so long ago that the Clinton campaign was similarly accused of pandering to a minority audience. During her 2007 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton seemed to adopt a Southern black drawl during a recitation of the Rev. James Cleveland’s hymn “I Don’t Feel Noways Tired” at a church service in Selma, Ala. Mocking on the nightly news ensued.

Authenticity aside, Kaine’s use of Spanish may simply be too late for the generation of Latino voters now coming of age.

The principal factor driving the growth of the Latino population in recent years has been higher birth over death rates, not immigration. Thus, the community is undergoing a natural American integration process that is supplanting Spanish with English as the main language, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund.

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A Pew Research Center survey of 1,500 Latino adults in the fall of 2015 found Spanish is a valuable part of Latino culture and identity, with 95% of Latinos saying it is important for future generations to speak Spanish. But most of the Latinos polled, 71%, said they did not believe fluency in the language is necessary to that identity.

Spanish isn’t necessary to appeal to Latino voters, either. A bipartisan survey conducted by the Spanish-language TV network Univision found the majority of Latinos — 68% — said their vote would not be influenced by whether a candidate spoke fluent Spanish; only 26% said it would. Still, the language is useful to attract voters who speak little English, of whom 4 out of every 10 reported they preferred candidates who speak to them in Spanish.

In interviews, many Latinos said they were listening more closely to what Kaine said about immigration policy than whether he said it in Spanish.

Some said they were disappointed when Kaine, in an interview with the Telemundo network last week, did not make any promises to halt the deportation of children from Central America who come to the country illegally.

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“I think many of them could have a chance at asylum, if they have lawyers,” he said in Spanish, “but others won’t have that opportunity because they don’t entirely meet the rules for asylum status.”

But for others — especially older voters — the language is an important part of the message.

Guillermina Reyes, 50, who operates the El Moctezuma restaurant in Orange, is one of them. She said she can identify with Kaine because of his Spanish, more so than if he spoke only English.

“It’s magnificent. He would be able to capture what we want to tell him, directly,” she said. “But I would have voted for Hillary anyway.”

Celso Muñoz Reyes, a naturalized citizen who was born in Mexico and now lives in Santa Ana, said he enjoyed listening to Kaine recently on a Spanish-speaking newscast.

“I respect him more for speaking Spanish,” Muñoz Reyes said.

Like Guillermina Reyes, he said he planned to vote for Clinton, regardless.

Still, he said, the gesture is even more welcome during a year of heightened rhetoric against Latinos from the other side of the aisle — particularly from Trump, who on the day he announced his candidacy said “killers and rapists” were among those crossing the U.S. border from Mexico.

Even for elected officials, it’s no longer enough to simply run as a Latino.

“Fifteen years ago, this business I’m in, the window dressing was seen as enough,” said Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.). “Having the right name was enough. Speaking the language was enough. That’s not true anymore.

“Our vote is not a cattle call. You’re not going to get our vote because you have the right person speaking the right language at the right time.”

Minnie Santillan, a political consultant and staff member for California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), said Latinos are sophisticated voters who will rally behind the candidate who shares their values and is good for their party, regardless of heritage.

She watched those dynamics play out in 2000, when she helped Cal Dooley, a white New Democrat from Visalia, beat Republican Rich Rodriguez in one of the most fiercely contested U.S. House races in the state that year.

At least one poll found Rodriguez with a lead of three percentage points, and he even had a campaign boost from then-Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush. But on election day, voters seemed to care more about experience and stances on the issues, Santillan said. Dooley, a white farmer with large land holdings, was elected in a district with the heaviest concentration of Latinos in the Central Valley.

“Our people are smart enough to read through the fluff,” she said. “Our community is no different than any other community across the country. We want to be able to send our children to college. We want our children to have their healthcare needs met. … We want to have a vibrant economy so that our families will be able to put that bread on the table.”

Spanish might help Kaine some.

“It is a starting point,” she said. “But it’s just that — a starting point.”

Duara reported from Phoenix, Carcamo from Los Angeles and Ulloa from Sacramento.

Follow them on Twitter: @nigelduara @thecindycarcamo @jazmineulloa

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