Political Strategists Discuss Minority Politics

The black and Latino populations will replace swing groups like “soccer moms” in determining the political balance of power over the next decade, said a panel of political strategists at the Kennedy School of Government’s ARCO forum last night.

Nearly 600 people crowded into the forum for the event, entitled “The Changing Dynamics of Black and Latino Politics.”

Harvard College Democrats, Harvard Republican Club, the Black Students Association and Fuerza Latina co-sponsored the forum to address the increasing political influence of minority groups.

Moderator Xavier de Souza Briggs, who is an assistant professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, pointed to statistics illustrating the rise of minorities’ presence.

In the past decade the black population grew by 28 percent and the Latino population grew at nearly twice that rate, Briggs said.

The panelists said it is now vitally necessary for politicians to adapt to the growing number of black and Latino voters.

President Bush could lose the 2004 election by 3 million votes if his percentage of black and Latino supporters remains the same, said Matthew Dowd, a Republican Party pollster who helped craft the Bush campaign’s minority outreach effort.

Forum participants also spoke of the moral considerations of inequality in congressional representation.

“Of the 1,867 senators in our nation’s history, only 15 have been minorities,” said Donna Brazille, a grass-roots campaign manager for the Gore campaign. “No more crumbs, no more scraps, let’s get a bigger piece of the pie.”

Republican Latino leader Lionel Sosa, who founded the nation’s largest Hispanic advertising firm and wrote a book on increasing minorities’ socioeconomic standing, echoed Brazille’s call for blacks and Hispanics to unify.

“Hispanics are tired of being portrayed as victims in need of government aid,” Sosa said, arguing that the Democratic Party does not hold a monopoly on Hispanic voters and issues.

Some participants questioned whether the current electoral system best represents all members of society.

“Our government was put together by an all-white, all-male, mostly slave-owning and aristocratic minority,” said Lani Guinier, the first Latino woman to be tenured at Harvard Law School.

“We are operating within a system that is incredibly unjust from its origins,” she said.

The forum also identified trends that coincided with the influx of minority groups into the political spectrum.

“It’s why New York is now a democratic state,” said Dowd. “It’s why New Jersey, which used to be an indicator state, is now a democratic state. Arizona, which is now safely Republican, will be an indicator state by the end of the decade.”

Yet many of the speakers described the ability of Republicans to win the minority vote.

Dowd cited Bush’s two gubernatorial elections in Texas, during which he focused on school reform and lowering taxes, and raised his Hispanic vote from 24 percent to 48 percent in four years.