http://www.amny.com/news/local/am-hispanic1010,0,1912014.story?coll=amny_home_rail_headlines
amNY.com
By Magdalene Perez
Special to amNewYork
October 10, 2007
New York politicians may want to practice their Spanish.
With 2.2 million Hispanics in the city and counting, Latino voters are
increasingly exerting their influence over city politics.
The signs are everywhere, political observers say, from a
record number of Latinos on the City Council to speculation that Puerto Rican
Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. will run for mayor in 2009.
"You see Latino organizations and community leaders
focused on issues and asking the candidates to respond to those issues,"
said Lillian Rodriguez Lopez, president of the Hispanic Federation, a group
that advocates for Latino voters in New York and New Jersey.
To be sure, Hispanics politicians have long been in the
city's ranks -- Herman Badillo has repeatedly run for mayor and Fernando Ferrer
was the Democratic party's nominee for that office in 2005 -- but observers say
their numbers have swelled in recent years. This surge, coupled with growing
waves of new migration from Mexicans and other groups, could set the stage for
a golden age of Hispanic political power.
Priority number one for Hispanic voters is public education,
according to a 2005 Hispanic Federation survey. Latino New Yorkers want smaller
class sizes, and increased access to preschool and after-school classes.
Equally important to Latino voters are employment and
affordable housing. When union organizer Melissa Mark Viverito was elected to
represent the largely Latino East Harlem and South Bronx, she wanted to know
how new development would affect longtime residents.
"The question is, 'How do I make those opportunities
available to my constituents?'" Viverito said. "How many jobs am I
going to get out of this? How much housing is going to be available to
them?"
Yet even while Hispanic voters may agree on the issues, they
can hardly be lumped into one indistinct group. To better understand the Latino
vote, it helps to look at some of the most important political trends among
Hispanic New Yorkers today: the long-entrenched influence of Puerto Ricans, a fresh
injection of Dominican representatives, and a new crop of Mexican and other
Latino immigrants who are turning out to register to vote.
Puerto Rican influence on city politics has been felt at
least since the first wave of immigrants came in the 1950s and 1960s. Today,
that influence still resonates in networks that have produced some of the
city's most powerful Latino politicians such as Carrion and Ferrer.
In the Bronx, political seats have been passed through the
generations from mother to daughter and father to son, as was the case when
Joel Rivera became the youngest member ever elected to the City Council in
2001, following in the footsteps of his father Jose Rivera, now a state
assembly member.
"I do think there's a generational shift," said
John Mollenkopf, a political science professor and director of the City
University of New York center of Urban Research, "But there's still a lot
of Puerto Rican political leaders."
Long one of the city's largest Hispanic groups, Dominicans
have only recently begun to assert the political influence to match their
numbers. But during the past several years the pace of Dominicans entering city
politics has quickened. Since 2001, voters elected two Dominican
representatives to the City Council, Diana Reyna in Brooklyn and Miguel
Martinez in Washington Heights, and Dominican state assembly member, Jose
Peralta, the first Latino elected to the state assembly in Queens county.
"Those are impressive gains over the last four or five
years given New York City politics," said Lillian Rodriguez Lopez,
president of the Hispanic Federation.
Even beyond electoral seats, Dominicans are exercising
changes on the policy level through appoints to city commissions. In 2004 Mayor
Michael Bloomberg appointed Guillermo Linares as commissioner of the office of
Immigrant Affairs. The appointment was symbolic as well as practical, as
Linares had become the first Dominican to hold public office in the United
States a decade before.
In East Harlem, Jackson Heights and other parts of the city,
it's easy to find a restaurant with owners from El Salvador, an immigration
services center run by Ecuadorians, or a neighborhood association formed by
Mexicans.
Those signs and others testify to the growing diversity of
the Hispanic population in New York, once clearly dominated by Puerto Ricans,
Dominicans and Colombians.
But while the number of Mexican, Central and South American
immigrants is growing rapidly, it may take time feel the full political impact
of these new groups, observers said.
"It takes people a while to learn about American
politics and engage in it," said Mollenkopf. "It takes people on
average eight or nine years to become a citizen."
Even so, with immigration politics dominating the national
stage year after year, new efforts to encourage citizenship and voter
registration are gaining momentum, according to Rodriguez Lopez of the Hispanic
Federation.
"You have an estimated 800,000 permanent residents who
are eligible to become citizens in the five boroughs," said Lopez, citing
a figure that includes Hispanics as well as other immigrant groups.
"That's a significant number of people who could really
turn an election."
New York City Population by Ethnicity
34% White: 2,746,422
28% Hispanic: 2,221,906
24% Black: 1,893,988
12% Asian: 916,367
2% Other: 177,440
Source: 2005 U.S. census estimate
Top issues among Hispanic New Yorkers
1.) Public Education
2) Affordable Housing
3) Job Creation
4) Crime Reduction
5) Health Care
Source: Hispanic Federation survey, 2005
From the 2006 American Community Survey (U.S. Census
estimate)
Mexican
260,622
Puerto Rican
770,123
Cuban
41,133
Other Hispanic or Latino
1,195,949
Copyright © 2007, AM New York