HispanicTrending

Recover Your Money Before It Is To Late

May 16, 2009
By Benjamin Ledbetter

The number of businesses in America that are closing or going bankrupt is at an all time high. The projections are for the economy to get worse before it gets better.
 
Business in America has gone into survival mode. Only the bills that are absolutely required to stay in business are being paid voluntarily.
 
Are you having a hard time collecting the money owed to you? Being told that there is no money to pay you? Debtors avoiding you? Ignoring your calls? Skipping payments?
 
These are serious warning signs that your debtor is very close to going out of business. You will not get paid on these without forcing these companies to pay.
 
I want to help you recover the money owed to you. We work on a contingency basis, meaning there is no cost for me to attempt to recover your debt unless you received money from your debtor.
 
To contact me, please click on the GGR symbol. This goes to my email. Please email me with your contact information and I will reply immediately. You can also call me directly at 713-400-1438.
 
Don't get left holding the bag. Once a business goes under it is too late to get what is owed to you. Be proactive and move to have your money recovered while there is still a chance. I look forward to assisting you.
 

 
Benjamin Ledbetter
Director of Quality Assurance
Greenberg Grant & Richards, Inc.
Voice: (888) 708-4000, ext: 1140
Fax: (713) 789-0137
E-mail: bledbetter@ggrinc.com
Web: www.ggrinc.com

Real estate swings have affected minorities more than whites, study shows

May 13, 2009
By Tiffany Hsu

The roller-coaster ride of the real estate market over the last 15 years has soared higher and plunged deeper for minorities nationwide than it has for whites, according to a study of homeownership released Tuesday.

The declines in homeownership among African Americans and U.S.-born Latinos in recent years were especially sharp, according to the study by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center in Washington.

Overall, the homeownership rate nationwide dropped from 69% in 2004 to 67.8% last year, a loss of 1.2 percentage points. The rate for black households, though, fell 1.9 percentage points, to 47.5%, reversing increases over four years. The rate for U.S.-born Latinos peaked in 2005 but has since fallen 2.6 percentage points to 53.6%.

The declines among the two minority groups were surprisingly severe, said Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist at the California Assn. of Realtors.

"I don't think it's a function of ethnicity, or at least not exclusively, but has a lot more to do with the socioeconomic situations these households find themselves in," he said.

For Californians, Kleinhenz suspects, the swings are magnified because of traditionally higher home prices and an ownership rate that usually lags behind the national rate by about 10 percentage points.

"We're seeing much more severe corrections taking place in a much shorter period of time," he said. "High home prices drove large segments of the California population to experiment with new types of financing, many of which turned out to be problematic. Households at the margin were trying to get their piece of California homes."

Kleinhenz believes that ownership rates nationwide will start picking up as early as next spring but after that won't reach peak levels any time soon.

During the boom time, roughly 1995 to 2005, minority groups reached for the American dream at a much faster pace than whites did. Homeownership among whites increased 5.6 percentage points to 76.1%, while increases among minority groups ranged from 11.7 percentage points (to 60.8%) for Asians to 6.8 percentage points (to 53.3%) for immigrants. The rate for Latinos rose 9 percentage points to 56.2%, and for African Americans, 7.5 percentage points to 49.4%.

The statistics showed that the gap in homeownership between whites and minorities had narrowed but still remained significant, according to the study's authors, Rakesh Kochhar, Ana Gonzalez-Barrera and Daniel Dockterman.

They also found that blacks and Latinos were more likely than whites to take out higher-priced subprime loans, designed for borrowers with low credit scores. Just 10.5% of loans to whites in 2007 fit that category, compared with 27.6% of loans taken out by Latinos and 33.5% by blacks.

One surprise from the study was that the drop in homeownership hit U.S.-born heads of households harder than immigrants, who were less likely to be homeowners anyway.

The Pew study analyzed data from private and government sources, including the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Inside Barack Obama's Hispanic strategy

May 14, 2009
By JONATHAN MARTIN

To get an idea of just how much effort the Obama administration is putting into retaining the support of the Hispanic community, click on the homepage of Eduardo Sotelo.

Don’t know who that is?

Top Obama aides do, and they’ve already had the president speak twice to the nationally syndicated radio talk show powerhouse better known as “Piolin.”

Last week, they brought the Southern California-based talker into the Oval Office for a sit-down that went largely unnoticed – except, that is, to the millions of listeners in the 52 markets where Piolin is heard.

“We need to be able to communicate through radio and obviously you’ve got the biggest listenership so we’ve got to make sure you’re involved,” Obama said in the interview.

It was just one example of a relentless courtship of the nation’s largest minority group and a pivotal voting bloc that numerous aides say has become a near-obsession of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

After initially facing questions about whether he could win the Hispanic vote, Obama won it by 36 percentage points against a pro-reform Republican – and his staff is determined to do it again in 2012.

Obama officials are focused on the fast-growing interior West and especially this state, which they believe the president lost only because it is John McCain’s home. With states such as Arizona adding congressional districts after the 2010 census – and thus electoral votes – turning the West into a Democratic bulwark could ensure a lock on the presidency, Obama’s strategists believe.

And they're backing it up with personal attention from Obama, who made his second trek to Arizona in barely four months in office. The president addressed Arizona State University graduates in a mostly full football stadium Wednesday, winning cheers from a crowd of about 60,000 when he went off-script at one point to pay homage to Latino icon Cesar Chavez in his commencement speech.

Yet even as the Obama charm offensive continues, the administration is faced with twin political challenges that ultimately may threaten any good will they’ve won from Hispanics – how he handles immigration reform and his first Supreme Court nomination. Hispanic leaders say their voters are watching.

“He will ultimately be judged by the Hispanic community on what he does for the weakest and most vulnerable,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the veteran Chicago Democrat, referring to the issue on which he’s become a national leader, comprehensive immigration reform.

 

Gutierrez said he and fellow Hispanic officials appreciate the wooing and White House invites, but want action on the issue of providing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. And he doesn’t mince words about what he sees as White House foot-dragging on the issue, which proved difficult to tackle even in better economic times.

“If Rahm thinks he can get away with not doing anything on immigration and still have the support of Latino voters, it won’t get done,” said Gutierrez, who has had a long and at times contentious relationship with his fellow Chicago pol.

But Emanuel aside, Gutierrez said he believes Obama is “reluctant” on the issue and that little progress has been made since the president had the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to the White House in March.

Obama pledged at his 100 Days press conference to work with Gutierrez and another member on immigration reform, but Gutierrez quipped: “That’s why you shouldn’t have term limits.”

“Because if you don’t have term limits, and you’ve been here for nine terms, you don’t get all lit up because the president mentioned your name at a press conference,” he said. “You look for what substantially has changed given his comment.”

Janet Murguia, president of La Raza, said she has been invited to the White House for a series of conferences and meetings this year but was still waiting for a clearer sign on Obama’s intentions on immigration.

“There’s going to be growing frustration if we don’t see some tangible and real signals that this is going to be carried out in earnest this fall,” Murguia said, suggesting that Obama needed to give a speech or somehow make clear this summer that he wanted Congress to act.

Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, also lavished praise on the White House effort to be inclusive but was equally candid: “I think they genuinely want to do [immigration reform] but they genuinely want to do other things a lot more.”

Obama himself conceded to Piolin on the radio last week that “we’ve been delayed a little because of the economic crisis” in addressing immigration. He said it was his “hope is that we can get something moving this year.”

That is, of course, different than getting an actual bill signed into law this year.

A senior administration official recognized that Gutierrez is “pushing very hard” on the issue and acknowledged its significance to the Latino community.

“The immigration issue tends to suck up all the oxygen,” said the official. “But our other major priorities, especially the economy but also health care, are also Latino issues.”

And while getting an immigration bill done isn’t the only thing weighing heavily on the minds of Hispanics, it’s not just the economy and health care. The community is making no secret of their strong desire to see the first Hispanic justice appointed to the Supreme Court, and the Hispanic Caucus has sent Obama a letter urging him to do just that.

Rep. Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat and member of the House leadership, said picking an Hispanic to replace David Souter would spark an “off-the-charts” reaction among Hispanics.

And if the president passed over the community?

“Then people would say the game is still played by the same people,” said Becerra, who himself nearly joined Obama’s Cabinet. “The game has not been changed. People would have every right to say that the doors of opportunity haven’t been completely opened.”

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz), who made a point to note his support for Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, said “it would just build up [anticipation] for the next appointment.”

“The urgency would be greater than it is now,” Grijalva said.

Murguia said plainly that it would be “a real opportunity for him to solidify his support with the Latino community.”

White House officials are reluctant to discuss the high court pick, but they note that this isn’t likely to be the president’s only appointment. Press secretary Robert Gibbs said this week that lobbying wouldn’t be helpful.

While anxious on immigration and the court pick, Obama’s Hispanic allies in Congress and advocacy groups generally offer praise on what they see as an unprecedented effort to include them – and not just on traditional Latino or minority issues.

It’s a point of pride for the White House.

“We’re not just doing this on the obvious conversations, but in every major policy conversation,” said a senior administration official.

Hispanics, the official noted, were at the table for meetings on the budget, the stimulus, health care and for a fiscal summit. And a major education speech was delivered before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Another top White House aide pointed out that when the president travels, they don’t just include Hispanic leaders in the intimate meetings set up before and after events in the usual places like California but in rust belt states like Ohio and Indiana, too.

Obama aides have put special emphasis on catering to the Spanish-language media.

They held a town hall meeting on the H1N1 virus earlier this month entirely in Spanish (except for the president).

When they announced their easing of the sanctions on Cuba last month, it was done by in Spanish and English by a bilingual NSC official.

All the daily press releases and advisories also go out in Spanish.

Obama has been interviewed on a variety of Hispanic radio and TV programs, including Univision, Telemundo and CNN En Espanol. Aides also note that the president has twice used his prime-time press conferences to call on Spanish-media representatives.

More quietly, aides such as Emanuel, energy and climate czar Carol Browner, domestic policy chief Melody Barnes and cabinet secretaries have also conducted briefings. And on the day of the State of the Union speech, newscasters from the Spanish-language TV stations got their own preview from Vice President Joe Biden.

“For many it’s the news of choice,” said Becerra of the Spanish-language channels.

When Piolin asked Obama if he had the votes in Congress on immigration reform, the president was candid.

“Probably not yet,” he said

But when it comes time to rally support for the bill, Obama said he would need the talk show host’s help.
“You can count on me,” Piolin assured.

Source: Politico

Census Bureau Estimates Nearly Half of Children Under Age 5 are Minorities

Estimates find nation’s population growing older, more diverse

May 14, 2009
Source: U.S. Census Bureau News

     The U.S. Census Bureau today released national population estimates showing that our nation is becoming older and more racially and ethnically diverse. The estimates found that nearly half (47 percent) of the nation’s children younger than five were a minority in 2008, with 25 percent being Hispanic. For all children under 18, 44 percent were a minority and 22 percent were Hispanic.

     “These estimates are a prelude to the information we will collect next year in the 2010 Census, giving us an accurate portrait of our nation at the national, state and local level,” said Census Bureau Acting Director Tom Mesenbourg.

     The nation’s overall minority population on July 1, 2008, was 104.6 million, or 34 percent of the total population. Minorities, defined as any group other than single-race, non-Hispanic white, increased by 2.3 percent from 2007 to 2008.

     The largest and fastest-growing minority group was Hispanics, who reached 46.9 million in 2008, up by 3.2 percent from 2007. In 2008, nearly one in six U.S. residents was Hispanic.

     The Census Bureau estimates the number of Asians at 15.5 million in 2008. Asians were the second fastest-growing minority group from 2007 to 2008, increasing by 2.7 percent.

     Following Asians in growth were Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders (increasing 2.4 percent to 1.1 million), American Indians and Alaska Natives (increasing 1.7 percent to 4.9 million) and blacks or African-Americans (increasing 1.3 percent to 41.1 million). The population of non-Hispanic whites who indicated no other race increased by 0.2 percent to 199.5 million.

     There were 5.2 million people who were of two or more races in 2008, up 3.4 percent from 2007.

     The U.S. population is not only becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, it is also growing older: the median age reached 36.8 in 2008, up 1.5 years since 2000. There were 38.9 million people 65 and older in 2008, comprising 12.8 percent of the total population. Of this group, 5.7 million were 85 years old and older. In 2000, 12.4 percent of the total population was 65 and older.

     As the population ages, there are relatively more women than men. For those under age 18, 51.2 percent are male, but the percentage declines to 42.4 percent for the population age 65 and older and to just 32.6 percent for the population 85 and older. Women represent 50.7 percent of the total population.

     The total number of children under age 5 was 21 million in 2008, or 6.9 percent of the total population, compared with 19.2 million and 6.8 percent in 2000.

     The number of elementary school-age children (age 5 to 13) was 36 million (11.8 percent of the total population) in 2008, down 1.3 percentage points (1 million) from 2000. In contrast, the number of high school-age children (age 14 to 17) increased, from 16.1 million and 5.7 percent of the total population in 2000 to 16.9 million, or 5.6 percent of the total population, in 2008.

     There were 191.2 million working-age adults (age 18 to 64) in 2008, representing 62.9 percent of the total population, an increase of 17.1 million and 1 percentage point from 2000.

     Other highlights:

     Hispanics

    * The Hispanic population is much younger than the population as a whole, with a median age of 27.7 years in 2008, compared with 36.8 for the total U.S. population.
    * Thirty-four percent of the Hispanic population was under 18 and 6 percent age 65 or older. The corresponding percentages for the total population were 24 percent and 13 percent.

     Blacks

    * The median age for blacks was 30.3 in 2008.
    * About 30 percent of the black population was under age 18, while 8 percent was 65 or older.

     Asians

    * The median age for Asians was 34.2 as of 2008.
    * Almost 26 percent of the Asian population was under age 18, while 9 percent was 65 or older.

     American Indians and Alaska Natives

    * The median age for American Indians and Alaska Natives in 2008 was 29.7.
    * More than 30 percent of the American Indian and Alaska Native population was under 18, while 8 percent was 65 or older.

     Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders

    * The median age for Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders was 27.7 in 2008.
    * Almost 34 percent of the Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander population was under 18, while 6 percent was 65 or older.

     Non-Hispanic Single-Race White

    * The single-race, non-Hispanic white population was much older than the population as a whole, with a median age in 2008 of 41.1.
    * About 21 percent of the non-Hispanic single-race white population was under 18, while 16 percent was 65 or older.

Why Does Google Send U.S. Hispanics To Foreign Web Sites?

May 14, 2009
by Joseph Kutchera

Put yourself in the shoes of a bi-lingual or Spanish-preferring U.S. Hispanic and try searching in Spanish on Google, Yahoo or MSN and what do you find? A good portion of the results, sometimes approaching 50%, come from sites based in Mexico, Spain, and other Spanish-speaking countries.

Let's look at some examples I found recently on the first page of natural (not paid) results on Google.com:

1) Vuelos a Nueva York (flights to New York): 9 out of 10 were foreign

2) Restaurantes en Los Angeles (restaurants in L.A.): 6 out of 11 were foreign

3) Recetas mexicanas (Mexican recipes): 5 out of 10 were foreign

4) Computadoras baratas (cheap computers): 6 out of 10 were foreign

Globalization of Information and News

However surprising this may be, we need to look no further than Google's corporate mission statement to see why this is the case: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google and other search engines index sites globally while we marketers, agencies and media sellers work within the economic and political borders of the U.S.

A search engine robot ranks results in each language by keyword ranking, the quality of the content and the number of sites that link to that site (with a possible preference to sites based within that country's borders). So, when a Hispanic searches for a niche subject that a Hispanic publisher hasn't provided in Spanish, where will a U.S. search engine send them? Wherever else in the world that content exists online in Spanish: Mexico, Spain, Argentina, etc.

Why is this happening?

In addition to the globalization of media, this highlights a number of trends in consumer behavior and lessons for U.S. Hispanics marketers:

    * Spanish-language sites/pages based in the U.S. may not be optimized for search engines as well as sites in other countries where Spanish is the main language.

    * Many U.S. Hispanics search in Spanish and may prefer visiting sites from their country of origin, depending upon their level of acculturation.

    * Spanish-language markets that invest much more with local, Spanish-language online publishers, like Spain, are more likely to have content online and therefore appear more often in search results.

    * U.S. Hispanic advertisers have lagged behind in moving their budgets online and therefore have provided less of an incentive for U.S. Hispanic publishers to post a wide variety of content online.

Nevertheless, even though English reigns supreme as the most utilized language online, Spanish may catch up soon as computer prices continue to fall and publishers bring more content online. New Netbooks today, for example, cost around $150, making it much easier for Hispanics to check email, use the Internet and call their relatives via Skype or MSN.

Solutions to this problem

The good news amidst this seismic change in consumer behavior is the opportunity that this presents to marketing professionals who are ready to try new and more sophisticated ways of marketing to U.S. Hispanics online. Here are some questions to ask yourself and your media partners for managing this issue:

1) Are you buying U.S.-only geo-targeted inventory on your search and banner buys? Or are allowing your publishing partners to serve those impressions wherever they have visitors across the globe?

2) Is your Spanish-language site (or pages) optimized for search engines?

3) Are you reaching U.S. Hispanics on country-of-origin web sites through ad networks or exchanges as they land on content pages (once they've clicked on search engine results)?

4) Are you applying additional layers of targeting like behavioral, contextual, or language targeting to further segment and understand your Hispanic audience online?

5) How does this consumer behavior with regards to search engines inform the way your brand reaches Spanish-language consumers online both domestically and globally?

Source: Media Post

Austin Vida May 2009 is Out

It’s Latino Music Month in Austin, thanks in great part to the Austin Latino Music Association (ALMA), which means the live music capital will “baila” a little more enthusiastically this month. ALMA has provided us a month-long list of Latino music showcases, highlighting the diverse array of sounds and styles that local Latino artists are producing in our city. From a Cinco de Mayo showcase at Emo’s with polka-punk-rockers Piñata Protest to a two-night stand featuring Grammy-nominated Grupo Fantasma at Antone’s, you’re sure to find something you like. All this music month madness culminates with the second annual Pachanga Music Festival at Fiesta Gardens on May 30.

This being Latin Music Month, as well as my official introduction as Austin Vida’s music editor, we thought it would be appropriate to dub the May issue our “music issue.” We’ve got tons of album reviews from local artists (Myrna Cabello, Girl In A Coma) and international stars (Mexican Institute of Sound, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs). We’ve also got an impressive cast of Q&A and band profiles: Adrian Quesada of Grupo Fantasma and Brownout; local Latin-rockers Del Castillo, fresh off the release of their new self-titled album; and a loud, heavy-hitting metal band you may not have heard of called Pack of Wolves. Believe us, you will be hearing about them in the future.

And last, but definitely not least, we’ve managed to capture most of this great music on videotape. Our May music issue is the first in Austin Vida’s history to incorporate streaming video. We’ve got footage of lots of great local bands performing live in Austin venues, like Del Castillo at Antone’s and Brownout at Scholz Garten. I’m not only Austin Vida’s music editor, but I’m also a videographer and I’ve been filming Austin bands since last summer for my blog ‘NITES (nitesatx.blogspot.com). I’m happy to be lending my video and writing skills to Austin Vida, and I’m proud to be the newest addition to the team. Cheers, y que les vayan bien.

-- Ajay Miranda, Austin Vida Music Editor

FTC accuses Golden Empire Mortgage of bias against Latino borrowers

May 11, 2009
By E. Scott Reckard

Have mortgage lenders discriminated against minority borrowers by charging them higher interest rates and fees? Fair-lending advocacy groups have long maintained that this is so, and federal consumer protection officials are agreeing in a case involving a California home lender.

The Federal Trade Commission said Monday that it had accused a Bakersfield-based mortgage banking company of charging Latinos higher prices for mortgage loans than it charged non-Latino whites. The agency alleged that the discrepancies could not be explained by applicants' credit histories or underwriting risk.

A lawyer for the company, Golden Empire Mortgage Inc., disputed the FTC's methodology and said he would fight the allegations in court.

The FTC lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, names as defendants Golden Empire, which has offices throughout California and other Western states, and its owner, Howard D. Kootstra.

Federal law bars creditors from discriminating against applicants for credit on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age or the fact that an applicant's income is derived from public assistance.

The FTC alleged that the problem stemmed from Golden Empire's practice of giving its employees and branch managers wide leeway to make more money by charging "overages," higher fees and interest rates than the borrowers qualified for. The complaint alleged that the practice resulted in Latinos being charged more because of their national origin.

"The defendants allegedly paid loan officers a percentage of the overages as a commission and failed to monitor whether Hispanic consumers were paying higher overages than non-Hispanic white borrowers," the FTC said in a news release.

The attorney for Golden Empire and Kootstra, Paul F. Hancock of Miami, said the charges resulted from a multiyear investigation by the FTC and focused on an analysis of loans made in 2006, at the height of the housing boom and easy-money era.

Hancock said his analysis of the same data that the FTC subpoenaed did not show that Latinos received significantly worse loans than non-Latino whites when all factors were considered.

The lawsuit, alleging violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, asks the federal court to order Golden Empire to stop its alleged discrimination, repay the borrowers who were overcharged and refund the FTC's costs in pursuing the case.

Source: Los Angeles Times

One of the Most Important Men in Politics You Haven't Heard Of

May 11, 2009
By RealClearPolitics

Sergio Bendixen, an immigrant from Peru who became an American citizen at 15, is one of the most influential people in American politics. What separates him from others of a similar title is his relative anonymity. Bendixen's political consulting firm Bendixen & Associates, founded in 1984 and now located in Miami, provides an all-in-one resource for U.S. candidates to receive public opinion polls, communications consulting, multilingual research, and focus groups. Bendixen is the Democratic Party's go-to-guy on the ever important Hispanic vote. Bendixen's efforts are not limited to the United States. He conducts extensive efforts in Latin American elections, where like in the U.S., he has personally pioneered the region's political public polling, research, and commercial advertising.
      
As a 2003 Sun-Sentinel article noted, "If you want to know what Latinos or Latino Americans are thinking, ask Sergio". Because American politics is becoming increasingly affected by the Hispanic vote, especially in swing states that helped Barack Obama win the Presidency, his importance in American politics has never been greater. And yet, despite Bendixen's monopoly on Hispanic public opinion and vote getting, his overwhelming success with the Hillary Clinton campaign in the Democratic Primary and Obama campaign in the General Election, he remains far from the spotlight. Bendixen is, despite his enormous clout among Democratic politicians, the most underappreciated and underreported man in American politics.

 

INTERVIEW WITH SERGIO BENDIXEN, PRESIDENT OF BENDIXEN & ASSOCIATES ALONG WITH FERNAND AMANDI, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FIRM

RCP: How did you get to where you are today?
Bendixen: McGovern was my very first political experience, obviously it came from my very strong feelings about the Vietnam War. That was the first campaign I was involved in because nobody in Florida wanted to run the McGovern campaign. From the very beginning, Florida was written off. I got the chance to run the campaign in Miami Dade County and that gave me a great opportunity to get to understand politics and campaigns. McGovern finished sixth in the Florida primary. So I figured on primary night, this guy isn't going anywhere, I might as well go back to Peru and I took off for a few months. I'll never forget, in a bus going from a little city in Bolivia to another, I found a Newsweek about three weeks old it says ‘Prairie Populist Wins Wisconsin' and it was my first news from the United States that McGovern had actually survived and was now a very likely candidate for the nomination. So I came back to the United States as quickly as I could, by that time the convention had already happened. My contacts in the McGovern campaign were like "Where did you disappear to? We thought you were dead". But they said "You were a great organizer, you did your ten precincts, we actually won those precincts. We never got a chance to tell you because you took off too quickly but we're looking for somebody to run Miami Dade County." I got $50 a week and gas money and even though we didn't have a chance to win it was very much like the Obama campaign with a big following of people. And with that huge number we basically took over the Democratic Party in Florida. You find people who peeled off of the McGovern campaign all over the country.

RCP: You worked for Jimmy Carter as well.
Bendixen: The national experience I got was in the Jimmy Carter campaign. Starting in 1975, we put together the pre-campaign that led to the floor of the Democratic convention straw ballot where Jimmy Carter defeated George Wallace, and convinced the Democratic establishment that he could actually defeat Wallace. And that led to, with some encouragement from us, convincing some people like Paul Udall and Fred Harris and others to leaving Florida to Carter, because of course he had no chance to become president. But this would be a good way to defeat Wallace. But he kind of broke the deal by becoming President.

RCP: How did Bendixen Associates come about?
Bendixen: Well after that I worked in Congress for Bill Lehman (a North Miami Beach Democrat) from 1974 through 1982. And I met Alan Cranston and he asked me to run his Presidential campaign which I did. And even though I'm sure no one remembers anything about Cranston for President, actually it got terrific press in '83, we won a lot of the straw ballots, we defeated Mondale in Wisconsin, I got written up quite a bit, and based on that I opened my Bendixen Associates in 1984 in Washington. We were doing all types of campaigns in Latin America and the United States and at that time Spanish television in America became important. The first network came out, they were looking for people who spoke Spanish and knew politics. I was one of the only people who had some experience in American politics and could talk about it in Spanish. You would see me for a project here and a project there but by 1989 they had grown to the point where they offered me one hell of a deal. It was Univision at the time and they said put your business aside, we don't want any conflicts of interest, and become our full-time political commentator/analyst/correspondent/pollster all-in-one and move to California. And the big deal there was that for the first time Hispanics were going to elect a county commissioner in Los Angeles. I stayed in California for ten years and worked not only the California political scene but the whole Hispanic political scene which was beginning to emerge at that time. The Hispanic political scene was just beginning to emerge at that time. In the ‘80s all it was were the Cubans in Miami but the Hispanic electorate was nothing that anyone would pay any attention to. But in the ‘90s it was blossoming everywhere. And then Pete Wilson, I was in the middle of that.

RCP: He must be your favorite politician.
Bendixen: (laughing) My favorite. He made my career. But was important was that those ten years allowed me in a sense to understand the Hispanic community. I think I understand it very well and I think that's why I'm a good consultant and I give good advice and help people win elections. But the combination of having the political experience of the ‘70s and ‘80s, with the presidential campaigns and consulting work, and then getting heavily involved in the Hispanic community through Univision and Telemundo, it allowed me to become a valuable consultant to the Democratic Party today.

RCP: And that's a good lead-in to your influence in the Democratic Party today. You worked for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primary this past Presidential election. Describe how that came about and the campaign itself.
Bendixen: My relationship with Hillary comes from when I left Univision and Telemundo and went back to Miami and reopened my consulting business. One of the first things I started to do was come to Washington in the ‘90s, Tom Daschle helped me a lot, and I gave conference after conference on how the Hispanic vote was growing, how many of them only spoke Spanish, and the Republicans were way ahead. And George W. Bush became President and Bush was stealing that vote from us. And I think my most important contribution to the Democratic Party was alerting them to what was going on and unless they worked it they couldn't count on Hispanic votes in the future. And that became very true because in 2002 and 2004 the Republicans got a substantial percentage of the Hispanic vote with George Bush leading the way and Jeb Bush basically being the architect. That became a very important part of what I did which was a wake-up call to the Democratic Party with the help of Simon Rosenberg and the New Democrat Network which helped me deliver that message and Hillary was there all the way. Daschle would invite me and Hillary was there and she became convinced that I was a valuable consultant and I knew the Hispanic vote and I could make the Democratic Party grow within it and so when she ran for President asked me to be the strategist for her Hispanic effort.

RCP: And looking back on it, you would say Hillary's performance in the Democratic Primary among Hispanics was a resounding success, correct?
Bendixen: It was a huge success. Even though Barack Obama worked extremely hard to win over the Hispanic vote and I think he did a good enough job creating a base that made it easier in the general election. To basically get to that 70% goal, we were able to defeat him 2 to 1 in Texas and California, Nevada, everywhere that we went. Why? Because she ran a very aggressive campaign, and she had a very big advantage, being associated with Bill Clinton, and her own personal history with the community. I think we ran a very effective campaign. It didn't get a lot of publicity, it didn't get written up a lot but I think our Spanish-language advertising and our Spanish-language approach was unprecedented; nobody else had ever been as comprehensive in their approach to the Hispanic electorate as we were.

Amandi: And there's no question that the Hispanic support that she had within the primary is what extended her ability to run and go deep into the primaries. On Super Tuesday, she won California because of the massive Hispanic turnout, winning around 65-35. In Texas she was able to win on the base of the Hispanic vote. Barack won the caucus that night but she won the popular vote by 3 or 4 points simply on the basis of the Hispanic vote which allowed her to go on. And in fact, the last primary, in Puerto Rico, where I think she won 75-25.

RCP: After Hillary loses the primary, Obama immediately hires you to run his Hispanic vote campaign. What was that like?
Bendixen: It was not difficult at all because we never ran against him in the primaries. I don't think we ever mentioned his name in all our advertising campaigns, it was always positive. I think that's why we did so well in. We didn't deal with Obama's positives or negatives, we dealt with the fact that the community wanted health insurance, better public schools, a stable economy so they didn't have to worry about an increase in prices or people losing their jobs. It was as simple as that. We just hammered away at that message, that we would go back to the ‘90s where people remembered wonderful economic times, but this time we were going to add health assurance and maybe better public schools and that was very powerful. And with my work in the Democratic party it was natural and the Obama campaign made it very easy for us, they treated us with great respect, we felt welcome from the first day.

RCP: How did your strategy change when you moved to Obama's campaign and faced John McCain who was the best among the Republican candidates at attracting Hispanic voters? He had wide in-state success when running for Senate and Obama had struggled mightily to gain Hispanic support in the Democratic primary.
Amandi: To the Obama campaign's credit, at the time, they understood politically that for them to win the Presidency, they needed to do the types of margins that Bill Clinton saw, and particularly in four critical states: Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida. And we had shown in our polling and Sergio had been forecasting for years that for the Democrats to recapture the electoral map nationally to give them the White House, they had to reverse the trend that the Bush and Republicans had shown among Hispanics four years earlier. The Obama campaign recognized this from the beginning, and they basically said listen, ‘we need you to do for us what you did for Hillary with Hispanics because if we can't win these four states where we think the Hispanic vote is pivotal, we don't have a chance."

Bendixen: There was a clear choice when we got involved with Obama. He was in the low 50s among Hispanics and McCain was in the low 40s or high 30s. That wasn't good enough. We needed to get to 70; we needed to take points away from him and get all the undecideds. Not an easy thing We did some focus groups to see what the strategy was and it was clear at that time that the 20 percent we needed to pick up were not sold on Obama as the candidate because they were not sold on the man - they were very much sold on the agenda of the Democratic Party. And so maybe our greatest contribution to the Obama campaign at that point was to convince them in the beginning, in the August, September, early October period - they had to sell the agenda, they had to campaign on health insurance, education, the economy, on Iraq, and that the personal sale of Obama should come at the end after he had been identified with those issues. And they followed that strategy almost to a tee.

Amandi: To their credit, because it was a little counterintuitive, we were in essence saying, "the campaign that you ran so successfully in the primary that won you the nomination featuring the person and the charisma and the personality of Obama does not work without these policies if you're going to win Hispanics. We can't go there because you're going to lose their support." So it was basically a leap of faith for them to say, ‘all right, we're going to trust you guys, we're not going to lead with our ace, our star card, Obama's persona, but instead establish him through the issues.

Bendixen: Especially in the contrasts with McCain. Especially on health and education, and the economy.

Amandi: Trying to gain the undecideds, which were really the opportunity for us to gain votes in the community, there was not a familiarity, there was no history with Obama. Number one they didn't know him, so that lack of familiarity led to a distrust. Because here he was promising all these things, they saw it as rhetoric, who is this guy promising all these things?

Bendixen: The bottom line was they were not really sold on him yet, the 20 percent that we were after, but when you gave them the contrast on how McCain felt on health insurance, how McCain had supported vouchers and Obama was for full funding for public schools, Obama was really for giving tax breaks to the middle class. All that you heard from McCain was ‘protect the rich' and the war was a very strong issue. That allowed us to get from the 50s basically to the low 60s. But then when we did our focus groups in October, we found out that because of the issues now they felt a lot more comfortable with Obama. So we put him on television with a commercial, and if you haven't seen you should look at it. Let's put Obama on television speaking Spanish and that got him from the low 60s to the high 60s. A very powerful commercial, one of the most powerful ever made for Spanish language communications in the United States. If they had reversed that, if they had gone with Obama first, and the issues later I think we would've probably lost ten points and might not have won Florida and maybe not Nevada.

RCP: How has Obama performed during his short time in office in terms of reaching out to the Hispanic community?
Bendixen: We've done two polls since he became President among all Hispanic voters in the U.S in March that showed him at about 80% approval. And then among the most difficult of all groups, Cuban Americans, the poll on Obama's Cuban policy, which got written up in the New York Times showed that he was at about 60% approval. So he's done a remarkable job. I can't speak to whether the Hispanic establishment is happy with appointments or political things but at the grassroots, in terms of your average Hispanic, he's extremely popular.

RCP: Describe the Cuban-American vote which was been steadfast Republican even when pundits predicted in recent years that Democrats would make significant inroads, although there does seem to be a generational divide with younger voters going Democrat.
Bendixen: A lot of people give all the credit to the younger generation when the true agent of change and the more important group in Miami's Cuban electorate is what we call the Cuban immigrants as opposed to the Cuban exiles. We allow almost 30,000 Cubans to come over almost every year. Since Mariel [The Mariel boatlift] there have been about half a million Cubans arriving in the United States. Most of them live in Miami and they have a completely different point of view on Cuba policy and on politics in general. And that is driven by the structural change, with regards to Cuban relations, these immigrants since the eighties and the new generations are much more in favor of a negotiation approach to Cuba while the older exiles much more want to stick to confrontation. But what we saw in the last poll, which I think was the most important part, was that even among the older generation Obama has done something remarkable - he's gotten them to rethink their position, and at least are willing to give it a try. They like Obama enough to say, "if this is where you want to go, go for it."

RCP: Is there anything good coming out of the GOP or positives you see in their message?
Bendixen: Well George Bush was fantastic at appealing to Hispanics. Hispanics are more socially conservative than much of the Democratic Party, they rarely vote based on their conservative positions on gay marriage and abortion. There's a quote that says, "I didn't come to America to get an abortion or gay marriage, it doesn't affect our lives." But there is a Hispanic culture that may be different from the American culture at large. The two most important things to Hispanics are the joy of life and commitment to relationships. When you ask many Americans how many immediate family members they have, they'll say 5, being their two parents and three siblings. Hispanics will say thirty with their aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, etc. There's also the idea that Americans prize success and material wealth more than they do.


RCP: Explain how you have pioneered the use of multilingual polling in the U.S.
Bendixen: Millions were watching Spanish language television. In 2000, 2001 I was approached by New America to do the same thing in America that I had done in Latin America with multilingual polling. They asked, "Can you do the same thing in America that you did in Latin America with American Koreans, Iranians, Armenians, etc.. My answer was its mission impossible because its 12 different languages and it would cost too much money. And they asked how much and I said $250,000, and they said ‘ok'. And I got that money to set about the job of developing the methodology of asking the same question in twelve different languages to Americans who spoke different languages. And you could measure all groups, interview Haitians in translations that are easy to understand. And it's much more effective. For American Hispanics, for example, they often feel much more comfortable answering questions in their own languages. When using the English language, they're often the most cautious. And so we were the first to conduct multilingual polling in the United States.

RCP: Explain your extensive work in Latin American politics which dates as far back as your introduction to U.S. politics.
Bendixen: The big deal for political consultants who wanted to do this type work was that I was the only one who spoke Spanish. The culture of Latin America is so different. In Venezuela, where I worked for the Christian Democrats, the political advertising was slow action, music, colors, rather than your candidate's positions. You create huge demonstrations. And as dictatorships were falling and democracies were sprouting up, Univision polled almost every election. We had to do door to door. In El Salvador we had to hire three Guatemalan helicopters to get ballots to the voting stations because guerrillas had blocked off all streets. [Bendixen and Associates work is now 80% with American politics and 20% with Latin American politics]

RCP: And a final Question: You are a 1970 graduate of Notre Dame.
Bendixen: Back when we had a football team.

RCP: Has President Obama given you a phone call yet, asking for advice?
Bendixen: No, but I won't be protesting, I'll be cheering him on.

Through Boom and Bust: Minorities, Immigrants and Homeownership

May 12, 2009
by Rakesh Kochhar, Ana Gonzalez-Barrera,and Daniel Dockterman

The boom-and-bust cycle in the U.S. housing market over the past decade and a half has generated greater gains and larger losses for minority groups than it has for whites, according to an analysis of housing, economic and demographic data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. From 1995 through the middle of this decade, homeownership rates rose more rapidly among all minorities than among whites. But since the start of the housing bust in 2005, rates have fallen more steeply for two of the nation's largest minority groups-blacks and native-born Latinos-than for the rest of the population.

Overall, the ups and downs in the housing market since 1995 have reduced the homeownership gap between whites and all racial and ethnic minority groups. However, a substantial gap persists. As of 2008, 74.9% of whites owned homes, compared with 59.1% of Asians, 48.9% of Hispanics and 47.5% of blacks.

At the same time, blacks and Latinos remain far more likely than whites to borrow in the subprime market where loans are usually higher priced. In 2007, 27.6% of home purchase loans to Hispanics and 33.5% to blacks were higher-priced loans, compared with just 10.5% of home purchase loans to whites that year. For black homeowners who had a higher-priced mortgage, the typical annual percentage rate (APR) was about 3 percentage points greater than the rate on a typical 30-year, fixed-rate conventional mortgage; for Latinos who had a higher-priced mortgage, the typical rate was about 2.5 percentage points higher than that of the conventional mortgage.

Moreover, in 2007, blacks and Hispanics borrowed higher amounts than did whites with similar incomes, exposing themselves to greater debt relative to their incomes. On both counts-the likelihood of higher-priced borrowing and higher debt relative to income-the gap between minorities and whites is greater among high-income households than among low-income households.

One surprise to emerge from this analysis is that the recent decline in the homeownership rate has hit native-born heads of households harder than immigrant householders. Immigrant householders are less likely than native-born householders to be homeowners (52.9% versus 70.0% in 2008) but their losses in recent years have been smaller than those of the native born.

The explanation for the relatively modest impact of the recent housing market turmoil on immigrants appears to lie in the changing characteristics of the foreign born. Among other things, the typical immigrant in 2008 had spent more years in the U.S. and was more likely to be a U.S. citizen than was the typical immigrant in 1995. Those factors, strongly associated with higher rates of homeownership, appear to have mitigated recent troubles in the housing market among immigrants.

This report also focuses on differences in 2008 foreclosure rates across the nation's 3,141 counties and the role of demography in explaining those differences. The analysis finds that counties with higher shares of immigrant residents than the average county had elevated rates of foreclosure. However, it cannot be inferred from this finding that immigration levels in and of themselves are the cause of elevated foreclosures. The state of the local economy, house prices and higher-priced lending are also linked to differences in foreclosure rates across counties.

Data from a number of sources are used in this study. They include demographic and homeownership data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) and Current Population Survey (CPS), foreclosure data from RealtyTrac®, loan data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), labor market data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and home prices from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).

Source: Pew Hispanic Center (Visit this site to download the full report)

Naturalized citizens are poised to reshape California's political landscape

May 11, 2009
By Teresa Watanabe

More than 1 million immigrants became U.S. citizens last year, the largest surge in history, hastening the ethnic transformation of California's political landscape with more Latinos and Asians now eligible to vote.

Leading the wave, California's 300,000 new citizens accounted for nearly one-third of the nation's total and represented a near-doubling over 2006, according to a recent report by the U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics. Florida recorded the second-largest group of new citizens, and Texas claimed the fastest growth.

Mexicans, who have traditionally registered low rates of naturalization, represented the largest group, with nearly one-fourth of the total. They were followed by Indians, Filipinos, Chinese, Cubans and Vietnamese.

The new citizens are reshaping California's electorate and are likely to reorder the state's policy priorities, some political analysts predict. Several polls show that Latinos and Asians are more supportive than whites of public investments and broad services, even if they require higher taxes.

Most Latinos, for instance, support all five budget propositions on the May ballot while most whites oppose them, according to recent polls by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. Although viewed as largely conservative, most Asian Americans supported a 2004 measure requiring large businesses to provide health insurance to employees, even as it failed at the ballot box, according to an analysis by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles.

Nationally, nonwhite voters overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, while most whites voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a recent study by the Pew Research Center showed. And there were more nonwhite voters last year -- Latino registered voters increased by 3 million compared with 2004, said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voting Registration Education Project in Los Angeles.

The surge in new citizens will accelerate by several years the California electorate's shift from majority white to nonwhite, according to Dowell Myers, a USC demographer. Although that shift won't be completed until 2026, Myers and others said, Latinos, Asians and African Americans are already joining with progressive whites to elect ethnically diverse candidates.

"As we have more Asian American and Latino voters, our electorate will begin to look more like the face of the public at large," said Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute. "From the standpoint of representative democracy, few things could be more important than this."

The path to the 1-million mark was paved by an organized collaboration among community activists, the Spanish-language media and government. Univision TV network and La Opinion newspaper, in particular, had many stories about the importance of citizenship and demystified the application process, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund in Los Angeles.

"You could not go throughout Los Angeles and not be bombarded with the message that it's time to become a citizen," said Vargas, whose organization helped spearhead the national campaign called Ya Es Hora ("It's Time").

U.S. immigration officials worked weekends to distribute information, develop TV scripts and provide an official to conduct an on-air mock citizenship interview, Vargas said. Jane Arellano, district director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' seven-county area covering Southern California, was the movement's "unsung hero," he said.

Arellano said she first met with activists in 2006 about their citizenship campaign plans. As she watched citizenship applications shoot up in January 2008, Arellano immediately appealed to her agency's headquarters for extra help.

In all, she managed to add more than 100 extra staff, won authorization for weekend overtime work and worked with the courts to add and expand citizenship ceremonies. The high point came in September, when 34,000 new citizens took the oath of allegiance -- more than a fourfold increase over the previous year, Arellano said.

Meanwhile, the region's adult and community colleges joined the effort, expanding English and civics classes to help prepare immigrants for their citizenship test. The Los Angeles Unified School District's adult education division nearly doubled the number of citizenship classes last year over the previous year, officials said.

One of those new Latino voters was Joanuen Llamas, a 26-year-old Mexico native and Los Angeles homemaker who legally immigrated here in 1998. She was inspired to become a citizen in March 2008 after joining the massive immigrant rights marches of recent years and took to heart their slogan, "Today we march, tomorrow we vote."

"It made me think that that's the way to change anything in this country," said Llamas, who cast her first vote, for Obama, in November.

Those demographic and political trends will continue to marginalize Republicans unless the party makes major changes in its tone and policies toward immigrants, said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican political consultant in Los Angeles.

"The reason the Republican Party is in such dire straits is its inability to successfully reach out and change its image among Latinos and Asians," he said. "The image is too shrill on immigration. It's an image of an intolerant cult."

But Gonzalez said Latinos and other immigrants still had far to go, noting that 8 million of them have not yet claimed citizenship although they are eligible. "The test is going forward," he said.

Indeed, new citizenship applications have already dropped significantly. In the Southern California district, for instance, applications plunged to 58,433 last year from 253,666 the previous year, U.S. immigration statistics show.

Most experts say that a 69% increase in application fees to $675 was one reason for the steep decline. The Obama administration is proposing $206 million in funding for immigration services that could help reduce the fee by about $50, and activists are hoping for more, said Rosalind Gold of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund. New citizen Alfonso Vergara is one product of the massive citizenship campaign effort. A Mexico native and pharmaceutical technician, the 31-year-old said he had postponed applying for citizenship for years because the process seemed too time-consuming.

But last year, he said, he was swept up in the marches and the call for civic activism.

"It was time for me to build a stronger future for my family and become a more active person in this country," he said.

Ultimately, Vargas said, the citizenship wave will help Latinos and other new U.S. citizens contribute even more to the country.

"This isn't about helping Latinos for the sake of helping Latinos," Vargas said. "This is about helping Latinos succeed for the sake of America."

Source: Los Angeles Times