WILL ROMNEY HELP GOVERNOR LUIS FORTUñO PUSH FOR PUERTO RICO TO BECOME A STATE?

March 19, 2012 by Jessica Marie Gutierrez 4 Comments

SOURCE AP/LATINO FOX NEWS http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/03/19/puerto-rico-primary-gives-push-to-luis-fortunos-statehood-bid/

The most important issue for Gov. Luis Fortuño during Puerto Rico’s GOP primary may not be at the top of the list for most Latinos, but Mitt Romney hopes his endorsement will help win Latino voters.

Fortuño is pushing for Puerto Rico to become a state—and he sees Romney as an ally.

The former Massachusetts governor sympathizes more openly with Puerto Rico’s pro-statehood camp than his GOP competitors. While Romney’s top rival, Rick Santorum, called on Wednesday for Puerto Rico to adopt English as the island’s official language as a condition for becoming a state, Romney says Puerto Rico should be admitted to the union without such a condition if its citizens decide to vote to join in a referendum scheduled for Nov. 6.

“It just makes sense,” Fortuño told Fox News. “We have been part of the United States since 1898. Natural-born citizens since 1917. Our men and women have served in greater numbers than most states since then. And I believe that it’s the right thing to do in the 21st century, to allow almost 4 million American citizens to express our will and then to work with the White House and hopefully President Romney to address this issue.”

President Barack Obama does not have an official position on Puerto Rico’s status, saying he will respect the decision of the island’s voters.

Only voters affiliated with the Fortuño’s conservative New Progressive Party were permitted to cast ballots in the island’s Republican primary this year – a requirement that obligated pro-Republican Puerto Ricans to declare their support for statehood.

With the combined benefit of Fortuño’s endorsement and Santorum’s gaffes with the local press, Romney cruised to an easy victory, taking some 83 percent of the vote and all of the 20 delegates up for grabs. About 130,000 Puerto Ricans cast votes in Sunday’s primary, according to the Associated Press.

The victory emboldened Romney, who polls poorly among Latinos nationally.

“Those people who don’t think that Latinos will vote for a Republican need to take a look in Puerto Rico,” Romney said. “I intend to become our nominee and I intend to get Latino voters to vote for a Republican.”

A Fox News Latino poll found only 14 percent of likely Hispanic voters favored Romney in a head-to-head race with Obama.

SUMMARY

Puerto Rico Primary By the Numbers

83 percent of vote reported

VOTES PERCENT

Romney 98,375 83%

Santorum 9,524 8%

Gingrich 2,431 2%

Paul 1,452 1%
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Filed Under: LATINO POLITICS Tagged With: Barack Obama, Luis Fortuño, Mitt Romney, Puerto Rico, Republican, Rick Santorum, Romney, United States

FROM HOUSEWIFE TO POLITICA: WATCH THE EVA LONGORIA INTERVIEW IN HER NEW ROLE AS NATIONAL CO-CHAIR FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA

March 19, 2012 by Jessica Marie Gutierrez 3 Comments

THE HISPANIC BLOG IS THE LATEST HISPANIC NEWS BY JESSICA MARIE GUTIERREZ

WATCH THE INTERVIEW ON MSNBC CLICK HERE TO WATCH

Actress Eva Longoria talks about her new role as a national co-chair for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign.

>>> poised to become a deciding factor in key states like colorado, new mexico and nevada, the obama campaign is now deploying some star power to sell its message tolatinos . eva longoria shot to fame playing is gabriel solis on the tv show “desperate housewives” now. she joins me now. so nice to meet you. you were very involved in the last election campaign four years ago. you’re taking a larger role now. what is your main purpose and how do you see yourself being helpful to the candidate?

>> i was asked to be a co-chair. my roles are to engage and mobilize the voters specifically with the latino and women ‘s community. those are two areas of interest i participate in heavily and pretty literate about. i’ll be going to swing states .

FLICKR | IMAGINECUP

>> you know a lot about health carey know. and we in fact, profiled you on nbc nightly news because of what you’re doing with special needs community.

>> yes.

>> but the women ‘s issues, women ‘s health issues have become front and center force of what has happened on the republican side . now in texas, interestingly, governor perry has turned back $35 million for planned parenthood preventive programs, including pap tests and mammograms and texas as you know better than i has i think it’s your home state has the highest number of uninsured women .

>> yeah.

photo source: AP

>> do you think this is going to become a mobilizing force?

>> absolutely. the election is going to be about choice and pretty clear for womenwho’s on their side. there is an attack on women ‘s health care and president obama ‘s policies are the only ones that are going to move the agenda for women ‘s rights. there’s so much dismantling of what we’ve accomplished as women by the right side. so i’m going to be out there and campaigning for him. i think one of the things about the affordable care act that just came out was that the gender rating for women , we’re charged more because we go to the doctors more. the affordable care act will eliminate the gender rating for insurers. women need to be educated on everything that obama has done in his first term regarding their rights and access to health care .

>> now, one of the striking things that is quite noticeable is that there are seven co-chair co-chairs who are latino .

>> that’s not a mistake, you know?

http://fotos.starmedia.com/2012/02/eva-longoria-critica-a-mitt-romney-136512.html

>> that is absolutely targeting 16.3% of the population. mitt romney had this to say after winning puerto rico on his chances of doing very well with hispanic voters.

>> those people who don’t think that latinos need to vote for a republican need to look in puerto rico and see there the conservative principles and latino voters go together and hispanic voters are going to vote for republicans if we stand for something, conservative principles that bring growth and good jobs and rising home values. that’s why we’re going to get latino voters to help us out.

>> now, george bush did very well in his first election with hispanic voters.

2011 Eva Longoria / WhoSay

>> right.

>> and that has gone down.

>> he’s also from the state of texas . .

>> do you think that immigration reform is the issue that has —

>> the clip is interesting. he makes a huge generalization because he won the primary so puerto rico voters, republicans who live in puerto rico voted for him is a huge generalization he’s going to get the latino vote. 63% of latinos in america are mexican-american. there’s central americans and of all the candidates, pitt romney is probably the one on the wrong side of every issue pertaining to latinos , education, the economy. he’s campaigning with — he’s causing the anti- immigration law from arizona a model law for the rest of the country. he’s campaigning with the author of it. that is polarizing to latinos . he wants to veto the d.r.e.a.m. act if he was in office. that is dangerous for our community. obama for me is the only one that understands that the success of the future of america is intricately tied to the success of the hispanic community.

>> there have been many hispanic leaders in the last couple years who have been disappointed in the president for not doing more on immigration reform .

>> its an a problem. reform has been on the national agenda for three administrations.

>> even longer.

[photo source: Judy Eddy/WENN.] via Perez Hilton

>> and it does need to be fixed. it’s broken. nobody wants illegal immigration . the misconception is latinos are for illegal immigration . that is not true. i know there’s disappointment in the latino community but what he has done, what he can do, he’s proposed changes to keep families together. he has reallocated resources from thedepartment of homeland security to focus on deporting criminals, not students. so i think also because the gop primary has been so long, all we’ve heard is attacks on his record and that’s what i’m going to be doing is getting out there and showing the great things about what he’s done in his first term. latinos need to hear it.

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Filed Under: LATINO POLITICS Tagged With: Associated Press, Barack Obama, Desperate Housewives, Eva Longoria, Getty Images, hispanic, Hispanic and Latino Americans, JESSICA MARIE, MSNBC, Republican, Texas, United States, Women's rights

TOP 10 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE ILLINOIS’ REPUBLICAN PRIMARY: STATE’S EMERGING COMMUNITIES OF COLOR & IMMIGRATION POLITICS

March 19, 2012 by Jessica Marie Gutierrez Leave a Comment

THE HISPANIC BLOG IS THE LATEST HISPANIC NEWS BY JESSICA MARIE GUTIERREZ

photo source AP/M. SPENCER GREENE Gov. Pat Quinn celebrates with students and supporters after signing the Illinois DREAM Act into law on August 1, 2011.

A Look at the State’s Emerging Communities of Color in Light of the Republican Primary

Illinois’s slow population growth over the last decade—3.3 percent, compared to a nationwide average of 9.7 percent—masks striking demographic changes in the state. While the white share of the population declined by 4.1 percent between 2000 and 2010, the state’s Hispanic, Asian American, Native American, Alaska Native, and mixed-race communities grew significantly. In 2010 Illinois had the fifth-largest Hispanic population in the country and the 10th-largest Hispanic share as a percent of the total population.

In light of the state’s primary tomorrow, here are some facts about how the state’s growing communities of color are changing Illinois’s economy and electorate.

1. Communities of color—particularly Latinos—drive Illinois’s population growth. The surging Hispanic population in particular propelled the state’s population increase. In 2010 Hispanics represented 15.8 percent of the state’s population, a growth rate of 32 percent over the decade. Hispanic population growth alone accounted for 89.5 percentof the state’s total growth from 2000 to 2009.

2. Children of color now make up close to half of the children in Illinois. In 2008 Illinois was 1 of 20 states in the nation with a child population that was more than 40 percent minority.

3. Communities of color are younger and represent the future of the state. In 2010 the median age of non-Hispanic whites in the state was 41.6 years. By comparison, Hispanics’ median age was only 26.3 years, while the median age of African Americans was32.7 years and Asians 34.6 years.

4. The increase in Illinois’s communities of color will soon translate into political power. In 2008 there were 749,000 eligible Hispanic voters in Illinois—the sixth-largesteligible Hispanic voter population in the nation. In that year the state had the 10th-largestHispanic voting share nationwide, with Hispanics comprising 8 percent of the total eligible voter population in the state. In the 2010 elections 658,000 African Americans, 241,000Hispanics, and 88,000 Asians voted in Illinois, and there is room for these numbers to grow. The pressure to turn numbers into political power will rise along with the number of eligible voters of color in the state.

5. In 2008 the support of Illinois’s voters of color helped then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) defeat Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the state. Even though Sen. McCain won 57 percent of white voters, Sen. Obama won the state with 61.8 percent of the total vote in 2008. More than 1 million voters of color cast their ballots in Illinois in 2008—more than 25 percent of all votes cast. Exit polls suggest that 95 percent of African American voters, 67 percent of Hispanic voters, and 62 percent of Asian voters supported Sen. Obama at the polls.

6. Illinois is a standout state in protecting its foreign-born population. On May 5, 2011, Gov. Pat Quinn (D) announced that Illinois would not participate in the controversial Secure Communities program (where immigrants booked into a county jail in a participating jurisdiction have their fingerprints shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement), because of concerns that the program was being used to racially profile Latinos and resulting in the deportation of immigrants not convicted of serious crimes. This action spurred other states, such as Massachusetts and New York, to drop the program as well.

7. Illinois passed a DREAM Act and stopped an Arizona-style anti-immigration law. The Illinois DREAM Act creates a privately funded “DREAM Fund,” giving undocumented immigrants access to much-needed financial aid to afford college, and putting them one step closer to reaching the American Dream. On the flip side, Illinois State Rep. Randy Ramey’s (R) Arizona-styled bill H.B. 1969—filed in February 2011—has not been able to make it out of committee.

8. Families of color in Illinois face significant economic hurdles. In 2010 the median household income for African Americans in the state was $32,866—just above 55 percent of the household income for whites. The median household income for Hispanic residents in Illinois that year was 76 percent of non-Hispanic white income.

9. Unemployment hits these communities harder than any other. In 2010, 22.6 percent of the African American civilian labor force over the age of 16 in Illinois was unemployed. This level was 2.4 times as high as the comparable unemployment rate of whites (9.2 percent). Hispanic unemployment in 2010 was also high, at 13.2 percent.

10. Nevertheless, communities of color contribute significantly to the state’s economy. Unauthorized immigrants paid $500 million in state and local taxes in 2010. In 2009 the purchasing power of Illinois Latinos totaled $43.6 billion. The same year Asian American buying power totaled $23.8 billion. The 56,567 Latino-owned businesses in the state made more than $10 billion in sales in 2007, the last year for which data are available, while the state’s 59,367 Asian-owned businesses generated more than $18 billion in sales.

HAS SENATOR MARCO RUBIO BUMPED UP HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY TO BE RELEASED BEFORE GOP CONVENTION?

March 19, 2012 by Jessica Marie Gutierrez 1 Comment

Rubio moves publication of memoir before GOP convention

EXCLUSIVE: Marco Rubio, the 41-year-old first-term senator from Florida of Cuban extraction with sterling conservative credentials and matinee star looks, has bumped up the publication of his autobiography from October to June. Politico‘s Mike Allen broke the news this morning. The Sentinel imprint of Penguin Group is moving up the publication of Sen. Marco Rubio’s memoir, “An American Son.” It was originally planned for October but will now go on sale June 19. The jacket is attached, including the flap copy. There will also be a Spanish language edition, “Un Hijo Americano.” Adrian Zackheim, president and publisher of Sentinel: “National interest in Senator Rubio keeps heating up and we want the book out in the world as quickly as possible. It’s important to the Senator and to us that people hear his remarkable story, and that of his family, directly from him.”

See the jacket full size

–Rubio is racing a more critical version, “The Rise of Marco Rubio,” by WashPost’s Manuel Roig-Franzia, edited by Simon & Schuster’s Priscilla Painton, scheduled for release July 3.

–From Rubio’s jacket: “Rubio spent countless hours with his grandfather … ‘Papa’ loved being Cuban, but he also loved America for being a beacon of liberty to oppressed people around the world. As Rubio puts it, ‘My grandfather didn’t know America was exceptional because he read about it in a book. He lived it and saw it with his own eyes. … Conservatism is not about leaving people behind. Conservatism is about allowing people to catch up. … [M]y dad would work banquets at hotels. At these events there are usually only two people standing—the speaker on the podium and the bartender behind the bar. My dad was the one behind the bar. But he worked all his life so that his kids could make the symbolic journey from the bar to the podium.’”

WHICH COMPANIES ARE TARGETING HISPANIC CONSUMERS RIGHT NOW?

March 19, 2012 by Jessica Marie Gutierrez Leave a Comment

THE HISPANIC BLOG IS THE LATEST HISPANIC NEWS BY JESSICA MARIE GUTIERREZ

A summary for, Media Sales Executives, Advertising Agencies and Corporate Marketers to

see what clients are moving into the Hispanic market and/or targeting Hispanic consumers

right now.

Post Foods-XL Alliance
Post Food’s has announced that XL Alliance will be its new advertising agency-of-record in support of Honey Bunches of Oats Hispanic marketing, the Bradington Herald reports. The New York and Denver-based agency will work in collaboration with their current media agency, MV42, Mediavest Multicultural. “We have a strong commitment to the growth of the Post business,” said Tony Shurman, Post Marketing Director. “XL Alliance has the right framework and is a great marketing partner to help continue the positive momentum we have achieved within the multicultural community.” In its new role, XL will evolve its incumbent assignment as Hispanic digital and social media marketing agency to include advertising, cross-channel planning and shopper marketing for Honey Bunches of Oats.Liliana Gil, cofounder and Managing Partner of XL Alliance; an executive who departed from Johnson & Johnson three years ago to join partners Enrique Arbelaez, Manny Fields and Armando Martin as cofounders of the agency. In addition to Post Foods, XL serves a roster of clients that includes Kroger Co., Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Diageo, among others.

American Heart Association – Interlex
The American Heart Association is working with Interlex to conduct branding, awareness and attitudinal research to develop a new positioning strategy for the American Stroke Association Brand. “For the past few months we’ve been deep into the research phase, conducting both quantitative and qualitative studies across General, African American, Asian American, Hispanic, South Asian, and Native American segments,” said Interlex President and CEO Rudy Ruiz. The goal, according to Ruiz, is to help the Association build a brand platform and communications strategy which is universally appealing and multicultural at the core. “This is a national initiative,” said Ruiz. “The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association is very committed to improving the health of all Americans. And since minority segments are often disproportionately impacted by stroke, it is very important that they reach these audiences in meaningful, motivational ways.”The San Antonio-based shop joins the Ad Council, Grey Worldwide, and Omnicom’s Cone Communications on the AHA/ASA roster of agencies.
Yahoo! En español – Toyota Prius
Yahoo! en Español launched a new blog, “Vida Ecologica” sponsored by Toyota Prius v, presenting tips on how to live an environmentally-conscious life.
American Airlines – Q’VIVA
American Airlines and Q’VIVA! The Chosen have teamed up with the show’s producers to offer fans a chance to win a unique VIP experience to attend a live Q’VIVA! performance in the United States.

Walt Disney Records
Walt Disney Records will be releasing two Song & Story titles and a collection of Disney Princess songs in Spanish for the very first time. The label will also release the Spanish language digital soundtracks for Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. All five albums will be released tomorrow March 20, 2012 wherever music is sold, digitally and physically. “We’re thrilled to offer Spanish-speaking families an additional way to experience the magic of Disney music in their native language,” says Cathleen Taff, SVP/GM, Disney Music Group.

Pepsi NEXT
Starting March 26, cola lovers everywhere will be invited to get a first taste of new Pepsi NEXT, a new beverage which intends to be a game changer in the cola category and the first to deliver real cola taste with 60% less sugar than Pepsi-Cola. “We’re on a mission to get consumers to experience the real cola taste of Pepsi NEXT for themselves,” said Angelique Krembs, Vice President TM Pepsi Marketing.
Promotions around the launch will include:
– A Walmart sampling program hitting 800 Walmart Supercenter stores across the country, beginning March 26 through the end of April. Consumers can visit facebook.com/pepsinext to find the nearest Walmart store for their risk-free trial of Pepsi NEXT.
– In-market sampling for consumers to try Pepsi NEXT for free across 40+ cities nationwide between the end of March and August 2012.
– A TV ad spot, created by TBWA/Chiat/Day, featuring an excited young couple recording their first interaction with Pepsi NEXT, meanwhile missing the “unbelievable acts” of their baby in the background, from dancing to handstands. This 30-second spot will begin airing nationwide on March 26 on prime-time and cable networks, and will be complemented with online and radio advertising.
– A digital application on facebook.com/pepsinext inviting users to “taste” Pepsi NEXT online.
– Targeted and relevant Hispanic advertising and grassroots marketing.

WILL ROMNEY HELP GOVERNOR LUIS FORTUñO PUSH FOR PUERTO RICO TO BECOME A STATE?

FROM HOUSEWIFE TO POLITICA: WATCH THE EVA LONGORIA INTERVIEW IN HER NEW ROLE AS NATIONAL CO-CHAIR FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA

WATCH THE INTERVIEW ON MSNBC CLICK HERE TO WATCH