PRESS RELEASE
from Balsera Communications via PRNewswire-USNewswire
MIAMI, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following release is being issued by Freddy Balsera, Managing Partner of Balsera Communications:
Three weeks before the November election, the Obama
campaign's Hispanic media team bucked the trend of negative campaigning
and took the bold move of making its entire paid Spanish language
message completely positive. Gone were the criticisms of John McCain or
the attacks on his policies. They were replaced instead with uplifting
messages on how Obama would help Hispanic families achieve the American
dream through lower taxes, access to health care and college
assistance. A strategy of hope and promise versus defamation and fear
mongering was how Obama closed the deal with Hispanic voters.
Having the discipline to resist counter punching while
the other side is spewing venom at you is easier said than done. To put
things in perspective, this course was charted at a moment when McCain
and the Republicans were painting Obama as responsible for everything
wrong in the lives of Latinos: the defeat of the immigration bill,
abortions among teenage girls and crime in the inner city. In Miami,
where I live, it went a step further. McCain and his surrogates
appeared more like McCarthy, unabashedly portraying Obama as a
communist in dramatic Cold War fashion. According to them, Obama had
more in common with Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega than
with Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. They were
serving up heaping portions of red meat to their base by engaging in a
Latino "culture war." One hundred percent of McCain's Spanish
television and radio ads in the country were negative.
And in the midst of this maelstrom of attacks and
distortion, the Obama Hispanic media team took a deep breath and
realized that McCain was missing the boat with Latino voters. It was
yet another example of McCain just not getting it. Latinos didn't want
to hear insults and attacks; they wanted high minded politics based on
plans and ideas. They wanted solutions to their problems.
The pundits who said during the primary process that
Hispanics would not support an African American candidate clearly
didn't understand how our community thinks and acts. They completely
misread why Hillary Clinton received a disproportionate amount of
Hispanic support during the primaries. It wasn't about rejecting a
black candidate like the so-called experts said; it was about
supporting someone they believed in and felt they had a relationship
with. So Obama's challenge in the general election was to develop his
own relationship and level of comfort with Hispanics. He lived up to
that.
The McCain campaign rode into the general election with
blinders on, feeling almost arrogantly confident and strong about
McCain's popularity among Hispanics because of his role on immigration
reform. Granted, that is an important issue to Hispanic voters and he
showed tremendous leadership on it, but what they failed to recognize
is that immigration isn't the only issue that mattered to Hispanics in
this election. Unemployment, lack of health care coverage, the war and
gas prices are affecting Hispanics the same as everyone else. For
McCain, being good on immigration wasn't enough in the eyes of
Hispanics if they disagreed with his views on every other issue.
Hispanics wanted someone to vote for, not against. And
McCain never told Hispanics what he stood for and why we should vote
for him; he only told us why not to vote for Obama. That's just not
good enough anymore. Meanwhile, Obama dedicated himself to telling
Hispanic voters who he was and how he would lift us up through better
paying jobs, greater access to health care and college assistance for
our kids. The clincher was when he said it himself in Spanish in his
last TV spot "Sueno Americano."
This election is the greatest example of the evolution
of the Hispanic electorate. Our community played a critical role in
battleground states like Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, New
Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Moreover, Hispanics showed that even
though we strive to preserve our culture and traditions, we are also
very proud of being new Americans and take the future of this country
very seriously. We came here seeking the American dream and want the
very best for this country and all of its people.
Obama made Hispanics feel respected by talking about
issues in a way that inspired us. He invested in our community and made
a historic effort to communicate his vision in terms that were
meaningful and effective to Spanish speaking voters. In the end, he
showed Hispanics that he understood us. The Obama campaign's Hispanic
campaign was the most prolific in the history of presidential politics,
and it was done the right way.
Freddy Balsera is the Managing Partner of Balsera Communications. He
helped develop Obama's Hispanic message and media campaign and also
served as a Latino surrogate for the campaign.