Minority groups launch voter drive

Organizations pledge to register more people of color for Sept. 12 primaries

Friday, Aug. 11, 2006

With minorities now comprising more than 40 percent of the population in Montgomery County, local advocacy groups want to make this election season one in which government representation reflects the demographic trends.

‘‘This is an historic moment for the immigrant community,” said Gustavo Torres, executive director of Casa of Maryland Inc., which advocates for immigrant workers’ rights. ‘‘We are going to choose the right people to represent our community, people who look like us.”

Torres spoke Monday at the Smithville Colored School, now a museum in Silver Spring, where 21 organizations representing minority groups signed a pledge to try to sign up all unregistered voters in the county by the Aug. 22 deadline for the Sept. 12 primaries and to continue voter outreach and empowerment efforts afterward.

‘‘Watch out,” the county’s NAACP president, Henry Hailstock, warned would-be legislators. ‘‘You better come up with the issues we care about.”

Hailstock called the elections ‘‘critical” to all minority groups. ‘‘We can be a formidable force to make an impact in this community, this country, this state,” he said.

Torres said the number of unregistered minority voters statewide was 277,000, but there is no reliable way to count unregistered voters, let alone unregistered minority voters, said Gilberto Zelaya of the Montgomery County Board of Elections. As of July 31, however, there are 502,422 registered voters in the county, he said.

The pledge signed by the organizations Monday calls for voter registration as the starting point in a movement for affordable housing and health care, quality education and economic development for all.

The push among minority groups for increased representation in the voting booth coincides with politicians paying more attention to minority constituents, said Nicholas Rathod of the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan research institute in Washington. ‘‘People are seeing more and more how important these votes are to candidates,” he said.

Rathod, senior manager of state and regional affairs, called President Bush’s courting of the Latino vote in 2000 and 2004 ‘‘watershed” moments, combined with the growth of the Latino and black communities.

‘‘They are not going to go away,” he said of minority groups. ‘‘Candidates need to consider and address their concerns. They can no longer be taken for granted.”

But whether population increases will translate into votes remains to be seen, said pollster G, Keith Haller, president of Bethesda’s Potomac Inc. ‘‘It takes a long time of maturation to create a political force,” he said, noting that the recent election of minority candidates in Southern California followed after 10 to 20 years of organization.

In Montgomery County, primary voters tend to be 55 and older and are longtime voters, Haller said, not the younger voters being targeted by the minority advocates. ‘‘The hardest thing in the world is to get people registered,” he said.

Carmen Larsen, secretary of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Montgomery County, signed the pledge Monday, emphasizing the privileges gained once someone votes. ‘‘If you can vote, you can go over and talk to your representatives about what is going on in your community,” she said.

Equally as important to Larsen is the accompanying economic empowerment. An owner of a small business in Chevy Chase, Larsen has worked with the U.S. House Small Business Committee since 1998 and seen the problems small, minority-owned businesses face in procuring government bids. ‘‘If we can get minority small businesses at the table, we can have more of a say,” she said. ‘‘We need more proactive outreach for the entire community. The minority community is just underrepresented.”