Awash In The Mainstream: Latino Politics In The 1996 Election

Following the pattern of two prior volumes on presidential election cycles, Ethnic Ironies and From Rhetoric to Reality, and Latino political participation, this new work examines the Latino impact on 1996 presidential campaign and election and Latino efforts to shape electoral outcomes. The contributors include chapters on eight states with large, concentrated Latino populations analyzing the course of the election, efforts by the Latino communities to organize to influence electoral outcomes, and outreach to the Latino communities. Three chapters represent departures from the prior volumes. In the overview chapter, in addition to providing a synthesis of key findings of the state level analyses and relating these developments to the national campaigns, Professors de la Garza and DeSipio review how the literature on presidential campaigns addresses Latino involvement. A new chapter is devoted to an analysis of the Democratic media campaign targeted to the Latino communities which was centrally managed and more extensive than in any previous campaign. A second new chapter is devoted to Latino participation in New England.