By Raimundo Rojas
At 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 2, 2004, Marta Maria Cruz was still in line at a voting precinct in Hialeah, Florida. It was warm for an autumn day, but the temperature in Miami's suburbs doesn't dip much below 80 degrees this time of year. It was hot, and the line kept growing.
The voters, mostly Latinos, were busy chatting with each other and fanning themselves with Bush/ Cheney fans that someone had distributed hours before.
Cars would pass by and honk their horns in support for those waiting their turn to vote.
Many in line began to get nervous as the hour neared 7 p.m. - - the time when the polls in this Florida time zone would close. A poll worker came out and assured them that if they were in line at 7 p.m. they would get to vote.
And vote they did.
Led in groups, they would leave their Bush/Cheney fans with the people in line behind them, and went to cast their ballots. At 7:03 p.m., Marta Cruz went into her voting booth and cast her vote for George Bush. By 10 p.m., polls showed that she was a part of the 55% of Florida's Latinos who voted to re-elect the president.
Florida's Hispanics gave the President the largest percentage of votes of any single state. With their help, the President was able to win 44% of the national Hispanic vote and, in the process, quite possibly the electoral votes in Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado.
Many members of the pro-abortion media are now terribly divided about how to report - - and interpret - - the actual percentage of the Latino vote that went for President Bush. Some are grudgingly conceding that Mr. Bush increased his percentage by 10 points over 2000.
However, pro-Kerry Latino groups brazenly claim the percentage of Hispanics voting for Bush just can't be right. The exit polls MUST be wrong, they insist. Disbelief reigns as the only possible explanation.
In a year when we saw Hispanics become the largest minority, perhaps a quick look back at the response of the Abortion Establishment might explain the November 2 results.
Planned Parenthood created a pro-abortion chaplain's position within its organization. The fact that he was a Hispanic who on many occasions has wrongfully claimed that abortion on demand is in the best interest of the Hispanic community is no accident. This was another attempt by Planned Parenthood to lay the ground work for the pandering that was to come.
On April 25, 2004, during the unfortunately named "March for Women's Lives," many pro-abortion Hispanics from groups with questionable membership numbers claimed that this year, unlike any other, Latinos would make the difference at the polls and assure a victory for pro-abortion John Kerry. Speaker after speaker assured the audience that Kerry truly knew what was best for Hispanics in the United States.
However, a closer look would have shown that, with the exception of the few Hispanic speakers shrilling from the podium, there weren't many Hispanics there. Yet those gathered truly believed that their rhetoric was gospel. Oops.
The Kerry campaign and its supporters probably were taken in by stories such as the one that appeared July 22, 2004, on the front page of the Washington Post. The story was titled, "Kerry Has Strong Advantage Among Latino Voters."
The article, written by two Post staff writers, goes on to claim that Kerry had a 2-1 advantage of Latino voters. It quoted Paul Rivera, senior political adviser for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, as saying, "Our goal is to exceed the Clinton-Gore number from 1996, which was 72 percent." He also claimed that the [Kerry] campaign hoped not only for a record turnout but also a record percentage. Oops again.
Unfortunately for them, they weren't listening when Governor Bill Richardson, the Latino governor of New Mexico, spoke at the Democratic National Convention this last summer. He spoke of the importance of the Hispanic vote and what the Democrats needed to do to defeat George Bush.
Gov. Richardson was prophetic when he said, "The issue is whether we can hold his [Bush's] share of the Hispanic vote to under 35 percent; if it goes up to 40 percent, we lose the election."
The election was lost for them, and yet many pro-abortion Democrats still claim the President couldn't have gotten the 44% of the Latino vote that he did.
Why did President Bush make big gains among Latino voters in the key states of New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona, and assure his victory in those states? Because many Hispanics weren't listening to the propaganda or believing the spin. Post-election Democratic squabbling over the specific percentage of the Hispanic vote that went for Bush seems to be more important to them than analyzing why so many Hispanics voted for President Bush. Just ask Marta Cruz.
"Kerry wants me to believe him when he says life begins at conception, but he's in favor of all abortions including partial-birth abortions," she said. "He kept Miguel Estrada from becoming a member of the [federal appeals] court just because pro-abortion groups asked him to block Estrada's nomination."
She concluded, "How can I vote for such a man?"
How indeed.