If Hillary Clinton is counting on massive Latino support for her candidacy in Texas, there may be a generational flaw in her plan, an article in the San Antonio Express-News suggests today.
Reporter Gary Sharrer notes that
San Antonio's first Hispanic mayor Henry Cisneros, 60, is supporting Clinton. The city's second Hispanic mayor, Ed Garza, 39, elected 20 years after Cisneros, is supporting Obama.
Contrasting the different political allegiances of elected Hispanic officials with their elected-official children, Sharrar's article found opinions aligned more with age than ethnicity.
Highlighting several political families, Sharrer reports, for example,
State Sen. Eddie Lucio of Brownsville also supports Clinton. But his son, state Rep. Eddie Lucio III, has endorsed Obama.
...
The children of older Texas Democrats were not even old enough to vote for Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential candidacy, the younger Lucio, 29, said.
"There's a clean slate for this (younger) generation," he said. "They weren't voting during the Clinton years. We have two fantastic candidates. Obama's message and Obama's plans really bring it home to me."
And speaking of newspapers, as a Texan I'm struck by the endorsements Obama has racked up from papers that often differ significantly in their recommendations. You can argue that newspaper endorsements don't mean much any more, but the range of the ones he has gathered is what caught my eye - so far, the major ones I'm aware of include the El Paso Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman (and Austin Chronicle) and the San Antonio Express-News. Combined, their circulation covers most of the population centers of this oversized state.