HOW'S YOUR RED-ZONE DEFENSE?

DNC aide decries Hispanic 'disconnect' (Steve Miller, 6/06/03, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The chairman of the Hispanic caucus of the Democratic National Committee said yesterday that there is a "disconnect" in the party regarding the minority vote and accused it of scrapping a $1.5 million plan to attract Hispanics. Alvaro Cifuentes, who also chastised the DNC leadership for failure to hire Hispanics, announced a three-day summit for party Hispanics in September that will be "completely funded on our own, separate from the DNC."

"There is obviously a problem in the party with Hispanic and Latino issues," Mr. Cifuentes said. "We've been trying for the past two years to address them." The DNC did not return calls for comment. The $1.5 million "Hispanic Project" was to be a vast, annual effort that included a get-out-the-vote campaign, recruitment of Hispanic candidates and establishment of satellite offices in key states. Some caucus members insist the plan is still being put together, although they declined to offer details. The summit is a result of indifference from the party's leadership, Mr. Cifuentes said. It is to be held in Albuquerque, N.M. "We aren't waiting around for anybody to put an agenda together anymore," he said. The dilemma is "an interesting problem," said Steven Ybarra, a caucus member who leads the Pacific region for the DNC. "Terry McAuliffe made a pledge to make sure that the voters who were critical were turned out and that we would have the proper resources to make that happen in 2004," Mr. Ybarra said, in reference to the DNC chairman. "And none of that happened." "It will make the job in 2004 all the tougher," Mr. Ybarra added. The "job" entails overtaking Republican gains in luring the Hispanic vote, which has become a Republican Party mandate.

Coleman works to rally Jewish support for Bush (FREDERIC J. FROMMER, Jun. 08, 2003, Associated Press)

Sen. Norm Coleman, one of only three Jewish Republicans in Congress, makes an unorthodox sales pitch to recruit Jews to vote for President Bush.

"Compassionate conservatism is a Jewish ethic," the Minnesota senator tells Jewish audiences in an effort to reverse nearly a century-long trend of Jewish support for Democrats.

In the 2000 presidential election, Bush won only 19 percent of the Jewish vote, according to exit polls. But recent surveys show that Republicans could pick up gains among Jewish voters.

"What I hope to get is more support for George W. Bush," Coleman said in an interview. "He's uniquely situated to significantly expand the percentage of votes he gets from the Jewish community."

That vote could be important in next year's presidential election, even though Jews make up only about 2 percent of the population. That's because they are concentrated in several competitive states, such as Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

"If you get another 10 to 15 percent of the Jewish vote, that could be enough in a close election to tip a lot of those big states," said Steve Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.

For normal people with real lives it must seem absurdly early in the process to be speaking of 2004. But for politicos the campaign is well underway. That's why it is remarkable that Democrats are still having to suck up to their base and the fact that they're seemingly meeting with some resistance is cause for genuine alarm. The GOP base--white men, married men and women, the religious, etc.--is as solid as it's been since Reagan. The battle is being fought on Democratic turf and, for once, the Republicans seem serious about winning it. That's gotta be scary for Democratic strategists. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 8, 2003 7:31 PM