Actress and Voto Latino co-founder Rosario Dawson spoke about the role immigration will play in the upcoming presidential election in an interview with The Daily Caller.
Dawson brought up Romney’s tie to the Latino community — his father was born in Mexico.
“Having his heritage be something that’s going to be really exciting for a lot of people to talk about and be really important for him to be speaking about — what that’s meant to him as an immigrant — as part of an immigrant family and story,” Dawson said.
Dawson contrasted Romney’s roots with the Obama administration’s record setting deportation of illegal immigrants.
“I think he’ll draw a lot of people in, but I think the Republican party has really sort of pushed away the Latino vote and the Latino conversation in such a negative way that I think it’s going to be very difficult for him to kind of get them on board. So that’ll be something that he can really use to make it very personal and that will be really important for him,” Dawson commented.
Despite the Romney’s background, Republicans haven’t done much to emphasize his link to the Hispanic community. NBC’s First Read points out that Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney Super PAC, revealed a $4.3 million ad buy across nine battleground states, greatly outspending the president. However, Republicans aren’t even trying to compete in Hispanic media outlets. According to NBC/Smart Media Delta, Republican are not airing ads on any Hispanic media… at all. Meanwhile, President Obama is spending $435,000 over the next two weeks on Hispanic media buys in Denver, Las Vegas, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami. Romney did release a Spanish speaking ad during the Florida primary, but he’s going to need a lot more than that if he wants to compete with Obama’s ad blitz for the Hispanic vote. If Restore our Future is already spending big money on ad buys, where is the logic in not even trying to compete in Hispanic media?
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