Mitt Romney Leaves His Spanish Behind … in Florida

When Mitt Romney surrogate Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL) says ‘Romney cree en nosotros’ (Romney believes in us) who is included in the pronoun ‘we’? And who is left out?

There are three Spanish-language ads currently on Mitt Romney’s official campaign site: two television ads, entitled Hechos (Facts) and Nosotros (We), and one radio ad, Estoy (I am).  Hechos is a negative ad targeting Gingrich in which a female voiceover compares Gingrich’s claims of being a Reagan-style Republican with the ‘facts’ as the Romney campaign sees them.

In contrast, both Nosotros and Estoy are what would be considered positive ads in which Romney surrogates Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and former Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart tout Romney’s experience, character and support of the Cuban community.

There are three Spanish-related stories that everyone is talking about post-Florida. John Karl’s observation that the only positive ad run by the Romney campaign in Florida was a Spanish-language ad—Nosotros, I assume—has gotten a good deal of publicity. Much has also been made of Romney’s Spanish-speaking son Craig, who acquired the language as a missionary in Chile.  He does the voiceover for the Nosotros ad, in a Spanish that, not surprisingly, features a good deal of aspiration of syllable- and word-final S, a characteristic of Cuban and Chilean varieties of Spanish.

Which brings up another question: are Republican candidates who are opposed to bilingual education and in favor of English as the official language being hypocritical when they do Spanish-language campaign ads?

The Spanish-language story people are not talking about, however, is the sudden and marked dropping of Spanish once polls closed in Florida. Nevada, which caucused only days later, is 26.5% Latino according to the census (compared to Florida’s 22.5%).  Just about the same percentage of Nevadans (20%) and Floridians (20.1%) report speaking Spanish at home.

Where Nevada differs from Florida is in terms of socioeconomic characteristics and political orientation of the Spanish-speaking population. Nearly half (45%) of people who speak Spanish at home in Nevada have less than a college degree (as compared to 26% of Florida’s Spanish speakers) and only 8% of Spanish-speaking Nevadans have a Bachelor’s degree or higher (over 21% in Florida). While almost a quarter of Florida’s foreign-born Spanish speakers are naturalized citizens, this number is less than 15% in Nevada. The unemployment rate for Latinos in Nevada is currently around 19%.

Most importantly, Latinos in Nevada vote overwhelmingly Democrat—76% for Obama in 2008 and 69% for Harry Reid in 2010 according to exit polling reported on CNN.com’s election center. However, there is a significant population of Nevada Latinos who are independent or who vote Republican. Flipping the CNN statistics on their head, we see that 22% of Latinos in Nevada voted for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008 and 30% of Latinos voted for Assemblywoman Sharron Angle (R-NV) in the 2010 Senate race, despite both candidates’ strongly anti-immigrant discourse.

There are no Spanish language ads on Romney’s campaign site for Nevada, although there are several videos for that state including a ‘how to’ on caucusing in the state. The Spanish language ads have disappeared from the ‘latest’ and ‘featured’ sections, and can now be found by trolling through the ‘early states’ remainder bin of ads. In contrast, the SEIU is taking their Dos caras radio ad from Florida to Nevada (and probably beyond), addressing those Latinos who might not be part of Romney’s ‘nosotros’.

The Romney Spanish-language strategy seems to indicate that, beyond Florida, Republicans (if what Romney does can be considered the official Republican approach, and I think it can) are conceding the Spanish-speaking Latino vote in 2012. It is clear from their advertising strategy that when Republicans say ‘nosotros’ they do not include all or even most Latinos; rather, they include only a shrinking percentage of Spanish-speaking Floridians who tend to vote Republican.

I am a sociolinguistic who specializes in Spanish with a particular focus on Spanish in the U.S., bilingualism, queer linguistics and conversation analysis.

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