Francesca Chambers
Red Alert Politics
A series of high profile moves by the Republican Party headquarters and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney this week showed that the GOP Establishment understands it must do a better job of reaching out to Hispanic Americans if it ever wants to see a Republican in the White House again.
Monday the Republican National Committee (RNC) announced that the launch of Hispanic outreach programs in swing states and states with growing Hispanic populations, including Virginia, New Mexico Florida, Colorado, Nevada and North Carolina.
“We are going to engage Hispanic and Latinos like we never have before,” said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus during a call with reporters.
RNC spokesperson Alexandra Franceschi told Red Alert Politics that the RNC’s Hispanic outreach program would use “both social media, a mobile campaign, and traditional voter registration and get out the vote efforts.”
The RNC has also increased its efforts to target young Hispanics.
Neri Martinez, who currently Executive Vice Chair of events for the DC Young Republicans, will serve as the State Director for North Carolina. Jayben Castro of the Young Hispanic Republicans will serve as the State Director of Virginia.
Further proof that the GOP is making a real effort to court Hispanic voters is that likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney hired Ed Gillespie, a former RNC Chairman and current a Director of Resurgent Republic, a not-for-profit that specializes in messaging to independent voters.
Another Resurgent Republic Director, Whit Ayers, is working with the RNC on Hispanic Outreach.
Resurgent is currently doing a six-part series on key voting demographic, including young voters and Hispanics.
In just-released data, Resurgent notes that the median age of Hispanics in the United States is 27.3. Another interesting statistic from Resurgent’s interactive page is that on 90 evenings in 2011 Spanish-language news network Univision won the 18-34 demographic — that’s 25 percent of all evenings in 2011.
Resurgent’s data reinforces the importance of the GOP’s plans to reach out to young Hispanic voters, who are clearly interested in politics and make up a large portion of this Hispanic American population.
“The mobile campaign, tumblr blog, and twitter account will play a pivotal role in engaging Latino youth, ” Franceschi said .
Follow the RNC’s Spanish-language twitter @RNCLatinos and Tumblr blog at RNCLatinos.tumblr.com.
Read more: http://redalertpolitics.com/2012/04/19/rnc-steps-up-efforts-to-engage-hispanic-youth/