‘Turn Texas blue’ hits headwinds with abortion – David Nather – POLITICO.com

Democrats are gearing up to spend millions of dollars to “turn Texas blue” by bringing in a new generation of Latino voters.

So when an abortion fight flared in Austin this summer, it seemed the stars had aligned — liberals had a hot-button cause to galvanize new supporters who just might stick around for the long haul.

There’s just one problem: Latinos as a group oppose abortion more strongly than most other voting groups.

Right from the start the effort is running into headwinds, since the battle over the anti-abortion bill is sure to create a month-long spectacle that draws attention to an issue that might galvanize liberals nationally, but isn’t very appealing to the very voters Democrats hope to win over in the state.

In their candid moments, Democrats acknowledge that abortion isn’t the issue they would have picked to lead the pitch for Latino votes. The fight was forced upon them, they say, when Gov. Rick Perry added the anti-abortion bill to last month’s special session and revived it in a second special session that started July 1.

“Is this the issue we would have picked to turn Texas blue? No,” Terri Burke, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said with a laugh. “It was kind of thrust at us. We didn’t pick it.”

On the surface, at least, the polls don’t look promising for a party that’s basking in the national spotlight because of a fight over abortion rights. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 53 percent of Hispanic Catholics say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. That’s a lower percentage than white evangelical Protestants and Mormons, but it’s higher than all other religious voting groups, including white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, black Protestants, and Jews.

And Steve Munisteri, the chairman of the Texas Republican Party, cited a poll by the Wilson Perkins Allen research firm that found a 2-1 “pro-life” margin among the state’s Hispanic voters. The poll, conducted for the state GOP, showed that 62 percent of Texas Hispanics who voted in the 2012 election described themselves as pro-life while just 32 percent called themselves pro-choice, according to Chris Perkins, the pollster who worked on the survey.

Some Democratic strategists say the key to winning over Latinos is to avoid focusing too much on any one issue — especially abortion.

via ‘Turn Texas blue’ hits headwinds with abortion – David Nather – POLITICO.com.