The Democratic Party is using ObamaCare in an attempt to woo Hispanic voters to their side and keep them as Democratic voters. In California, where Hispanics will outnumber whites next year, the effort being made is substantial. In Richmond, California, near San Francisco, the Hispanic percentage of the population is almost 40%, so those charged with selling ObamaCare to the public are targeting Hispanic voters in the area.
Community group representatives are targeting groceries, farmers’ markets, and job fairs across California. Shanti Jensen, who works for the Fresno-based California Health Collaborative, said she’s attended more than 20 events and spoken with roughly 400 people. California Health Collaborative received $940,000 from Covered California to sell ObamaCare’s virtues to uninsured women.
Gabriel Sanchez, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Mexico, said, “A lot of the long-term implications, partisanship-wise and electorally, are going to depend on how well the outreach does.” He did acknowledge that Hispanics know little about ObamaCare, saying that Hispanics find the law “complicated and confusing.” But, he predicted, Latinos “remain much more enthusiastic about the law than the general population. Ultimately, a large number of Latinos will enroll and they’ll overwhelmingly like it,”
Dulce Delgadillo, 28, a research assistant at a San Francisco-based community research firm, thought it wouldn’t be quite that easy to sell Hispanics on ObamaCare. He said, “There is a general fear of government by that population. And there is a huge gap in knowledge” about the law’s benefits.
And Mario H. Lopez, president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, also saw difficulties selling Hispanics on Obamacare. He said, “There’s no question that Obamacare is a disastrous health-care policy for the entire country, including the Latino population. The more you explain, the more people get it.”
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