Hispanics Would Like A National Leader

Who is the person that Hispanics look to as a national leader? If you had a problem coming up with a name, then you are not alone. Most Hispanics in a recent Pew Research Center survey couldn't come up with one either. The leading contenders were Sonia Sotomayor and Marco Rubio, but each of them could only pull about 5% of Hispanics who view them as national leaders. Antonio Villaraigosa got 3%, and no other person scored at least 3%. About 63% said they didn't know and another 9% said there wasn't a national Hispanic leader.

That makes it quite obvious that this large portion of our population is virtually leaderless -- and it is the fastest growing portion of the U.S. population by far. This is not a good thing. All portions of the population need at least one, if not more, national leaders to voice their concerns and guide the community into ways to address those concerns.

The Republicans were hoping to develop Rubio into a leader of the Hispanic community, but with only 5% of Hispanics viewing him that way, it is obvious that has been a failure. That is because Rubio does not reflect the goals and values of the Hispanic community, but those of white Republicans (especially teabaggers). At best, he is just a token minority for the GOP (much like Michael Steele, Alan Keyes, and Herman Cain were). And like Blacks, Hispanics are not stupid enough to fall for tokens who don't really represent their concerns.

But as the second chart shows, the vast majority of Hispanics think it is important that they have a national leader (around 74% - 75%). And when you look at a demographic breakdown of the Hispanic community, it becomes obvious that desire cuts across all lines. Native born and English-dominant Hispanics don't view this quite as important as the other groups, but even in those groups at least 60% see having national leadership as very important.

This lack of national leadership among Hispanics is probably a good thing for Republicans. In the last national election, they lost about 3 out of every 4 Hispanic votes. That could easily climb much higher (like it is among Blacks), if Hispanics had formidable national leaders to guide them and point out just how bad the GOP policies really are for that community.

But this is a golden opportunity for some. Voids are not natural and tend to be filled, and this void in national leadership will eventually be filled. Fortunately, there are many talented and capable young Hispanics in this country -- and some of them will step up and fill this need. Who will it be? For that, we'll just have to wait and see.

This Pew Research Center survey was conducted between May 24th and July 8th of this year, and 5,103 Hispanic adults were surveyed. The survey has a margin of error of 2.1 points.

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And for those of you who are troubled about how to address Hispanics/Latinos, the survey tried to answer that for you. They asked those in that community, and the results are in the chart below.