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This paper represents a preliminary investigation of the contours and correlates of representational roles as perceived by elected officials of color serving at state and local levels nationwide. The research questions we seek to answer are: How do elected officials of color view their representational role? Do Black, Latino, Asian, and American Indian officials differ in their representational role orientations? What other factors may influence (or be associated with) their orientation toward a representational role? In what ways are elected officials who hold the trustee view different from those who hold the delegate view? And, how do Blacks and Latinos differ in the correlates of these two prevailing views of representation? Our data, the Gender and Multicultural Leadership Survey, focus on individuals serving at state and local levels of government where nine out of ten of nonwhite elected officials are located. With the increasing diversity in the nation's population and political leadership, this research aims to broaden understanding of the meanings of democratic representation in a multicultural society by studying the attitudes of female and male elected officials of African, Asian, Hispanic, and American Indian origin. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latino attitudes toward U.S. immigration policy have long been seen as internally contradictory, both by scholars of the Latino experience and by polemicists external to the community who have made often misguided assumptions about Latino support for an expansive immigration policy. In this paper, I seek to disentangle Latino attitudes toward U.S. immigration policy and develop a model that assesses factors predicting Latino attitudes on this issue. This model builds on previous efforts to more richly understand Latino attitudes toward immigration, which themselves tap scholarly efforts to understand popular attitudes in the non-Latino community toward U.S. immigration policy. The model that I test, however, adds factors unique to the immigrant experience of Latinos themselves. I find that Latino attitudes, like the attitudes of the population as a whole, are shaped by individuals' positions in society and their group attachments and identities. In terms of attitudes toward preferred immigration policies, it is particularly critical to analyze the relative closeness or distance of Latinos to the immigrant experience. Immigrants are much more likely than later generations of Latinos to support legalization as the preferred policy outcome, controlling for the other variables in the model (some of which measure specific connections to immigrant-sending countries). Support for the most restrictive preferred policy outcome increases across generations. U.S.-born generations are also less likely to support legalization than were immigrants, but the marginal impact of being born in the United States was less than for support of closing the border. Immigrant generation was certainly not the only factor to influence preferred immigration policy, but had a more consistent impact and an impact of a larger magnitude. Although there are a few exceptions to this pattern, the other variables in the model reinforce the story of the effect of immigrant generation. Generally, support for legalization is more common among Latinos who are on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum and to their fellow Latinos (as well as to people from their country of origin or ancestry). Support for the most restrictive of the policy options tested is most common among conservatives and least common among Latinos of Mexican origin/ancestry and frequent visitors or remitters. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes newspaper coverage of immigration reform in mainstream English-language newspapers prior to, and following passage of immigration reform legislation by the US House of Representatives in December, 2005. The purpose of this project is twofold: 1) To illuminate the media's participation in the social construction of the policy "problem" and acceptable "solutions" to it; 2) To illuminate how the social construction of the policy problem and solution contributes to the social construction of a particular group of people in America, namely Latino immigrants. The analysis presented here is based upon a qualitative analysis of a large random sample of newspaper articles published in the northeast and southwest United States during August 2005, April 2006, and October 2006. The analysis reveals both consistency and significant changes in the news coverage of immigration reform between April 2005 and October 2006. I discuss two key findings at length. First, changes in coverage between August 2005 and October 2006 portray an expansion in the terms of the debate about immigration reform that has proven significant in the course of the policy's development. Second, while many articles fail to explain the need for immigration reform, the coverage generally portrays the problem as "illegal immigrants" from south of the US-Mexican border. This portrayal contributes to the social construction of Latinos as the Other. This project therefore enhances our understanding of the social construction of immigration policy and its subjects, and the print media's contribution to this process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to the study of representation is the role of the race of the representative and how to best afford representation for minority groups. This paper examines member behavior in the 108th session of the House of Representatives on immigration-related bills to assess whether Latino members offer a greater degree of representation than non-Latino members for Latino constituents. Using a quantitative analysis, I construct a data set from the legislative record to analyze different types of actions, including roll-call votes, bill introduction, bill sponsorship, and house resolutions. Controlling for the racial composition of the district, party, and several other possible factors, I find key differences between the actions of Latino and non-Latino members. Most importantly, Latino members of Congress engage in more representation acts that favor immigration than their non-Latino counterparts. The findings have implications for how we measure and evaluate substantive representation and the value of minority members in Congress. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Figures from the 2000 Census indicate that Latinos are now the largest minority group in the United States. With population projections showing a continued growth in the Latino population over the next 50 years, the major parties are making a push at appealing to this growing segment of the electorate. Given that the preferences of the Latino population do not necessarily fit neatly on the liberal-conservative dimension that the two parties occupy, both parties are trying to woo potential Latino voters. There were over 3000 political advertisements aired in Spanish that were sponsored by the Gore and Bush campaigns in the 2000 presidential election. In addition, there were ads in English that also were targeted to the Latino community. Using individual data merged with political ads, we test whether these efforts influenced Latino vote choice. Drawing from the literature on persuasion and acculturation, we test three models of the effectiveness of three types of ads, each varying in how targeted their appeal was to Latinos. We find that the effectiveness of the ads on the likelihood of casting a vote for Gore (or Bush) was mediated by the individual's partisanship and dominant language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study that examined the macropartisan implications of the political environment in California as of March 2004. Information on partisan change in the state; Data and analysis; Results; Discussion and conclusion.

How do levels of trust--an important determinant of social capital--of the Migrant Seasonal Farmworker (MSFW) population in Idaho compare with levels of trust among Latinos nationally? Do MSFWs in Idaho have higher levels of trust towards other Latinos than they do of whites in the state? These questions are central to an ongoing discussion about the assimilation/incorporation of racial and ethnic groups in the United States. To address these questions, we compare findings from a survey of MSFWs in the state of Idaho in 2002-2003 and four focus groups conducted in May and June 2003. Using the Social Capital Community Benchmark survey as a contextual background, we found that MSFWs in Idaho have even lower levels of trust than Latinos nationally. We also found that MSFWs' levels of trust are low towards whites. Most surprisingly, levels of trust of MSFWs towards other Latinos are equally low. Increasing levels of trust and social capital is critical in this community for achieving greater incorporation, economic development, and improving quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the fact that they comprise large portions of the American population, both African-Americans and Latino-Americans are underrepresented in halls of political power. This study gathers original data and develops a unique experiment to test the presence of race-based discrimination against hypothetical minority candidates by a diverse sample of white Americans. Analysis of the data suggests that the ?usual suspects? of region and age remain prevalent as predictors of racial bias in evaluating Latino-American and African-American candidates. However, younger white Southerners, like their non-Southern counterparts, do not display a racial bias when evaluating the minority candidates relative to a white candidate. This suggests that through cohort replacement, the future may present a Southern region no longer distinct in terms of racial discrimination against minority political candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of major theoretical and practical interest in contemporary politics is the incorporation or inclusion of marginalized and underrepresented groups in American society. This paper examines the perspectives and policy positions of the nation's elected officials of color toward immigrant incorporation. The paper reports results from telephone interviews with a national sample of African American, Hispanic, Asian American, and American Indian elected officials (EOs) in local and state legislative office. The GMCL national survey, conducted from June 2006 through January 2007, is part of a larger project on African American, Latina/o, Native American, and Asian American elected officials in U.S. politics. As the first of its kind, this survey provides a comprehensive examination of the backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives of America's increasingly diverse elected leadership at the local, state, and national levels. This paper focuses on examining EOs' level of support on four immigrant-related policy proposals: the provision of government services in languages other than English; bilingual education in public schools for students not proficient in English; drivers' licenses for immigrants regardless of legal status; and non-citizen voting rights in local (i.e. school board) elections. Bivariate analysis finds four sets of factors influence elite positions on the four immigrant-related proposals: perceived constituency characteristics, personal demographic characteristics of the officeholders, a select set of attitudes and political orientations, and institutional/political variables associated with their public office. Multivariate analysis shows that race and gender matter-but in different ways across the racial and gender groups studied and depending on the policy issues at stake. The results suggest that there is no clear divide among racial groups. Race and gender groups show a variation of support across the immigrant-related policies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the way in which racial/ethnic context influences Latino support for ethnic political causes. Welch et al. (2001) argue that feelings of solidarity within the African-American community intensify as the size of the African-American in an individual's residential environment increases. We extend this hypothesis to Latinos, while noting that higher levels of in-group heterogeneity within the Latino community might complicate this relationship. Specifically, we posit that native born Latinos will be less likely to support ethnic political causes in environments where the Latino population is comprised primarily of foreign-born individuals. These hypotheses are tested using data from the 2000 Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard National Survey of Latinos. We also examine how different structural patterns of residence among Latinos influence their political behavior, finding that higher levels of segregation between Anglos and Latinos dampen the positive relationship between Latino group size and support ethnic political causes. Therefore, this study adds to the current literature by explicitly considering how levels of segregation influence the political behavior of Latinos. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent campaigns, candidates have sought to attract votes from the growing Latino electorate, and many have done so through ethnic cues. Yet, we know very little about the real impact of such appeals, nor how Latinos react to them. Building on previous research on the effects of racial priming and cue taking, this article examines the role that ethnic cues play in shaping the political opinions and choices of Latinos, as well as the response of non-Hispanic white Americans (Anglos). We take up the simplest of group cues, the ethnicity of the candidate. We argue that candidate ethnicity can alter the political choices of Latinos and Anglos by priming ethnic and/or nationalist identities, which can then be used to formulate political judgments. Using a laboratory experiment, we manipulate exposure to candidate ethnicity information and test how this ethnic cue affects candidate preference decisions among both Latinos and Anglos. We find significant differences in the factors that influence candidate preference among both groups when a candidate is revealed to be Latino. Our results help to explain co-ethnic voting among Latinos and resistance to Latino candidates among Anglos. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intense debates in the United States over immigration often coincide with each wave of mass immigration. The last two decades have witnessed the largest number of immigrants admitted to the US. In addition to increases in legal immigration, there has been a dramatic increase in undocumented immigrants, which by some estimates has grown to over 11 million. The increase in "legal" and "illegal" immigration has predictably resulted in a backlash toward immigrants and current US immigration policy which many consider to be broken. In response to this backlash, in 2005 the House of Representatives passed HR 4437, which sought to create a 700 mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and criminalize undocumented immigrants and persons assisting them. Politicos and media elites were taken by surprise when in the spring of 2006 over a million immigrants and immigrant-rights advocates took to the streets in protest of these draconian measures. In light of these dramatic events, this study seeks to examine the factors shaping American public opinion toward undocumented immigrants and US immigration policy. Current studies on attitudes toward immigration largely consider the role of economic motives, inter-group contact, affect, and symbolic orientations (Pantoja 2006a, 2006b; Binder, Polinard, and Wrinkle 1997; Hood and Morris 1997; Citrin, Green, Muste and Wong 1997; Espenshade and Hempstead 1996; Espenshade and Calhoun 1993). Each of these studies has advanced our understanding of the factors underlying opinion formation toward immigrants and US immigration policy. However, given data limitations, most have not examined how media framing influences immigration attitudes. Furthermore, since many studies were conducted pre-9/11, we know little about how national security concerns influence attitudes toward immigration. This study overcomes these issues by proposing an experimental design to test the effects of differing frames (Druckman 2004) in shaping public opinion toward undocumented immigrants and immigration policies. Subjects are assigned to one of six conditions: a control group, a national security frame, an economic benefit frame, an economic cost frame, a social instability frame, and a historical tradition frame. We hypothesize that those who receive a positive frame (economic benefits and historical tradition) will have more favorable views towards undocumented immigrants and be more supportive of progressive immigration reform relative to those who receive a negative frame (economic cost, social instability, and national security). We treat each frame separately to see whether some frames carry a stronger effect than others in influencing the ingredients of evaluations and opinions on immigration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research focusing primarily on socio-economic status and mobilization as determinants of electoral turnout has noted that levels of participation in the Latino community are significantly lower than those of other ethnic groups, presumably because of the influence of said indicators. While the insights this research has produced are plentiful, its starting point has been precisely these proximal factors for Latinos as residents or citizens of the United States. Based on research presented at the 2006 meeting of the American Political Science Association, which demonstrated 85% of sophisticated Latinos are ideologically consistent through the process of immigration, and that 66% implement the same criteria they used to select a party in their countries of origin to select a party in the United States (Jimeno and Rodríguez 2006), we hypothesize that an inverse relationship will also hold. Namely, first generation Latino immigrants who do not participate in the American system, thus depressing participation levels, are those who did not participate in their countries of origin. Preliminary analysis shows that for one of the most meaningful political activities, contacting a government official, behavior in the countries of origin is a more powerful predictor than some traditional SES control variables. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]