Pocketbook and social issues sway voters from the straight ticket
EDINBURG -- At the end of the night, Hidalgo County confirmed for the state and the country that it still bleeds a brilliant blue.
But surveys of individual voters told a more nuanced story.
During the final weeks of the elections, candidates pleaded with local voters to split their tickets and choose candidates based on their individual merits. And some Hidalgo County voters complied, with more than a third voting for combinations of candidates from both the major parties, according to an unscientific survey and an analysis of election results.
The Monitor sent reporters to polling stations across the county on Election Day to survey a random sample of voters about their choices for president, U.S. senator and 449th state District Court judge. A total of 250 people responded.
In all, slightly fewer than half of the poll respondents made the palanca, or straight-ticket, vote - a number that appeared to match totals on straight-ticket voting from the Hidalgo County Elections Department. Another 15 percent voted for only Republicans.
Thirty-five percent of voters picked some strange ballot-fellows: Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic Senate candidate Rick Noriega; Republican incumbent Judge Danny Rios and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama; Obama and Republican incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.
Voters who split their tickets despite strong party loyalties likely did so because of specific issues with one or two particular candidates, said Gary Mounce, a political science professor at the University of Texas-Pan American.
"They made that one exception for moral reasons or personal reasons," he said of his students, many of whom split their tickets to avoid scandal-plagued judicial candidate Jesse Contreras.
Republican candidates, including Cornyn and Texas House hopeful Javier Villalobos, warned during their races that Rio Grande Valley voters risked being taken for granted by their beloved Democratic Party.
"(Many Valley voters) voted Democrat all their lives because their families voted Democrat, but I think it's important to look past the party and vote for the candidate," Laura Elizabeth Morales, a member the Young Conservatives of Texas, said Tuesday evening as election results rolled in.
But Mounce argued that Mexican-American voters renew their loyalty to the party based on the same pocketbook issues that led voters nationwide to back Obama for president.
Mexican-American loyalty to the Democratic Party "goes way back to (Lyndon) Johnson and (John F.) Kennedy, and probably back to Franklin Roosevelt," he said. "It's based on issues - it's based on Social Security, unemployment insurance, affirmative action under Johnson, Kennedy doing away with the poll tax and four or five specific economic issues."
Republicans running on social issues like abortion and gay marriage have had difficulty getting a foothold among Hispanics because of this "pragmatic" streak, Mounce said.
Pragmatism runs both ways in the privacy of the voting booth. Lifelong Democrats lent their support to Cornyn, the longtime senator who visited the Valley during the final days of his campaign to plug his support for a local U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital and county infrastructure funding.
The only thing likely to break party loyalty in the Valley is a big policy shift by the GOP, Mounce said.
But while the overall map remains blue, Hidalgo County may not be as much of a Democratic slam dunk as previously thought.
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Sara Perkins covers Mission, western Hidalgo County, Starr County and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4472.
