Campaign ads in Spanish

Nevada is one of the big four Latino sates — the others are Colarado, New Mexico and Florida — those are the states where Latino voters could be critical on November 4, and where the Obama and McCain campaigns are using Spanish language ads to appeal to those voters. But just recently, the Obama campaign expanded its Spanish language outreach to beyond the big four.

"The World’s" Marco Werman talks with Pilar Marrero of "La Opinion," a Spanish newspaper in Los Angeles, about how the candidates’ Spanish language ads compare to their English ads.

Marrero says Obama’s ads are focusing more closely on taxes and healthcare, and are a change from what she’s heard in other Obama Spanish language ads: "It seems to me it’s focusing more closely on these two issues instead of generally the issue of the economy, and ‘we’re going to do better for you’ … they know that healthcare is one of the major issues for Latinos, and taxes is an issue for everybody."

McCain’s ads are focused more on Latino small businesses, according to Marrero: "The big focus of the McCain campaign has been on Latino small businesses; he really doesn’t talk that much to Latino workers … he knows that Latinos have a lot of small businesses."

Both campaigns’ Spanish ads are different from their English ads in a key way: the immigration issue is raised in the former, and not the latter. Marrero: "That’s part of the problem McCain has — even though he has a decent record on immigration … during the primaries not only [did] he turn away from it to satisfy the Right of his party, but he’s saying that he wants to emphasize enforcement first. It’s contradictory — people don’t know if it’s the message in English or the message in Spanish that they should believe."

PRI’s "The World" is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. "The World" is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.

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