Pat Brown Institute Public Policy Lecture Series (2004, No. 8)
December 9, 2004
6:00-8:00 p.m.The Center at Cathedral Plaza
555 West Temple St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
“Playing the ‘Latino Card’: Race, Ethnicity, and National Party Politics in 2000 and 2004”
Dr. Luis Ricardo Fraga
Stanford University
National exit polls from the 2004 election find that 44% of Latino voters supported the reelection of President Bush. This represents a 9% increase over the support he received in 2000. What are the implications of these findings for the role of race and ethnicity in national party politics? Are Latinos the newest swing vote contributing to Republican Party domination in distinct regions of the country? What are the strategic challenges faced by the Democratic Party in responding to this trend?
Dr. Luis Ricardo Fraga is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. He has published widely in scholarly journals and edited volumes. His primary interests are urban politics, politics of race and ethnicity, urban politics, and educational politics. He is co-editor of Ethnic and Racial Minorities in Advanced Industrial Democracies (1992). His most recent publications are “Demography and Political Influence: Disentangling the Latino Vote,” Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy (2004) with Ricardo Ramírez, and “Playing the ‘Latino Card’: Race, Ethnicity, and National Party Politics,” Du Bois Review (2004) with David Leal. He is currently completing two book manuscripts: The Changing Urban Regime: Toward an Informed Public Interest, a history of the political incorporation of Latinos in San Antonio city politics from 1950-1990, and Missed Opportunities: The Politics of Schools in San Francisco, an examination of the implementation of a desegregation consent decree from 1983 to 2003. He is a past president of the Western Political Science Association and has served on the Executive Council of the American Political Science Association (APSA). He was appointed in 2002 by the President of the APSA to serve on its Standing Committee on Civic Engagement and Education. Fraga has received a number of teaching and advising awards at Stanford including the Rhodes Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1993), the Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education (1995), the Allan V. Cox Medal for Faculty Excellence Fostering Undergraduate Research (1997), the Faculty Award from the Chicano/Latino Graduating Class (1993, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001), the Undergraduate Faculty Advisor of the Year Award (2001), and the Associated Students of Stanford University Teaching Award (2003). He was also given the Adaljiza Sosa-Riddell Award for Exemplary Mentoring of Graduate Latina/o Students by the Committee on the Status of Latinos in the Profession of the American Political Science Association (2001). In 2003-04 he is a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, working on a study entitled “Gender and Ethnicity: The Political Incorporation of Latina and Latino State Legislators.”
(Parking is available under the Cathedral Plaza)
Please RSVP with Joseph at 323-343-3770.