Looking for Brown Faces

As President-elect Barack Obama takes his time to make his first Hispanic appointment, the Latino leaders who supported him are beginning to squirm — not because they all expect job offers, but because they fear they could end up with egg on their faces.

Just a few days ago, they were saying they expected Obama to repay his debt to Latino voters by naming between two and four Latinos to his Cabinet — at least one to his executive staff and many others to sub-Cabinet positions.

It was these leaders who persuaded 67 percent of Latino voters to support Obama and helped him win the battleground states of Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

If the president-elect fails to deliver, he and his Latino surrogates will be held accountable. If Obama doesn't at least match President Bush's good record of Latino appointments, they will have "problemas" explaining it to their own constituents.

Yet as more and more people are appointed — or reported to be shoo-ins for various nominations — the cards being drawn have only black and white faces. The brown-faced cards are not coming up!

In fact, the main card Latinos have in this game — bearing the face of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson — has been switched.

Instead of secretary of state, which is the job Richardson is most qualified to fill and the high-level appointment Latinos expected from Obama, it looks as if Richardson will be relegated to commerce secretary.

Ironically, Sen. Hillary Clinton, the presidential candidate who enjoyed the most Hispanic support during the primaries, is now the leading candidate for the high-level job that could have gone to a Latino. Richardson, a former Cabinet member under President Clinton, was called a traitor for supporting Obama over Clinton during the Democratic primaries. Now it is Clinton who is getting the secretary of state position, the job Richardson wanted, and it is Latinos who still are waiting for the appointments they feel they earned on Election Day.

To do better than recent presidents, Obama would have to name a significant number of Latinos not only to his inner circle of White House advisers and his Cabinet but also throughout his administration.

In 2009, will Obama do better? He should! More Latinos voted for him than for any other president.

Of course, Obama himself helped to raise Latinos' expectations. "When I'm president, I'll be asking many of you to serve at every level of government," Obama said during a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in September.

For that reason, Latino elected officials and the leaders of many Hispanic organizations have been expressing complete confidence in their belief that Latinos will be in many positions of authority in the Obama administration. They bragged about how it was a foregone conclusion that Latinos would have seats at the table where policy debates will be held.

And they have a long list of qualified candidates, including labor leader Linda Chavez-Thompson, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or Rep. Xavier Becerra of California for the Department of Labor; Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York for the Small Business Administration; Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado or former New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid for the Department of the Interior; Miami Mayor Manny Diaz or Bronx President Adolfo Carrion for the Department of Housing and Urban Development; educators Susan Castillo or Blandina Cardenas for the Department of Education; and Federico Pena, who was the secretary of transportation and energy in the Clinton administration and who already serves on Obama's transition team, for a White House inner-circle assignment.

But as more non-Latinos are named to the Obama administration, the confidence of the Democratic Latino leadership is turning into nervousness. In this historic moment, when we will have our first minority president, could we end up with an administration that doesn't represent America's diversity?

Now that we will have a black president, some people might think we no longer need an administration that "looks like America." But it's the other way around! Now that we will have our first minority president, many of us are hoping to see a U.S. government that actually looks like the American people — for the first time.

If not now, when?

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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