http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1050962004FRASER NELSON
Mr Kerry’s Catholicism has helped make him favourite with Arizona’s large Hispanic population and thereby the state as a whole.
EVERY drinker in El Tupi bar was glued to the Olympics on television. One, a Hispanic, leaned over and offered a joke: "Do you know why Mexico doesn’t have its own team? Because everyone who can run, jump or swim is already in the US."
None of his friends laughed - it’s an old one. But the principle holds good. Mexico’s borders are leaking illegal migrants at the rate of one every 90 seconds and no-one - least of all the president, George Bush, - seems to know what to do about it. The population of Arizona has doubled over the last 15 years, fuelled by both migration (most of it illegal) and the high birth rate of the migrants. The Republicans came up with a solution - make eight million of them legal "guest workers" then chase their vote.
If Mr Bush expected an outpouring of gratitude from Phoenix, Arizona he would soon be disappointed by the mood of El Tupi. The Mexican-Americans here compete to find the most unflattering adjective for the president.
Mark Gallegos, who works in a mobile-phone shop outside Phoenix, said Mr Bush’s attempts to learn Spanish and embrace Hispanics have "not even started" to change his mind to carry on a family tradition on election day.
"I vote Democrat, I was raised a Democrat and I’ll die a Democrat," he said. "If my mother sees George Bush on television, she changes the channel. But we don’t see many Republicans - to them, this doesn’t matter."
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