Will Gil Cedillo Learn His Lesson?

Gil Cedillo started off his campaign by trying to emphasize his early support for Barrack Obama. Signs for one of his earliest events even had the moniker:

CEDILLO
.........B
.........A
.........M
.........A

But Cedillo failed to learn the lesson of the Obama campaign. Obama never campaigned as "The Black Candidate," because he knew that would be the kiss of death. He'd be writing off an awful lot of non-Black voters with a campaign based on race. Even many African Americans would have been turned off by a campaign like that--that's why many African American leaders initially flocked to Hilary rather than Barack. They didn't want to marginalize themselves by making what they thought would look like a race-based decision.

So along comes Cedillo, and I guess he thought the demographics of the 32nd District were so favorable that he could win as "The Latino Candidate." He rejected the "post-racial" or "trans-racial" campaign of Obama and opted for a race-centered definition of this contest.

Big mistake. His "The Latino Candidate" campaign alienated both Latinos and non-Latinos. Anyone familiar with voters in the district could have told them this approach wouldn't work. American-born Latinos (like American-born Asians) don't like being treated as foreigners, whether by Latinos, Asians, or Whites. They were born here and they know they're American. Anyone telling them otherwise does so at his own peril.

And anyone who tries to define his candidacy by race will definitely alienate those of other races. So Cedillo's campaign alienated the White and Asian minority in the district, AND lost a lot of support among the Latino majority. Of course, his own personal ethics (revealed both prior to and during the campaign) didn't help things with either group.

So, come election day, it's Judy Chu, by over 4,000 votes. As has been noted elsewhere, even if the Pleitez voters had broken 4:1 for Cedillo (by no means a sure thing, since many Pleitez voters were energized by the Pleitez candidacy and wouldn't have voted at all if not for him), Cedillo STILL would have lost. And that's despite Cedillo bringing in Betty "Uncle Tom" Chu into the race, who probably got half of her votes by accident (enough to win the Republican nomination, but people won't make that same mistake in July).