Courting Latino voters

I see news that the New Democrat Network (NDN) has launched ads targeting SW Latino voters (Phoenix, Las Vegas and Albuquerque) with the focus on education and jobs. The NDN blog features a letter from Henry Cisneros asking for support (money). From Albuquerque:

The New Democrat Network plans to spend $80,000 in Albuquerque for ads in Spanish on Univision and Telemundo as the start of an eventual $5 million effort to target Hispanic voters in key states. The campaign started Friday.

Ads also are being run in Phoenix and Las Vegas and will start in Florida next week.

Gov. Bill Richardson is advising the network on the campaign.

The network's founder and president, Simon Rosenberg, said the campaign will be the largest targeted at Hispanic voters and will include a bilingual "war room" that will oversee travel by national leaders to key markets and communications to Spanish media outlets.

More: Undoubtedly this is to counter the recent push by the Bush administration to court Latino voters. The DOE has targeted Latino media with this press release (see below). Bush campaign began on Thursday with ads in both Spanish and English in New Mexico. Lots of reason to do this; see this Hill article.