CENTENNIAL, Colo.—National and local Hispanic pastors urged Latinos Tuesday to choose values over the economy and vote for Sen. John McCain for president.
“We believe that there are more important things than money and our economy,” said Gilberto Velez, chairman of the board of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “The Latino community is very well known for their principles and their morals.”
The pastors made their endorsement as individuals, not clergy, at McCain’s Colorado campaign headquarters in Centennial, a suburb south of Denver. The pastors said McCain is the anti-abortion candidate who would protect traditional marriage and appoint conservative judges to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Some of the pastors acknowledged that Obama was leading McCain among Hispanic voters despite McCain’s stance on those issues.
Velez said “we have to be realistic” and that polls conducted by his group—which represents 15 million Hispanic evangelical Christians in the U.S. and Puerto Rico—show a slight lead for Obama among Hispanics.
Marcos Witt, a senior pastor at the Houston-based Lakewood Church—the largest in the country with a weekly attendance of 40,000—blamed Obama’s lead on “a lot of misinformation being disseminated by the Hispanic media.” For instance, he said Hispanics need to be informed about Obama’s pledge to protect abortion rights.
Federico Lee Maes, a Denver attorney and member of the Alianza Ministerial Hispana de Colorado, called abortions a “tragedy” and said that they “pray and hope that the Hispanic community will awake to the importance of their values.”
Witt, a four-time Grammy Award-winning Mexican Christian singer, also said Hispanics need to be reminded that McCain once advocated for comprehensive immigration reform that included a guest worker program.
“We’re here to turn the volume up on that message,” said Witt, who estimates about 8,000 Hispanics attend his church every weekend.
But Federico Pena, the Obama campaign’s national co-chairman and Denver’s first and only Hispanic mayor, said Monday the bad economy and a “very negative rhetoric” on immigration are among the reasons Hispanics have turned away from Republicans.
Democrats will hold rallies in seven cities Saturday targeting Hispanic voters in an attempt to convince them to vote early for Obama.
