Hmmm, so this is what the election year is going to look like.  It begins with the sensational accusations of sexual assault against Herman Cain and an equally astounding press conference by the candidate himself that pushes the limits of what is now fair game.  Should we dare visualize how it might end?  It almost should not matter, now that we get a glimpse of what could be a spectacularly sorry election year – except that it might get worse for HispanicLatinos, especially those unprepared or who live in a state of denial.

Along with a battered economy, high unemployment and failing schools – the same challenges that all Americans face – HispanicLatinos confront the distinct possibility that they will be made a scapegoat during a campaign that paints them as the Willie Hortons of 2012.  Willie Horton, a black man convicted for murder, was released temporarily for a weekend furlough from a state prison in Massachusetts.  He never returned and later raped a woman in Maryland.

Horton was the black face that the 1988 campaign of Vice President George Bush used in an ad to tear white voters away from Michael Dukakis, who was miles ahead in the polls.  Bush won in a landslide.  Two years later, Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, following the path tread by Bush that lowered decency standards at the national level and feeling empowered to use race, ran a blatantly racist ad in 1990 against his opponent, the former black mayor of Charlotte, Harvey Gantt.  In the ad, a pair of white hands crumpled a rejection slip for a job.  In the background, a voice intoned that the job had been given to an unqualified minority applicant. Helms won.  And, of course, most HispanicLatinos are familiar with the Pete Wilson story in California.

Now, the reverse might well hold true, wherein state campaigns whip up racial sentiment to benefit a presidential ticket.  The face of a HispanicLatino immigrant – symbolizing the nation’s tough economic times and its changing demographics – is child’s play for cynical political communication strategists bent on capitalizing on an anxious public.  What? you say, no presidential campaign would dare do that.  Perhaps.

But what about the third-party organizations not connected to a presidential campaign that can engage in statewide campaigns for governor and for the Senate in critical states in order to influence the presidential election?  In an electoral sleight of hand, the third-party entities that were given license by the U.S. Supreme Court to do almost whatever they want next year – as long as they do not coordinate with another federal campaign – become crucial.

In various electoral war rooms throughout the country, advisers in scores of third-party organizations are conceptualizing how to win their individual contests by using coarse, direct and perhaps even brutal messaging if necessary, and adroit managers at the presidential level could finesse how to benefit from statewide races using transparently anti-HispanicLatino messaging.

There will be enough winking of the eyes in Washington next year to get around the no-coordination barrier to cause plastic surgeons to warn about eye-muscle collapse.

That might be for the better.  The campaign will not be a pretty sight.

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