Californians and the Environment

The Public Policy Institue of California has recently released a poll about Californians and their attitudes on the environment, especially the way that they view politicians. You can download the entire report, including the questions asked, from the PPIC. Even the SacBee's Daniel Weintraub commented on it today. The point that he made was that Schwarzenegger had a better record than Democrats and Independents give him credit for.

I found a much more interesting piece of data buried in that report. This deals with the attitudes concerning the environment in the Latino community. According to the report, "One example of Latino sentiment: Latinos are more likely than whites (60% to 44%) to say the environmental positions of gubernatorial candidates are very important to them."

What does that have to do with this blog. Consider the Latino population of Brentwood, a CD 11 city on the edge of the Delta. 19,200 registered voters with less than 100 separating Democratic and Republican registrations. But there are 37K residents 18 or older and of the total populationm, over 54% is classified Latino or Hispanic. If you want to win this election, you need to turn out that constituency. But, considering the typical progressive organization, I don't have much hope that this set of actions will get the focus it needs either.