Cabinet picks help, hurt Hispanics political gains

WASHINGTON -- For Hispanics, Sen. Ken Salazar's selection as Interior secretary represents both a milestone and a setback.

President-elect Barack Obama's choice of Salazar to join his Cabinet — the second Hispanic, along with Commerce Secretary-designate Bill Richardson — acknowledges the political clout of the nation's fastest-growing voting bloc.

It also leaves the Senate with a shrinking Hispanic caucus. And it underscores a paradox that underlies Obama's historic election: Minorities remain underrepresented in Congress.

Hispanics, now the nation's largest minority group, are 14.7% of the population, but hold only 5% of the seats in the current Congress. Blacks make up 12.4% of the nation's population, but just 8% of the current Congress. Obama's election left the Senate without any African-American members.

Asian Americans, at 4.5% of the population, hold 1% of the seats.

Since 2006, the Senate has had three Hispanic members — a first in the nation's history. But now Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, is departing for the executive branch, and Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., has announced he will not run for re-election in 2010. That raises the prospect that Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., could become the Senate's lone Hispanic representative.

"It's bittersweet," Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said of Salazar's selection.

Some Hispanic leaders are hoping Colorado's Democratic governor, Bill Ritter, will appoint another Hispanic to replace Salazar. John Trasviña, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, suggested Salazar's brother, Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., or Federico Peña, a former Denver mayor who served in then-president Bill Clinton's Cabinet.

Vargas says both Democrats and Republicans need to work harder to recruit and support minority candidates. This year, Democrats "really missed a bet," he said, by not funding the challenge that state Rep. Rick Noriega mounted against Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Noriega got 43% of the vote, despite being outspent by more than 4 to 1.