McCain in Colombia sends message home
He hopes to highlight his foreign-policy experience and to court Hispanic voters.
CARTAGENA, Colombia - Sen. John McCain's trip here yesterday was part of an unusual three-day presidential-campaign swing to Latin America with a dual message for voters back home.
By visiting Colombia and Mexico, McCain wants to emphasize to all voters that he has stronger foreign-policy credentials than Sen. Barack Obama, his Democratic rival.
McCain also wants to appeal specifically to Hispanics in the United States by expressing his concern for problems in Latin America.
"Hispanics are a very important voter bloc in some key states," Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said, citing Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Florida. "It's a bloc that Obama didn't score well with against Hillary Clinton" during the Democratic primaries.
President Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2004 election, according to exit polls. McCain would receive 28 percent of the Hispanic vote in Newhouse's latest poll for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal.
McCain's visit "demonstrates that we exist and are important for the United States," said Ricardo Tribin, president of the Colombian-American Chamber of Commerce in Miami.
After arriving in the country last evening, McCain and his wife, Cindy, met Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at Uribe's ceremonial home in Cartagena before a meeting between the two men and several cabinet ministers.
While in Colombia today and tomorrow, McCain will highlight his strong support for a free-trade agreement that is stalled in Congress because of Democratic Party opposition.
Like most Democrats, Obama opposes the deal because of job losses in the United States linked to international trade, and because of violence against union leaders in Colombia, where they are being killed at alarming rates.
McCain began broadcasting a Web ad yesterday in which he says, "We must encourage more trade agreements to create more jobs on both sides of the border; that's why I'm behind the Colombian Free Trade Agreement."
In Cartagena, he is also expected to voice strong support for Uribe, the United States' closest ally in South America.
The United States is spending about $600 million a year for Plan Colombia, which since 2000 has helped the government combat cocaine trafficking and a leftist insurgency. Colombia is the world's biggest source of raw coca leaf, the basis for cocaine.
The government has been fighting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for 44 years. The FARC finances its operations through cocaine trafficking.
Many international groups want McCain to use his bully pulpit to express support for rooting out paramilitary influence in Colombia's Congress. Uribe is tied to many of those lawmakers.
"We would like McCain to come out strongly for independence of the judiciary and for thoroughly investigating the paramilitary groups and holding accountable their accomplices," said Maria McFarland, who follows Colombia for Human Rights Watch.
It is no surprise McCain staffers chose Colombia as the first country to visit in Latin America. Nowhere else in the region do Latin Americans have such high regard for the United States and Bush, said Marta Lagos, who oversees the Latin Barometer poll.