Obama campaign touts health care reform in Spanish-language ads

By Tovin Lapan

Wednesday, May 9, 2012 | 1:39 p.m.

The campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama announced Tuesday the release of new Spanish-language television and radio ads that will play in the battleground states of Nevada, Colorado and Florida.

The ads feature first-person accounts from Obama for America organizers and supporters telling how they see the president’s policies aiding Latino families and communities.

The ads focus on Obama’s work on health care and expanding health insurance coverage to a greater segment of the population.

“With President Obama’s health care reform, young people can stay on their parents’ plan until they’re 26...This reform was a priority for the president, because he understands how important it is for working families,” Obama for America organizer Ernesto Apreza says in Spanish in an ad.

The Spanish-language ads are part of a nine-state, $25 million campaign the Obama team announced this week. Previously, the campaign spent $850,000 on ads in Spanish in the same three states to promote the president’s education policies, according to political ad tracker Smart Media Group.

In 2010, about 31 percent of the Hispanic population was not covered by health insurance, compared to 12 percent of the non-Hispanic white population. The majority of Hispanics, 51 percent, are in favor of the Affordable Care Act while 35 percent of the general U.S. population favors the health care reform law, according to polling firm Latino Decisions.

The president already enjoys an advantage over Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney in polls of Hispanic voters. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in April showed Obama leading Romney 64 percent to 24 percent among Hispanics, similar to the results of a recent Pew Research Center poll.

Romney’s campaign ran Spanish-language ads in advance of the Florida primary but none since. On Tuesday, at a news briefing in Washington, D.C., Republican National Committee Hispanic outreach director Bettina Inclan caused a stir by suggesting that Romney had not yet decided what his policy on immigration is.

“I think as a candidate, to my understanding, he’s still deciding what his position on immigration is. I can’t talk about what his position is going to be,” Inclan said.

Later, Inclan backed off that statement on Twitter.

“I misspoke, Romney’s position on immigration is clear,” she wrote, and included a link to a page covering immigration on Romney’s campaign website.

The GOP named Hispanic outreach directors in six swing states — Nevada, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia.