MAR 21 1982 A( IcTIN ArAPP r'ANf QTATrq11/1AN , i Hispanics gain stature quickly n DAVE McNEELY - %I-American-Statesman Staff .BROWNSVILLE — In 1978, when Repub- lican Bill Clements was making what turned out to be a successful campaign fori governor, he once was pressed by a report-. er about his attitude toward a question of Importance to Mexican Americans. I- -"I'm not running for governor of Mead- tee Clements snapped. ' .That remark haunted Clements with Mexican Americans, who considered it in- sensitive. And Clements may have changed his mind. Since he became governor, he has assiduously courted Mexican-American voters. . Mexican mericans, 21 percent of Texas' population, tive increased their number of registered Nkotits by 59 percent since 1976. And most of thfin are Democrats. In 1980, 79 percent of tkeir vote •went to. President' Jimmy Carter, and that was lower than usu- al for a Democratic presideRtial candidate. As the number of Anglc) voters drawn from the Democratic to the Republican pri- mary increases, the growing Hispanic vote becomes even more important in deciding .the Democratic. nominee. . As a result, Attorney General Mark White, Railroad Commissioner Buddy Tem- ple and Land Commissioner Bob Arm- strong, who want to be the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, are facing south. There is a strong belief that the balance of power in the Democratic primary, May 1, and the probable runoff June 6, will be from San Antonio south, where most Mexi- can Americans live. • • 0 Not too many elections ago, candidates -showed their support for and appet to min- :orities by having a "coordinator/ /or black or "Latin American" activities. Neither White, Temple nor Armstrong has one this year. All said they have Hispancis working on their staffs, but they perform a variety of duties. None is singled out as the staff Mexi- can American. On. themay to this Rio Grande Valley city for a meeting of the Mexican-American ,Democrats, a busload of supporters of Bob Armstrong for governor even wrote a Span- .h-language song they titled "Corrido de Democrats' Roberto Brazo Feurte," — "Ballad of Bob Arm Strong." They sang it with great gusto to other delegates in Armstrong's hospitals ity suite. • -.7 The song says that ,Mark ;White treats Mexican Americans like a dictator would, that Buddy Temple "with all his money can't buy our vote," and that Armstrong will win. At the MAD donvention, White passed out statistical com4arisons between the num- ber of Mexican-American division chiefs in his office of mostly lawyers, compared with none, in Temple's or Armstrong's more tech4cally oriented offices. "Where are the Mexican Americans?" the comparison asked. Late-starter Temple was suffering from mild pneumonia, and put in only a brief appearance. Temple is relying on help from union supporters, some Mexican-American leaders such as Rep. Hugo Berlanga of Cor- pus Christi, and his family's money to try to win Mexican-American support. White hired Marc Campos, former presi- dent of the Mexican-American Democrats, to help him round up Hispanic votes. Cam- pos, of Houston, registered more than 300 new members of MAD just before the cau• cus, anti carried their proxies to thE Brownsville convention. Although some were disallowed on technicalities, Campos still mustered enough people that he was barely able to deny Armstrong the two- thirds majority necessary to win the MAD endorsement. But there is a large anti-Mark White vote among Mexican Ameri- cans, because of his opposition' to bringing Texas under the federal Voting Rights Act in 1975, when he was secretary of state, and because of his defense as attorney general of the state's effort to avoid universal !bilingual education lathe state's pub- lic schools. Armstrong has a residual Mexi- can-American support he has built up over the years by stumping for campaigns candidates and heading up presiden- tial tickets in Texas. That, coupled with the help of Rep. Gonzalo rientos, MAD president R1 Moya, and Democratic National Committee member Lena Guerrent- sot a 60 percent vote from the MAD caucus close to the two-thirds neces- ..ry for an endorsement —and ,he la 89 percent of the delegatei who were there. So, whose efforts are paying off? "Temple has many Mexican- American leaders," says Andy Her- nandez, who compiles statistics for the Southwest Voter Registration Project, ithile "Armstrong seems to have most of the grass-roots types, the people who go door to door." • • • Hernandez said that as of the end of last year, there were 1.4 million Mexican Americans of voting age in Texas. Of those, 830,643 were regis- tered to vote. That amounts to 23.$ percent of all the registered voters. In 1978, 169,900 Mexican Ameri- cans voted in the Democratic guber- natorial primary race, Hernandez said. John Hill got 60.2 percent, Dolph Briscoe 32.9 percent, and 6.9 percent went to other candidates. The turnout rate was 28.7 percent. This year, Hernandez predicts a turnout rate of 30 percent to 35 per- cent, depending on how heated local races are — and there are lots of heated local races. That would pro- duce a Mexican-American vote of at least 249,000, Hernandez predicts. Most of those expected to go to Dem- ocrats since there are few Mexican Americans who are also Republicans. That voting strength isn't only im- portant to the gubernatorial candidates. That is why candidates like Ann stet