The handy metaphor — now cliché — is of the drowsy Goliath that awakens, takes note of its own strength and votes Democratic en masse. The party has been waiting for nearly 20 years. Even though Hispanics make up nearly half the state's population and tend to vote Democratic, Bill White (governor), Linda Chavez-Thompson (lieu­tenant governor), Hector Uribe (land commissioner) and their fellow Democrats with statewide aspirations may still be waiting come November, many experts say.

Despite the numbers, the Hispanic vote may never be the cohesive and reliable bloc the party needs to dye the reddest of red states blue. Instead of a slumbering giant, a more pertinent metaphor may be that of a brilliant Fourth of July firework arcing into the night sky. When the firework reaches its apex, to the Democrats' dismay, it branches into multiple voting patterns. The Hispanic vote may eventually be as difficult to categorize as the Italian vote or the Irish vote.

That growing diversity is reflected around the dinner table when his extended family gets together, says the Rev. T.J. Martinez, a Jesuit priest who heads Cristo Rey Jesuit College Preparatory School of Houston. A Brownsville native, Martinez says that his father, a second-generation Texan, is a yellow-dog Democrat, while his nieces, more socially conservative, “are open to other ways of understanding politics, other ways of seeing the world.”

Hispanic voters are diverse in another way as well, says Marc Campos.

The local campaign consultant notes that San Antonio and Rio Grande Valley Hispanics, established for generations, vote differently — and more reliably — than the Houston and Gulf Coast Hispanic community, which is more working-class and first-generation. “It takes a lot more effort to get them out,” Campos says.

Comparable to Anglo vote

The numbers are formidable. Hispanics made up 31 percent of the Texas population in the 2000 census and will likely be 36-37 percent in 2010. In five of the eight states projected to gain seats after Census 2010 — including Texas — and in all 10 of the states projected to lose seats, Hispanics made up a greater share of the overall electorate in 2008 than they did in 2000.

Hispanic voter turnout in Texas grew by 31 percent between the 2000 and 2008 elections. At the same time, Hispanics make up only about 20 percent of registered voters in Texas and only 12 percent to 14 percent of the total vote.

Lydia Camarillo, vice president of the San Antonio-based Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, contends that the Hispanic vote is actually performing about as well as the Anglo voting public.

“The Latino electorate can be an important factor,” says Camarillo, “but it will not perform at the rate expected unless the resources are spent to energize it. It can't be, ‘Oh, it's just going to happen.' That was the case with Tony Sanchez in 2002.” (Sanchez is the Laredo banker who headed the Democrats' so-called “dream team” that year and lost in a Perry landslide.)

Jerry Polinard, a political scientist at the University of Texas-Pan American, also notes that a voting population that's been excluded takes several generations for voting to become the norm. “Women,” he notes, “gained the vote in 1920, but they didn't gain parity with men until 1968, and now they vote in greater numbers than men. For Hispanics the percentage of the vote is increasing, and the clock is ticking, but it won't happen overnight.”

This huge demographic, however diverse, is up for grabs and always has been, says Lionel Sosa, a veteran San Antonio advertising executive who's been working to persuade Hispanics to vote Republican since 1978. That was the year that U.S. Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, came to see the adman, looking for a way to reach out to a group that Texas Republicans had historically ignored.

Tower told Sosa his goal was to get 35 percent of the Latino vote. “If this race is as close as I think it's going to be,” the GOP senator said, “we're going to need every vote we can get.”

Sosa crafted radio and TV ads (“John Tower: Con Nosotros”) and wrote a John Tower corrido that got wide play. He made sure that the senator showed up at LULAC meetings, GI Forum gatherings and Hispanic luncheons around the state.

Tower defeated U.S. Rep. Bob Krueger, D-New Braunfels, by about 12,000 votes, less than 1 percent of the total. The Republican share of the Hispanic vote went from 8 percent to 37 percent — “enough to put him over the top,” Sosa said.

Border policy divisive

Sosa, now 71, also crafted ads for George W. Bush when he ran for governor. Bush got more than 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 1998, in part by focusing on “family values,” (although political scientist Polinard notes that “those gains have been virtually wiped out by Republicans' emphasis on immigration.”)

“Bush taught us an important lesson,” says Adrian Garcia, Harris County's first Hispanic sheriff and a Democrat. “He reached out.”

Since Bush, Republican candidates nationwide have more forthrightly branded themselves as opponents of comprehensive immigration reform and proponents of mass deportation, both of which resonate among Hispanic voters. Crusades against immigration and in favor of sending in the National Guard and building a border fence make them wary.

“It's a galvanizing debate,” says Garcia, a former Houston police officer who served as a Houston city councilman from 2002 to 2008. “Young people today will remember the impact of these conversations for a very long time.”

That would seem to favor Bill White, the Democrat, in the governor's race, although Sosa contends that Gov. Rick Perry has managed to avoid taking an extreme position on immigration reform and border security during his decade in office. “He's gotten it [the Hispanic vote] before,” Sosa notes. “He always goes very conservative in the primary and becomes more moderate in the general. He won't be anti-immigration. He'll have a very humanistic position on it.”

Both the Perry and White camps insist they're cognizant of the Hispanic vote but don't tailor their message to reach it. “The same issues that concern Hispanic voters concern all Texans,” says Perry spokesman Mark Miner. Miner also noted that Perry has appointed the state's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, Eva Guzman of Houston, and a Hispanic secretary of state, Hope Andrade.

White spokesman Michael Moore points out that his boss not only speaks fluent Spanish but handily defeated a well-known Hispanic candidate, Orlando Sanchez, when he was elected mayor of Houston the first time. “A lot of people already knew him; a lot of Hispanic leaders knew him,” Moore said. “It wasn't a big sell.”

Can't take it for granted