Why Omaha's Latinos Are Winners In A Mayoral Election Their Candidate Lost

Democrat Heath Mello, who lost his bid to become mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, on Tuesday, had the strong backing of Latinos, particularly in heavily Latino South Omaha, which he represented as a state senator.

On its face, then, Mello’s defeat suggests a setback for Latinos as they seek to gain political influence. 

But in her winning quest, Republican incumbent Jean Stothert made significant outreach to the Latino community, and neutralized Mello’s immigrant-rights positions by taking similar stances.

“She just can’t neglect it and take it for granted that South Omaha will be in the pocket. With the changing demographic, it is becoming more liberal as we speak,” said Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a Latino politics specialist at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.

“That is a new reality in and of itself,” he added.

Mello, an anti-abortion Catholic, is the son of a factory worker and house cleaner from the blue-collar south side of Omaha, the state’s largest city. When he returned to the area as an adult and became its state senator, South Omaha was already undergoing a demographic makeover.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, Latino immigrants from Mexico and Central America began flocking to Nebraska for jobs, especially in the state’s meatpacking industry. In 1990, just 3 percent of Omaha’s population was Latino; by 2010, about 13 percent of the city was Latino, mostly concentrated in South Omaha.

Mello developed deep ties within the Latino community there and became a proponent of their legislative causes. 

Sergio Sosa, Heartland Workers Center’s executive director, pointed to the election of a number of Latinos in recent years, as well as the growing number of Latino citizens eligible to vote, as evidence that its efforts are paying off.

As it turned out, Mello not only lost, he topped Stothert by just 139 votes in South Omaha’s Ward 4, far short of the margin he needed to outweigh Stothert’s advantage in the affluent western parts of the city.

Precinct-level results are not yet available, but it looks like Latino voters did not turn out in high enough numbers to make the difference for Mello, according to Benjamin-Alvarado. That could change as more U.S.-born Latino children come of age, and other community members gain citizenship.

The race still showed the power of Latino voters. Stothert knew she could not risk letting Mello differentiate himself as an immigrant-rights advocate. She pointed to her letters to the legislature supporting bills providing DACA recipients driver’s licenses and professional licenses. She also appointed Joel Cota , a Mexican American active in the South Omaha community, as her community liaison.

During her re-election bid, Stothert created a satellite campaign office in South Omaha, taped Spanish-language radio ads and made her annual appearance in South Omaha’s massive Cinco de Mayo parade.

“It is one of the first times that the mayoral candidates have been putting Spanish-language ads in radio stations. They have been canvassing the Latino community,” Sosa said.

Evelia Gutierrez, a bilingual liaison for Omaha public schools who arrived in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant before obtaining citizenship, was crushed when Mello lost.

She said Stothert, in a Spanish-language radio ad, exaggerated her role in DACA bills in the legislature. Stothert campaigned for state legislature in 2006 as anti-immigration, promising a hard line against “illegals,” Gutierrez said. 

Still, Stothert’s desire to frame herself for her re-election as more compassionate to immigrants spoke to the Latino community’s growing influence, Gutierrez said.

“She knows that we do play a big role not only in the votes, but also in the economy,” Gutierrez said.

It could not have hurt her standing in the Latino community that Stothert was public about her decision not to vote for President Donald Trump . That undermined Mello’s attempts to ride anti-Trump energy, which is especially strong in the Latino community.

“She may have back-doored him in that way,” Benjamin-Alvarado said. “That’s not the reason why she won, but in terms of having to play to that audience already, yeah,” it made a difference.

“The calculation” for any mayoral candidate, he concluded, “has to be inclusive of Latinos and their interests.”

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