Hispanics make 9 percent of state population

BOISE – Hispanic activist Maria Mabbutt believes the day is rapidly approaching when the state’s largest minority begins to flex some political muscle.

“Any time a minority population reaches 10 percent of a state’s population, that’s when attention especially is paid,” the leader of the Idaho Latino Vote Project said. “We’re very close – within the next five years.”

New population figures released by the Census Bureau on Wednesday underscored Mabbutt’s prediction. Idaho’s Hispanic population accounted for nearly 9 percent of total population, nearly a full percentage point higher than when the 2000 census was taken.

The figures showed the Hispanic population statewide growing at 4.8 percent from mid-2002 to mid-2003 while total population was up just 1.7 percent, maintaining the trend since the 2000 census. After nearly doubling in the 1990s, the Hispanic population has grown three times faster than the state as a whole since.

It totaled almost 120,000 last year.

“What it says is our community’s growing and we’re here to stay,” said Leo Morales, who was politically active in his community while a student at Boise State University and is now with the Idaho Community Action Network.

“We consider Idaho our home, and we’re going to continue to call Idaho our home,” Morales said.

That stronger growth was seen in 37 of the state’s 44 counties, and 18 of them saw the Hispanic concentration increase by a full percentage point or more.

Those included Canyon County in southwestern Idaho, where Hispanics now make up 20 percent of the population, and the seven counties comprising south-central Idaho, where the Hispanic population is over 16 percent regionally and well above 20 percent in Minidoka, Jerome and Cassia counties.

“Idaho is really not prepared for that increase as far as services and resources,” state Hispanic Affairs Commission Director Margie Gonzalez said, maintaining that the issue is economic as well as social.

“The schools are going to have to become more prepared,” Gonzalez said, citing the high dropout rate among Hispanics.

“And the businesses will have to become more prepared,” she said. “The buying power is there.”

In addition to the Hispanics counted by the census, Gonzalez estimated as many as 10,000 more are in Idaho without documents but who still make money and spend it.

“That’s where the business is as our population grows,” she said. “It’s going to make an impact, but it’s up to the business owners to become educated.”

Education and the economy are key issues for Hispanics, Mabbutt said, as is health care, and it is at the local level that Hispanic political influence will first be felt. The timing depends on how long it takes to not just register Hispanics to vote in large numbers but to actually get them to the polls for every election from school board on up, she said.

Five years ago, only 10,000 of the 37,000 eligible Hispanic voters were registered. Today the number has hit 17,000 of an estimated 40,000- person Hispanic pool.

“So we’re still not even at half what the potential is,” she said.

But it’s having some effect. An Hispanic was elected to the City Council in Burley last year for the first time. More than one in five Cassia County residents are Hispanic.

“Participating in school board elections, municipal elections, the county elections – the local level is where we can make a difference,” Mabbutt said. “That is where it is significant.”