A Mexican in the "gringo" election campaigns

- Mexican-born César Martínez has been creative director for the last Hispanic election campaigns of George Bush and John McCain.

MARCOS SÁNCHEZ . PAMPLONA Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 04:00 h. César Martínez Gomáriz was born in Mexico DF 46 years ago and has been living in San Antonio, Texas, USA for the last 25 years. 25 years, the same years he has been dedicated to communication, political and traditional marketing.

Director of MAS Consulting Group and in addition to having created advertising campaigns for brands such as Coca-Cola, Burger King or Western Union, Martinez has been advertising director for the Hispanic campaign of George Bush in 2000, as well as a member of the communication strategy team for the Hispanic electorate of the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004 and creative director also for the Hispanic area of McCain-Palin in 2008. César Martínez was predestined to be involved in the political world. His grandfather, Jerónimo Gomáriz Latorre, was a member of the Spanish parliament during the Second Republic ("he replaced Azorín," says the grandson), undersecretary of Justice and, later, the republic's consul for North Africa. While living in Oran, the Spanish Civil War broke out and he emigrated with his family to Mexico. "On the other hand, my grandfather, on his father's side, was a constituent in 1917 of the Mexican Democratic Republic," adds Martínez. "My mother was more into the PAN [National Action Party, right-wing], while my father was PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party]. My brother Jerónimo was a political cartoonist; my brother Rodolfo, an anthropologist, or socialist; and I decided to be a publicist. I grew up with four newspapers at home and a lot of opinion.

Do you like politics?
I don't belong to any party, but I like it. I feel it is important to participate. Politics should not be left to politicians alone, but people have to get involved. In the United States, you even vote for your school board members.
However, participation in elections is low, at least in Spain. Are citizens fed up with politicians?
It's democratic boredom. I suppose in Spain's first elections the turnout was massive. You have to remind people that it's very important that they vote. If you don't vote for someone, someone else is going to decide for you. I take my children with me when I go to vote. In the last U.S. election, my company worked for Senator McCain, but my children were more for Obama. In my house there were two signs, Obama and McCain. If people don't participate, democracy doesn't grow. And democracy is like health: if you don't take care of it, it starts to go.

How do you prepare a candidate?
They are projects that take months. The first thing is to research and determine what type of person you want to vote for: how old they are, what their media consumption habits are, what language they use... Doesn't it seem impossible to connect an Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, English-speaking candidate with a Latino, Catholic, Spanish-speaking audience? Well, if you find similar values, it is possible.

And what was it like working for George Bush?
He was a very disciplined candidate on message and connected well with the voter. The 2000 election was very complicated because in the end it ended up being decided by the Supreme Court. The difference between Bush and his rivals was that he identified more with the common citizen. In 2004, while Bush was seen working on his ranch, Senator John Kerry was more distant.
However, if there is currently a politician with a bad image or a bad memory, it is George Bush?
Internationally, maybe, but not so much in the United States. Otherwise, he would not have been re-elected in 2004, when 3 million more people voted for him than his rival. Bush's image is not the most popular on the planet, but in the campaign it worked very well.

What are Bush's charms?
He managed to connect. The most important thing is to connect, to communicate and, possibly, to convince. You say vote for me, but if there's no connection, it's impossible to win. Kerry had no ability to connect. Obama had an excellent ability. McCain had it, but the positioning he was given as if he were Bush III had an influence.

Cyclone Obama was invincible.
Gigantic. But Obama came into office representing hope and, a year later, the situation is complex. He achieved great chemistry with the people and the defeat he just had in Massachusetts is the best thing that could have happened to him. It's a warning that he has to reconnect with the people. The voter is in charge.

How much blame do advisors have for what politicians do or say?
I wouldn't call it guilt. We are communicators, not politicians. We don't have to agree completely with what the candidate thinks because, at the end of the day, what we are looking for is to communicate with the target audience. A candidate has four audiences before him: the base; the undecided; the indifferent, who are not interested in voting; and those who are against. We, the media consultants, are not hired to win our vote, but to win the vote of thousands of people. The one who votes is the one who knows and the one who rules, period.

How powerful is the Latino vote in the United States?
Latinos make up 15% of the population. We are the largest minority and, in some places, the majority. In Texas and California, for example, one out of every three citizens is Latino. In North Carolina, the Latino population growth has been 600%. What is happening to Latinos in the United States is what is going to happen to immigrants in Spain. It is no longer easy to move base voters, so the new voter, the first-time voter, is the one who may be easiest to persuade. The immigrant vote is going to be very important in Spain and, if a candidate is able to talk to them as Spaniards, as people who help the country to grow, he or she can be carried to victory.

On the other hand, all parties aspire to win the youth vote.
The vote of young people is the most difficult to motivate, the indifferent vote. They are not interested in politics and are much more interested in football or friends. But there are people who bet on youth and it works for them, as Obama did, who has to go back to that because now he is disconnected from youth.