There's a man in Phoenix with a political playbook that has become valuable. So valuable, the Obama campaign believes it could help clinch the president's re-election.
Phoenix City Council Member Daniel Valenzuela is a fourth-generation Mexican-American. Last year, he won a seat on the Phoenix City Council in a traditionally Republican district, and he did it by increasing Latino voter turnout by 488 percent.
"I decided early on that this campaign would be a campaign for social behavioral change," Valenzuela tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. "To get people active, register to vote, realize the power of a vote and to get them to cast that vote."
Latino voters continue to shape American politics, and this election season should see candidates on both sides courting the support of the fast-growing group. In Valenzuela's case, he did it the old-fashioned way. He recruited a group of local university students who knocked on 72,000 doors. READ MORE
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Personally, I think the Latino vote is the Republicans' to lose, and they've been doing a lot to try to lose it. The Democrats will probably win out in the end.