Super Duper Latino Vote is No One’s Big Enchilada

Asked on Super Duper Tuesday to choose between a black candidate and a white candidate, Latinos chose both — and neither.

“The candidates need to understand where Latinos stand,” says Smithe Celestrin, 31, standing outside Public School 24 in Brooklyn’s diverse working class neighborhood of Sunset Park. Celestrin, a dark-skinned Puerto Rican-French-Chinese digital advertising manager, says her main issues are the war, the economy and immigration. “This is our country and we will have our say in it.”

In a Democratic contest in which the issue of race has played a definitive role, racially fluid and ambiguous Latinos like Celestrin delivered a loud and historic message to the candidates and pundits and to the country as a whole: the black-white electorate of yesteryear is dead.