Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
The entry titled "Obama's sister wooing expats in Mexico."
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Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2008 > July > 17 > Entry
Obama’s sister wooing expats in Mexico
The Democratic Party has made targeting ex-pats a priority this election season, hoping to take advantage of the more than 6 million Americans who live outside the country (that’s more than 24 entire states). For the first time, ex-pats got their own Democratic primary (Obama took 65 percent of the vote) and will have 11 votes at this summer’s Democratic convention in Denver.
Now that the general election is on us, the Democrats Abroad group is pushing its members to get their absentee ballots by signing up online. We’ll see if the effort improves the numbers. The AP reports that of the 990,000 who requested absentee ballots in 2004, less than 400,000 were actually counted (problems with foreign mail services got most of the blame).
Soetoro-Ng is a Honolulu teacher who is Obama’s half-sister on his mother’s side (after she divorced Obama’s Kenyan father, she re-married an Indonesian man). She will be courting Mexico City’s large American population, many of whom are indeed wealthy enough to afford a couple of plates.
There is also a Republicans Abroad group, which helps Republican ex-pats get absentee ballots for individual states.
Republican candidate John McCain visited Mexico last week, but it’s not clear if Obama will head south of the border before the election.
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