Democrats lost four Texas state House seats held by incumbent Hispanics. Locally, Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia also went down to defeat.

The Republicans gained five Hispanic members in the House, and Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman, of Houston, won with more than 60 percent of the statewide vote.

"We had no Hispanic Republicans in the House. Now we have cinco, five," said Juan Hernandez, a founder of Hispanic Republicans of Texas.

Hispanics also played a key role in Gov. Rick Perry's re-election, despite Democrat Bill White's extensive courtship of South Texas and large urban populations.

Nationally, the message sent by Hispanics in politics was mixed.

Hispanic voters saved the day in elections for Democratic U.S. Sens. Harry Reid of Nevada and California's Barbara Boxer and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown.

At the same time, Republicans Susana Martinez and Brian Sandoval won gubernatorial races in New Mexico and Nevada while Republican Marco Rubio won the U.S. Senate race in Florida.

Contradiction explained

The Hispanic Republican victories in Texas seem contrary to an Associated Press exit poll that showed 61 percent of the state's Hispanic voters cast ballots for Democrats.

The contradiction is simple. Overall voter turnout was up in Texas this year, but turnout in many Hispanic areas was stagnant or down.

Some of the most heavily Hispanic state House districts in Harris and Bexar counties saw only about a quarter of the registered voters cast ballots. Some Republican districts, however, had voter turnouts of more than 45 percent.

Republicans have a formula for statewide success that matches an Anglo majority with a third or more of the Hispanic turnout to equal victory. Media consultant Lionel Sosa, of San Antonio, said the Republican vote grew from 8 percent of Hispanics casting ballots in 1978, when it first was targeted by then-U.S. Sen. John Tower, to about 37 percent this year. "This is a new revolution that is happening in Texas," he said.

Perry took advantage of this coalition effect in his victory. Perry spent more than $600,000 on Hispanic advertising during the last three weeks of the campaign.

While exit polling showed a majority of Hispanics voted Democratic, 39 percent voted for Perry's re-election.

In heavily Democratic and Hispanic South Texas, Perry captured 48 percent of the vote. Perry got no less than 20 percent of the vote in South Texas counties and took 40 percent of the Cameron County vote.

Houston Democratic political consultant Marc Campos said Texas Republicans have a history of seeking Hispanic voters while Democrats take them for granted. "They make the effort, and I cannot say that in good conscience about the Democratic Party," he said.

Campos said Hispanic Democratic voter turnout was down in some areas and in other areas was anemic compared to the surge of Republican turnout. He said Reid, Boxer and Brown reached out to Hispanics on issues such as immigration reform and the federal Dream Act to help immigrant youth attend college.

While White tried to reach out to Hispanics by speaking Spanish and airing ads that focused on his family, the former Houston mayor also matched Perry with commercials proclaiming he will crack down on the border.

"Who's tougher on the border isn't exactly going to excite a lot of Latino voters," Campos said.

Gregory Rocha, chairman of the political science department at the University of Texas at El Paso, said it always is difficult to get high Latino voter turnout because of chronically low education and low income levels among Hispanics.

Micro-targeting

Rocha said modern campaigns also work against the typical Hispanic voter by targeting with direct mail and phone calls only those, such as himself, who are more affluent and have a history of voting.

"They won't touch anybody else," he said.

Democratic political consultant Leland Beatty, of Austin, does such micro-targeting. He said many Democrats refuse to target Hispanic voters.

"They say, 'They don't vote so I'm not going to spend money on Hispanic turnout,'" Beatty said. "It's such a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't ask somebody to vote for you, they're not going to give it to you."

Democrats have counted on the growing Hispanic population to put them back in power once they start voting in dramatic numbers. But GOP pollster Michael Baselice has argued that so long as Republican candidates take a third of the Hispanic vote, they will win statewide elections for the next 10 to 15 years.

Beatty said there also is the phenomenon that when Hispanics assimilate into Anglo, blue collar neighborhoods, the men in particular begin voting like their Anglo neighbors.

"Demographically," he said, "we're talking about people who listen to the same radio stations, drive the same pickups and wear the same gimme caps."

r.g.ratcliffe@chron.com

gscharrer@express-news.net