MIAMI (AP) - Republican Hispanic lawmakers had a groundbreaking
year in the 2010 midterm elections, picking up two governor posts -
the first ever for a Latina - while holding onto a U.S. Senate seat
and adding several congressional seats.

Latino advocacy groups lauded the addition of a growing and more
diverse crop of Hispanic officials. But they also said they were
waiting to see whether the new lawmakers would address the most
pressing issues facing their communities.

Opposition to President Barack Obama's agenda fueled Tuesday's
GOP surge, but many also connected Obama's election to the rise of
minority GOP candidates.

"Color is becoming less of an issue," said Richard Ivory, a
black Republican political consultant and founder of
hiphoprepublican.com. "There was a time when the white electorate
saw race first and made judgments based on this alone."

Overall, with Democratic losses, there was likely to be only a
small net gain of Latinos in Congress. Florida's Marco Rubio will
join the Senate's lone Hispanic member, New Jersey Democrat Bob
Menendez.

"One thing we do know is that it was a good year to be a
Republican Hispanic candidate," said Arturo Vargas, head of the
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
"Hispanic Republican candidates rode the Republican title wave. It
was coast to coast. The only place they didn't seem to win was the
Pacific Ocean," he said, referring to California, where Democrats
held strong and Republican Abel Maldonado lost his bid for
lieutenant governor.

In New Mexico, Susana Martinez was elected as the nation's first
female Hispanic governor. Nevada voters elected Brian Sandoval as
that state's first Hispanic governor.

On the congressional side, Jamie Herrera will become the first
Latino congressman from Washington state, while Raul Labrador will
be the first from Idaho. House Democrats were defeated by Latino
Republicans such as Francisco Canseco, who beat Rep. Ciro
Rodriguez, an 11-year House veteran. Also in Florida, state
representative David Rivera beat Democrat Joe Garcia, a former
Obama administration energy official, to capture an open House seat
- one of the few nationwide that Democrats had hoped to pick up.

In Alabama, Democrat Terri Sewell became the first black woman
elected to Congress from that state. And in Louisiana, Democrat
Cedric Richardson unseated first-term Republican congressman Joseph
Cao, the only Vietamese-American in Congress, in a
Democratic-leaning district.

In South Carolina, Nikki Haley was elected governor, becoming
the second Indian-American to win a gubernatorial race. She is also
that state's first female governor.

African-American Republicans also made significant gains.
Fourteen black Republicans were on House ballots nationwide, almost
double the number in 2008. Insurance company owner Tim Scott will
be the first black Republican to represent South Carolina in the
U.S. House since Reconstruction, and in Florida, veteran Allen West
ousted a two-term Democrat to a House seat. He will become
Florida's first black Republican in Congress since the 1870s.

"It is very heartening for our country to see this kind of
diversity moving forward," said Hilary Shelton, director to the
NAACP's Washington bureau. He noted that a black Republican has not
served in Congress since J.C. Watts of Oklahoma left office in
2003.

Shelton also said it was noteworthy that both West and Scott
were elected in primarily white districts.

The same was true for several of the Latino congressional
candidates. In some cases they won despite, not because of, the
Hispanic vote.

Two-thirds of Hispanic voters in Nevada opted for Sandoval's
opponent, Rory Reid. Hispanic voters there tend to vote Democratic.
Sandoval, however, was not helped by reports that, in response to
questions about whether his children might be racially profiled by
an Arizona-style immigration law, he told Spanish-language media
that his children "didn't look Hispanic."

Even Marco Rubio, who speaks frequently with pride of his Cuban
immigrant parents but also supports the tough Arizona immigration
law and a repeal of the new federal health care law, won only a
third of Florida's growing, non-Cuban Hispanics.

Like most Americans, Latinos tend to rate the economy, health
care and education among their top priorities, but most voted
against candidates who supported harsh enforcement-only immigration
laws.

Angela Maria Kelley, a vice president for immigration policy and
advocacy at the Center for American Progress, called Latino voters
"the firewall that kept the Senate in Democratic hands."

She and other Latino leaders said Hispanics were key in tight
races, particularly in Nevada's Senate race, where Democrat Harry
Reid squeaked by Republican tea party favorite Sharron Angle. In a
last-minute campaign push to help show that she was tough on
immigration, Angle ran ads featuring scary-looking Hispanic gang
members.

"Latinos took great offense to that, and they turned out in
great numbers," Kelley said. An exit poll conducted for the
Associated Press in the state showed Hispanic voters breaking
heavily in Reid's favor, but by about the same margin as in 2004.

National Council of La Raza Vice President Eric Rodriguez said
lawmakers from both major parties would be wise to seek out Latino
and other minority voters and address their issues, as well as
support more minority candidates.

"If this is an indication of that, then this is a good thing,"
he said.