ASHINGTON - What may be the most politically crucial message of presidential and congressional candidates in the 2000 campaigns won't run on the major networks, and won't be in English.
With a fast-growing, strategically placed Latino vote up for grabs, the hot medium is Univision, a Spanish-language cable TV station that has seen political advertising grow exponentially in the past two years.
Latinos are expected to be the biggest minority group in America by 2010. And while Hispanics currently make up only 5 percent of the national vote, they are a critical swing vote in some key places.
Four states with large Latino populations, California, New York, Florida, and Texas, could decide the 2000 presidential race, and a couple of dozen congressional districts could determine which party controls the House of Representatives. And neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a lock on the Latino vote.
''In every election from now into the future, Latinos will have a decisive say, because of the concentration of Latinos in important states,'' said Henry Cisneros, president of Univision and a former secretary of housing and urban development.
Candidates are taking note of the numerical power of Latino voters, now 30 million and growing. Presidential contenders are announcing their candidacies in Spanish as well as English. They have hired Latinos on their campaign staffs, and are buying time on Spanish-language television to get their messages across.
Vice President Al Gore is to give the keynote address at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute dinner on Wednesday.
Before 1998, Univision never sold more than $500,000 in campaign ads nationwide. Last year, political advertising sales catapulted to $8 million, and the revenues are expected to more than double during the 2000 campaigns.
Hillary Rodham Clinton was rattled into recognizing the political impact of the Hispanic community in New York last week. Her repudiation of 16 members of a Puerto Rican nationalist group so infuriated Puerto Rican political leaders that her support among these influential people has been threatened.
Latinos do not yet have the national organization and the campaign-finance clout of some other constituencies. But their growing influence is already formidable.
In addition to the big four states, Latinos are a significant part of the vote in New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, and Connecticut, and are growing in numbers in Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.
Political analysts and party officials say there are as many as 25 to 30 House seats where the Latino vote could swing the election. In 13 of those districts, the 1998 winner was elected with less than 52 percent of the vote.
Mobilizing the Latino vote is the Democrats' best chance of taking back control of the House, something they could do just by taking five districts away from the Republicans, said John Del Cacato, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The rewards are also great for the presidential candidates, but wooing the Latino vote is fraught with complications. The concerns of Mexican-Americans in Texas or California differ greatly from those of Puerto Ricans in New York, or Cubans in Florida.
Voting patterns are unpredictable even within ethnic groups. Cubans, who generally oppose Fidel Castro, tend to be more Republican, but strongly anti-Castro Democrats have done well among Cuban-American voters in Florida and New Jersey.
Latinos tend to be more conservative than African-Americans, and are not a shoo-in vote for Democratic candidates, especially in states like Texas, where Governor George W. Bush enjoys good relations with Hispanics.
''Traditionally, we've been aligned with Democrats. Now, we're up for grabs,'' said Ingrid Duran, executive director of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
Bush, with strong support among Latinos in Texas, not to mention having a brother who is governor of Florida and a sister-in-law who is Mexican-American, has a clear edge in Texas and a strong start in Florida, analysts in both parties say. Democrats have a strong base in New York, where two-thirds of Latino voters voted for the Democratic candidate in the last New York City mayoral election.
Bush ''has a record now. He's made some high-profile appointments. He's helped some Latinos get elected, and they can be his ambassadors to other states,'' said Robert Jara, an analyst with the Houston-based Campaign Strategies, which assists mainly Democratic candidates.
Democrats and Republicans alike say Bush has a bond with Hispanics that is natural and genuine, transcending the politician-constituency relationship, much like the relationship President Clinton has had with African-Americans.
Whether that relationship can translate elsewhere, however, is an open question, especially in California, where lingering anger over what Hispanics perceived as anti-immigrant Republican policies is still evident.
Bush's biggest problem in California may be the ghost of former Republican governor Pete Wilson, whose backing of Proposition 187, which curtailed government services for immigrants, infuriated Latinos and galvanized many to register and vote.
''Bush is going to have a real problem in California, even though he has opposed Proposition 187,'' said Leo Briones, a Democratic pollster in California.
The successful candidates, Hispanic leaders say, will do more than utter a few words of Spanish. ''Clearly, they have to be more sophisticated in their approach,'' said Joe Garcia, the Independent chairman of the Florida Public Service Commission.
''Latinos are much more savvy today than they were 10-15 years ago,'' Garcia said, ''because they've realized how much power they have.''
