Who is lionel sosa

He had the image of Picasso entertaining groups of friends for lavish restaurant meals and paying for them simply by drawing a sketch on a napkin and giving it to the restaurant owner.

Another time, Sosa wanted to be a top artist for Walt Disney, to be the right-hand man of Disney himself. Sosa knew he could draw. He was the class artist for the Sydney Lanier High School class that graduated in Neither the Picasso nor the Disney dream came true.

But sometimes success arrives just by dreaming big, even if it happens in another way. His influence in San Antonio and the rest of the nation remains strong.

I had a couple of accidents, I must say. In high school, he drew constantly, on the blackboards, for the yearbook and comics for the school newspaper. His father inspired him. After high school and about the time he served in the U.

While there, he compiled a portfolio he hoped would be the ticket to a Disney job, drawings of Disney characters and movie stars. Sosa ran short of money while in California. After purchasing a bus ticket home, he did not have enough money for a taxi to Disney offices.

And in every market across the country the campaign followed his lead, executed his strategy and significantly over performed historical standards. I just figured both parties had finally figured it out with Republicans leading the way.

Of course I was wrong since no campaign — Democrat or Republican — has run a campaign like that since. But more importantly I was wrong because even today neither party has anyone who comes close to successfully developing messaging and ads in as many Senate, gubernatorial and Presidential campaigns focused on Latino voters across the country as Lionel. Think about that for a moment. No one in our profession has communicated with more Hispanic voters than Lionel by a wide measure.

More than any other political consultant in history he has defined our political system to the emerging Latino electorate. In a profession that values a bare knuckle street fighting mentality, Lionel rose to the top of his profession with a gentlemans demeanor, a sincere personal touch but a fierce effectiveness in his medium.

Make no mistake, there is a warrior behind that bow tie and calm voice. In fact when I called Lionel to tell him that the AAPC would be inducting him into the Hall of Fame, I immediately started listing off the names of those I wanted to have personally acknowledge his work — President Bush both of them — and possibly a third , Speakers Gingrich, Hastert, more Governors, Senators and Congressmen than I could count.

Ultimately he would decide that we should just show some of his reel. I would submit that for all of the men and women we have honored with our highest level of recognition — tonight we induct the first among us to have mastered our craft in two languages and in two cultures. While Lionel is undoubtedly the first man to bring Spanish language mediums into common practice on state and national campaigns — he was also among the first to demonstrate that targeting Hispanic voters in English was as, or more, effective as Spanish if you understood and could connect in both Hispanic and popular American culture.

Lionel wrote the book on how to have a political conversation with two cultures in the same medium at the same time. No seriously, Lionel literally wrote a book on how to do it.

In these stories, we discover the heart of the Latino soul, rich in spirit, patriotism, and a fierce commitment to the United States. Often unrecognized and certainly not fully appreciated Lionel was that rare person who was so far ahead of his time the only person he could compete with was himself.

His uncanny ability to capture the American Dream as envisioned through the eyes of the immigrant, the poor, the struggling family working to build a better life has allowed him to introduce his clients to Latino voters in a way that would serve both major parties well today — especially during these times of mutual anger and negativity.

Nowhere in his extraordinary body of work do you see the vitriol, name calling, blame, scapegoating, demagoguery or scare tactics that both Democrats and Republicans commonly employ today to mobilize Latino voters. That he has been so overwhelmingly successful in that way should be a lesson to us all. I have no doubt that from the moment that young Mexican kid established in his own mind where he wanted to go in life, he innately grasped the politics of who we as Latinos aspire to be in America.

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