Historical Hispanic partisan alignments, Hispanic outreach styles, and the theory of Hispanic surge-and-decline effects on Hispanic peripheral voters

Earning a Doctor of Philosophy degree is truly a marathon, not a sprint, with the dissertation being the capstone to all the cumulative work that came before it in one's academic journey -from the dream of receiving a Ph.D., to completing the class work, to passing the comprehensive examinations, to the writing of the final dissertation version.No one person could ever go through this process without the help from so many individuals along the way.The first person to plant the Ph.D. seed within me was Bill Moyers during a dinner with my Dad and Mom at our home when I was 13 years old.Bill talked to me about the importance of learning something about everything you can, especially outside your field of work, and then to pick two or three topic areas that you become an expert in.When sharing his theory with others, I call it the "T" knowledge base model -one should have broad and basic knowledge across the spectrum, then have deep knowledge in your area(s) of specialization.To Bill I thank you for planting the first seed.