ORLANDO, Fla. - Like eager but awkward suitors, Barack Obama and John McCain are working hard and sometimes fumbling in their efforts to court Hispanic voters who could swing November’s presidential election.

For the African-American Obama and white Anglo McCain, the problem is less one of language than of trying to understand a group whose own diversity can make it a mystery to others. It’s not a simple matter of saying, “Take me to your leaders.”

But that, in essence, is the ground game the presidential candidates and their campaigns have been playing in pitching to voters who could form decisive constituencies in critical battleground states.

“They just come to me and say, ‘Who are the bosses of the Latin community?”’ said Patrick Manteiga, who runs a family-owned newspaper for Hispanics in Tampa’s historic Cuban neighborhood of Ybor City. “That’s like coming and asking, ‘Who are the bosses of white America, of the soccer moms?’”

Both candidates are pressing their case in three speeches in as many weeks to Hispanic umbrella groups and working in other ways to make their outreach more sophisticated. Republicans have opened an office in Orlando, where most of the state’s Puerto Ricans live, and Obama opens one this week in Ybor City.

They’ve both got their work cut out for them in appealing to a large and growing segment of the population that has leaned Democratic but has not always been motivated to vote. A recent AP-Yahoo News poll found Obama leading McCain 47 percent to 22 percent among Hispanic voters, with 26 percent undecided.

McCain is respected by many Hispanics for refusing to pander to anti-immigrant sentiment over the years. Yet he is viewed in some Latin quarters as a sequel to the unpopular President Bush, a problem he has with voters at large, too.

Obama’s vitality and soaring oratory appeal to Hispanics just as they do to others. Whoops of approval were heard throughout his speech this week to the League of United Latin American Citizens’ convention.

During the last presidential election, Hispanics in key swing states such as Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Florida represented anywhere from 8 percent to more than 30 percent of voters, according to exit polls, and their numbers are only expected to grow this year.

Although Texas Hispanics have tended to vote Democratic, in the 2004 presidential election, Bush, the state’s former governor, split their vote with Democrat John Kerry. Now their support may be up for grabs again - not enough perhaps to swing the state but enough to force McCain to spend more resources there.

Many Hispanics interviewed by The said they wanted more of a direct pitch from the candidates.

Many also acknowledged tensions on that front, because of competition over jobs and services or because of prejudice. Yet many also said these issues would not be the deciding factor for them, especially in a year when the economy and the war in Iraq loom large.