President Barack Obama's emotional call for a congressional vote on gun control during Tuesday night's State of the Union address struck many in the House chamber as a powerful moment, including NBC News' top correspondents, who also picked up on significant points in the president's remarks on the economy and North Korea.

Brian Williams
Anchor and managing editor of 'NBC Nightly News' and 'Rock Center with Brian Williams'

This is ... part of the backdrop of gun violence and public violence that kind of formed the backdrop for the president to come into that chamber tonight. Someone mentioned on social media tonight that immediately after the speech, we weren't talking about the economy. We were talking about that last emotional note.

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Chuck Todd
NBC News political director and chief White House correspondent 

To me, it was a tale of a couple of speeches. You had a very run-of-the-mill State of the Union where he was putting together agenda item after agenda item that sounded like the campaign, that was very well focus-grouped, very well poll-tested — minimum wage, pre-K, things that people care about at home, education and jobs. And then, I have to say, the entire tone of the speech changed there at the end. It was just incredibly emotional. You don't find many State of the Unions that have moments like that. He's had to do a State of the Union right after the Gabby Giffords shooting that had some emotional moments, but that was something else, and, boy, did he put his entire weight behind guns in a way that I don't think a lot of people expected.

Savannah Guthrie
Co-anchor of TODAY and NBC News chief legal correspondent

To be crass about it, he played the best card he had in a very difficult political fight — the emotion card. Here he is in a hall full of people who have been directly affected by gun violence, and yet he faces an uphill battle. He's hoping that the tragedy of Newtown — that still-searing scar that this country has — will change the political calculus. But it's not just Republicans he has to deal with to get a coalition to enact some kind of gun legislation. He's got to get conservative Democrats, conservative members of his own party from red states, many of whom are facing re-election or are advocates of gun rights and gun ownership. ...

It's the calendar that's the enemy right now. The farther away you get from Newtown, the more difficult this task becomes.

David Gregory
Moderator, 'Meet the Press'

How does government work to make the economy better? That's the big challenge of his second term. Boy, there was a shot across the bow of Republicans tonight when, in effect, he said obsessing about the deficit (and) deficit reduction is not a plan for economic growth. ...

He said, the president did, it's not a bigger government we need but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth. And who did he mention quite a lot tonight? Apple. Siemens. CEOs. The business community.

Kelly O'Donnell
NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent

During the emotional part, where the president was referring to potential gun reforms, Gabby Giffords and her family, about 5 to 7 feet behind me, were standing — she was applauding with difficulty with her right hand. ... There was one moment where I just happened to catch it where a woman was shouting the name of a young woman and saying she deserves a vote.

Andrea Mitchell
NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent

There was a clear warning to North Korea, but it was an empty warning. Unless China jumps in with heavy sanctions, which is unlikely, there is no further punishment of North Korea that the Western allies can enact.

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Perhaps no person in America better reflects the possibility and peril of a life lived in the public eye than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

From lashing out at a “vast right-wing conspiracy” when news of her husband’s infidelity emerged to finding her “own voice” after a teary answer to a voter’s question on the campaign trail, Clinton has never failed to confound her critics and inspire her fans.

As Clinton’s final day at the State Department closes the latest chapter of her public life, here is a look at 15 key moments -- from the 1960s through today.

First big speech: Hillary Diane Rodham gives the commencement address at Wellesley College in Massachusetts in May 1969. It establishes her not just as respected but as outspoken: She criticizes a previous speaker, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Brooke, and suggests that he is out of touch with the action her generation craves. Weeks later, she is featured in Life magazine as a shining example of the Class of ’69.

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Meeting her match: At Yale Law School, Hillary Rodham meets Bill Clinton. She would write later that the attraction was immediate, and that they shared an intellectual bond that never broke: "Bill Clinton and I started a conversation in the spring of 1971," she wrote in the memoir, "and more than 30 years later, we're still talking."

‘If that's not enough ... don’t vote for him': Bill and Hillary Clinton go on “60 Minutes” in January 1992, in an interview that airs immediately after the Super Bowl, to deny that he had had a 12-year affair with an Arkansas state employee, Gennifer Flowers. In the interview, Hillary Clinton says: “You know, I'm not sitting here — some little woman standin’ by my man like Tammy Wynette. I'm sitting here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together. And you know, if that's not enough for people, then heck, don't vote for him.” The couple are pictured with “60 Minutes” executive producer Don Hewitt.

Health-care advocate: As first lady, Hillary Clinton leads a presidential effort in 1993 and 1994 to reform health care, a policy role unprecedented for a first lady. The plan ultimately aims for universal coverage by requiring employers to provide health care. But some Republicans, and notably the insurance industry, attack the plan as hopelessly bogged down in bureaucracy, and it dies in Congress. The defeat is a huge setback for a woman who aspired to be a non-traditional first lady but who opponents feared had designs on being a co-president.

Making her mark: In September 1995, Clinton goes to a U.N. conference in Beijing and delivers a forceful critique of abuse of women in China, using language that would be considered strong for any American leader but particularly out of the ordinary for a first lady. She declares: “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.”

 

Conspiracy theory: In January 1998, just after allegations surface of a presidential affair with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, Hillary Clinton goes on TODAY and dismisses the matter as a "feeding frenzy." She stresses that the president has denied the suggestions of an affair. She goes on to tell Matt Lauer: “The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”

 

Between the two of them: The Clintons, with daughter Chelsea famously clutching their hands, leave the White House for a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard in August 1998. A day earlier, the president had admitted on national television that he had had an improper relationship with former White House interview Monica Lewinsky. Hillary Clinton later writes of this period in her memoir: “Although I was heartbroken and disappointed with Bill, my long hours alone made me admit to myself that I loved him. What I still didn't know was whether our marriage could or should last.”

Engaging debate: Clinton makes a point during a September 2000 debate with Rep. Rick Lazio for a Senate seat from New York. During the same debate, Lazio produces a pledge against “soft money” political contributions and walks over to Clinton’s lectern, encouraging her to “sign it right now.” Some Clinton supporters later say the move was bullying. Clinton wins with 55 percent of the vote, and in 2006 trounces another Republican opponent with 67 percent. She generally wins praise as a hard worker in the Senate, and after re-election quickly turns her attention to a bid for the presidency.

Finding her voice: Clinton exults after defeating Sen. Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary in January 2008, resuscitating her campaign after a bruising defeat in Iowa days earlier. Clinton, asked by a New Hampshire voter how she deals with the stress of campaigning, had choked up and said: “You know, I have so many opportunities from this country, I just don't want to see us fall backwards.” In her victory speech, Clinton says she “found my own voice.”

 

The laugh: Nearing the end of her primary campaign, Clinton enjoys a drink and some laughs with reporters on her campaign plane after a stop in South Dakota in May 2008. Her laugh — with a boisterous crescendo that borders on a cackle — becomes so famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) that it inspires a parody by Amy Poehler on “Saturday Night Live.”

End of a long battle: Clinton waves to supporters at the National Building Museum in Washington in June 2008 after endorsing Obama for president — the end of their historic prizefight of a Democratic primary campaign. In a reference to her popular-vote count in the Democratic race, she says: “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.”

Globetrotter: Clinton, as secretary of state for Obama's first term, visits the historic Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, in October 2009. She would say later that it was “hard to believe” that no one in the Pakistani government knew where al-Qaida leaders were hiding. By the end of her tenure as secretary, Clinton had visited 112 countries, logged 956,000 miles and spent the equivalent of 87 days traveling, according to an official State Department count.

Finding Osama bin Laden: Clinton, with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and members of the president’s national security team, waits out a tense moment just off the White House Situation Room during the May 2011 raid that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Asked later why she had her hand over her mouth, Clinton would say: “Those were 38 of the most intense minutes. I have no idea what any of us were looking at that particular millisecond when the picture was taken. I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early spring allergic coughs. So it may have no great meaning whatsoever.”

Hillz, the meme: Her popularity as secretary of state spills over to the Internet when, in October 2011, she is photographed checking a mobile device and wearing sunglasses aboard a military C-17 plane bound from Malta for Libya. The shot inspires a Tumblr site, Texts from Hillary Clinton, in which the "secretary" sends snarky texts to the likes of Ryan Gosling, Mark Zuckerberg ... and Mitt Romney.

‘Prevent it from ever happening again’: Clinton testifies to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Clinton is pressed by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., about why the administration had not learned quickly that the attack was a planned assault, not the spontaneous result of a protest. She answers: “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator.”

 

RELATED: Clinton steps down, but a reluctant style legacy endures

Last fall, a cadre of wealthy business executives and conservative groups tried to sell California voters on new campaign finance reforms.

Couched in lofty rhetoric about the importance of cutting off money from special interests to politicians and other regulations favored by reformers, their proposal sought to ban the practice of using payroll deductions for political expenditures — a popular method of union fundraising.

Once alerted to the true nature of Proposition 32, the unions and political left rose up against it.

An innocuously named nonprofit, the Iowa-based American Future Fund, proved to be one of the biggest backers of the initiative, sinking more than $4 million into the ballot measure that voters ultimately rejected.

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As a “social welfare” organization, the American Future Fund is not required to publicly disclose its donors. But to maintain its tax-exempt status under Sec. 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code, influencing elections cannot be its primary purpose.

The American Future Fund’s investment in California was part of a nationwide, political advertising spree in 2012 that exceeded $29 million, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of state and federal records.

That amount included more than $19 million on efforts designed to oust President Barack Obama, as well as millions more to oppose Democratic candidates for Congress and even two state attorneys general. Now the group is funding ads opposing Obama’s nomination of former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska for defense secretary.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision in 2010, nonprofits such as the American Future Fund have played a more prominent role in electoral contests — all while giving their supporters the ability to keep their identities hidden. During the 2010 midterm elections, politically active nonprofits outspent super PACs, which exist to fund political advertisements, by a 3-to-2 margin.

The American Future Fund ranked third among “social welfare” nonprofits in spending in the 2012 federal election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, trailing only the Karl Rove-affiliated Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

There are also Democratic-aligned nonprofits, but their spending was well below that of their conservative counterparts. The top left-leaning nonprofit was the League of Conservation Voters, which reported spending about $11 million in the 2012 election opposing or supporting candidates.

The American Future Fund’s spending “raises some serious questions” and “evades any form of meaningful disclosure,” said Adam Rappaport, senior counsel with watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Numerous officials with the American Future Fund did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Advocating for ‘free-market ideas’
The American Future Fund’s mission is to “educate and advocate for conservative and free-market ideas,” according to its annual filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

Despite asserting that it isn’t primarily focused on elections, the nonprofit’s DNA is decidedly political.

Conservative political operative Nick Ryan, a longtime adviser to former GOP Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, founded it in 2007. Over the years, the group has paid Ryan’s firm, Concordia Enterprises, hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for consulting services.

In 2010, the New York Times reported that Iowa businessman Bruce Rastetter provided an unspecified amount of “seed money” for the organization. Ryan once represented four of Rastetter’s companies as a lobbyist, including Hawkeye Energy Holdings, one of the country’s largest ethanol producers.

The nonprofit’s first president was Nicole Schlinger, the former finance director of Iowa’s Republican Party. Its current president is veteran Republican state Sen. Sandra Greiner, who served for 14 years as the Iowa chairwoman of the pro-business American Legislative Exchange Council.

Ryan and Greiner did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2008, when the American Future Fund was seeking — and ultimately garnered — tax-exempt status from the IRS, it pledged to abstain from electoral politics, saying it would spend 70 percent of its time doing work to “educate the public on policy issues” and 30 percent engaging in efforts to “influence legislation through grassroots advocacy.”

When asked on its application if the group had any plans to spend money to “influence the selection, nomination, election or appointment” of anyone seeking public office, it answered “no.” It also vowed to stay out of the presidential race.

When the IRS subsequently inquired why the group’s advertisements “appear to be more partisan than nonpartisan,” the group’s attorney, Karen Blackistone, wrote that the efforts were “strictly issued-based and nonpartisan.”

The group takes a position on issues and encourages the public to contact their representative, she wrote in a 2008 response to the IRS.

“AFF’s advertisements have never commented on a candidate’s character, qualifications or fitness for office,” she stated.

Big money tied to post office box
The American Future Fund has raised more than $60 million, with spikes in contributions coming in election years.

Much of that money has come from another conservative “social welfare” nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors by name — the Arizona-based Center to Protect Patient Rights.

The nonprofit has no website and lists its address as a post office box in Phoenix. It was launched in 2009 by Republican operative Sean Noble, who has extensive ties to the vast political network underwritten by the Koch brothers.

Noble, a former chief of staff for former Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

For three years running, Noble’s organization has reported making substantial grants to the American Future Fund for “general support,” according to IRS filings. The nonprofit contributed more than $14 million to the American Future Fund between 2009 and 2011, or 51 percent of funds the group raised over the three-year period.

The Center to Protect Patient Rights has also given millions of dollars to a network of conservative groups, including the Koch-backed nonprofit Americans for Prosperity, as was first reported by the Center for Responsive Politics.

In addition to Noble, there is another Koch connection.

In 2008, Trent Sebits, the former manager of public and government affairs for the Kochs’ Wichita-based refining giant, Koch Industries, registered with the state of Kansas to lobby on behalf of the American Future Fund and Americans for Prosperity. Sebits did not respond to a request for comment.

The American Justice Partnership, another “social welfare” nonprofit, gave $50,000 to the American Future Fund in 2011 and $2.4 million in 2010, according to IRS filings. The group supports free enterprise and is often at odds with trial lawyers.

Dan Pero, its president, said in an emailed statement that the organization supported the American Future Fund to help “promote free enterprise and improve the fairness and predictability of the legal environment.”

Like super PACs, “social welfare” nonprofits are allowed to accept unlimited donations from individuals, corporations, unions and other organizations. The only funders whose names they are required to publicly disclose are those that make contributions earmarked for political purposes.

That’s as it should be, according to attorney Dan Backer, who is not affiliated the American Future Fund but does work with other conservative groups.

“A nonprofit makes its decisions by a board or other management structure, which is distinct from its donors,” Backer said.

Increasingly political
In 2010, the American Future Fund became far more politically active, reporting $8.6 million in political expenditures as well as millions more for “media services,” “telecommunications” and “mail service/production.” It told the Federal Election Commission that it spent $9.1 million on political advertisements.

Marcus Owens, former chief of the IRS’s nonprofits division, said it is “difficult to conjure up a situation where a particular expenditure would be reportable to the FEC but would not constitute political campaign intervention under tax law.”

Nevertheless, Owens said the organization could make a “straight-faced argument” that its orientation had simply changed over time to become more overtly political.

Of the $25 million that the American Future Fund reported spending to the FEC last year, more than 90 percent fueled ads that urged voters to support or reject candidates.

The group also sought the FEC’s advice on whether mentioning the White House or “the administration” in negative ads ahead of Election Day would be seen as referring to a “clearly identified candidate for federal office.”

Such a designation would have required the group to disclose information about its donors. (The commission deadlocked, 3-3, in a vote along party lines.)

In addition to the presidential race, the American Future Fund spent money in 20 congressional elections in 2012, including California’s 26th Congressional District, where it spent $500,000 attacking Democrat Julia Brownley, who, as a state legislator, had authored legislation to bolster disclosure for political advertisements.

She won anyway, but told the Center for Public Integrity that she is “deeply concerned” about the activities of non-disclosing groups in the wake of Citizens United and hopes to “take immediate action” to strengthen federal disclosure laws.

The American Future Fund also spent more than $542,000 to aid West Virginia Republican Patrick Morrisey in his successful quest to win the race for attorney general, records indicate, and more than $620,000 in a failed effort to sink Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat.

Complaints about the American Future Fund’s political activities have followed it since its creation.

In 2008, the Democratic Party in Minnesota contended that the group needed to register as a political committee after paying for ads that praised then-U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn. The FEC disagreed.

Two years later, in October 2010, consumer group Public Citizen and two other organizations alleged that the American Future Fund’s “huge expenditures” to aid candidates in the midterm election should have triggered requirements that the group register as a political committee and disclose its donors. That complaint is still being considered by the FEC, which often takes years to fully resolve such matters.

CREW, the watchdog organization, filed a complaint against the American Future Fund with the IRS in February 2011 that challenged whether its primary purpose was something other than influencing elections. The group has dismissed the complaint as “baseless” and contends that CREW “only targets government officials and organizations who have a differing or conservative point of view.”

Proposition 32

California’s campaign finance rules require major donors to groups that pay for political advertisements to be named in actual ads.

Thus, when a political committee called the California Future Fund for Free Markets aired ads praising Proposition 32, each advertisement included the disclaimer “with major funding by the American Future Fund.”

One ad criticized lawmakers for making “deals cut in shadows and back rooms” as dramatic music played in the background. Yet the donors to the American Future Fund itself largely remain in the shadows.

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit independent investigative news outlet.  To read more of its stories on this topic go to  http://www.publicintegrity.org/politics/consider-source 

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In a formal letter to the mayor, Sandi Jackson on Friday afternoon resigned as Chicago's 7th Ward alderman.

She said her decision to resign, effective Jan. 15, was made with a "heavy heart."

"As a representative of the people of the 7th Ward, I value the public trust which has been bestowed upon me and take my responsibility to safeguard the interests of my constituents seriously," she said in her resignation letter.

"Likewise, I am unapologetically a wife and a mother and I cannot deny my commitment to those most important personal responsibilities," she continued. "To that end, after much consideration and while dealing with very painful family health matters I have met with my family and determined that the constituents of the 7th Ward, as well as you Mr. Mayor, and my colleagues in the City Council deserve a partner who can commit all of their energies to the business of the people."

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In a statement, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Jackson's "leadership has been greatly appreciated."

"As Sandi takes this time to focus on her family, we give her out deepest thanks and support for her service to our city and the residents of her ward," he said.

Her resignation comes a little less than two months after her husband, Jesse Jackson, resigned as Illinois' 2nd District congressman amid a federal probe and after months away from his congressional duties with a diagnosis of bipolar depression.

Soon after her husband stepped down, rumors swirled that she was interested in running for the Congressional post.

"I will finish my term. I intend to finish my term," she said in December, denying the rumors. "Unless something catastrophic happens -- I could step outside and get hit by a bus today."

Federal authorities had been looking into whether the former congressman used campaign funds to decorate the couple's Washington, D.C. home. The couple briefly put the home on the market.
Additionally, Sandi Jackson had recently been asked by Illinois' State Board of Elections to explain a $69,000 discrepancy between her campaign finance reports and those of her husband.

No charges have been filed against either Jackson.

Also on NBCChicago.com: 22 candidates file for Jesse Jackson Jr.'s vacated seat

Her predecessor in the 7th Ward, Bill Beavers, said he wasn't shocked by the news.

"Not surprised. She was never there," he said, referring to the D.C. home.

Beavers is now a Cook County Commissioner. He's also feeling the heat of the feds, accused of taking thousands of dollars in campaign dollars for personal use. He's pleaded not guilty and maintains prosecutors are after him only because he refused to wear a wire on fellow Commissioner John Daley.

Emanuel said the process to find a replacement for Jackson, who was elected to the Chicago City Council nearly six years ago, will begin next week. The post will be filled through a mayoral appointment and would be Emanuel's first.

A special primary to replace the former congressman will be held on Feb. 26 with the General Election following on April 9.

 

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Former President George H. W. Bush remained in the intensive care unit of a Houston hospital on Friday, but "continues to improve" and his exchanges with medical staff now include singing, according to a statement from a Bush family spokesman.

Bush, 88, was admitted to Methodist Hospital on Nov. 23 for bronchitis. He was transferred to intensive care on Sunday after setbacks including a persistent fever.

"President Bush remains in the intensive care unit at Methodist Hospital, where he continues to improve," family spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement. "The president is alert and, as always, in good spirits -- and his exchanges with doctors and nurses now include singing."

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The statement said that the Bushes, like their doctors, are "cautiously optimistic that the current course of treatment will be effective." The Bushes thank everyone for their prayers and good wishes, McGrath said.

Bush has lower-body parkinsonism, which causes a loss of balance, and has used a wheelchair for more than a year. 

Bush was the 41st U.S. president and is the father of former President George W. Bush. In a political career spanning four decades, Bush, a Republican, also served as a congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, envoy to China, CIA director, and vice president for two terms under Ronald Reagan. 

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. has left the Mayo Clinic, where he had been receiving treatment for bipolar depression.

Mayo Clinic spokesman Nick Hanson confirmed to NBC Chicago that Jackson Jr. was no longer a patient at the Rochester, Minnesota, hospital. 

Jackson Jr. spokesman Frank Watkins, who is located in Washington D.C., said he wasn't aware the congressman had left the clinic. 

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 "I know nothing," Watkins said. "I was informed by the Trib." The Chicago Tribune reported that Jackson Jr. had left the clinic at around 11 a.m.

This was the congressman's second stint at the famed hospital. He spent much of July at the clinic after receiving a diagnosis for poor mental health. He returned to the clinic weeks before he was reelected to office in the 2nd District, after he was spotted at a D.C. brew pub with other women. 

Press began to camp out in front of his D.C. home after the incident and he retreated to the hospital. 

Jackson reportedly has been working on a plea deal with federal investigators looking.

Watkins said he knew nothing about that, either. 

"If it's going on, it's away from this office," Watkins said about the plea deal. 

Hispanic voters, who were instrumental in putting Barack Obama back in the White House, now hope the president will work diligently in his second term to cross some big to-dos off their legislative wish list: jobs, affordable education, health care access and immigration reform.

Hispanics voted for Obama over Mitt Romney by a resounding 71 percent to 27 percent and may have put him over the top in several key swing states. The total number of potential Hispanic voters this year reached a record 23.7 million – up about 80 percent since 2000 – and Hispanics now compose about 10 percent of the total electorate, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

“The Latino electorate arrived Tuesday, there’s no question about it,” said Rafael Collazo, director of political campaigns for the National Council of La Raza. The organization, which bills itself as the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, says it helped register more than 90,000 new Hispanic voters this year.

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“States like Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, even Ohio -- the Latino vote was a net gain for the preferred candidate and was the deciding factor or at least very, very close to being the decisive factor,” Collazo told NBC News.

"The Latino giant is wide awake, cranky and is taking names,” labor leader Eliseo Medina, of the Service Employees International Union, told NBC Latino. 

With the election behind them, Hispanics now want Obama and Congress to work on issues identified in surveys as their priorities – more jobs, affordable health care, access to higher education and immigration reform.

GOP faces immigration fight after election

The latter issue has been more important for Hispanics than for other U.S. voters, said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization.

Hispanic support for Obama was high even before he announced in June that the government will stop deporting, and begin granting work permits to, some undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as children.

“However, when it comes to asking Hispanics which party is more concerned for the Hispanic community, after the deferred action program was announced the (Democratic) share went from 45 to 61 percent – the highest we’ve measured in Pew Hispanic surveys in 10 years,”  Lopez said.

“In his acceptance speech, Obama mentioned that comprehensive immigration reform was something that needed to be addressed, and we’re going to hold him to that,” Collazo told NBC News.

The day after the election, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised to introduce an immigration reform package next year. He said if Republicans block the legislation, they would do so "at their peril."

Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union and former chairman of the Republican Party in Florida, agreed that the immigration debate has been detrimental for the GOP.

“Across the board generationally and demographically, the immigration issue has become a wedge issue … because it’s become a litmus test of respect and caring in that community,” Cardenas said. “My advice for conservatives and the party as a whole is to get bipartisan immigration reform done in next 100 to 200 days.”

A survey of Hispanic voters by the firm Latino Decisions found that Hispanics pushed Obama over the top in Colorado, Florida and Nevada, swing states where they turned out in unusually high numbers.

Cardenas said the GOP can’t pay short shrift to minority groups if it wants to put a Republican in the White House.

NBC Latino: We voted – now let’s get to work, say Latinos after historic vote for Obama

“The so-called mainstream vote is no longer sufficient,” he said. “The coalition of all of these minority votes is a priority in these elections today. The Hispanic vote is the most numerically significant of all of these groups. We need to develop a precise, aggressive, winning political game plan to address that community.”

The Hispanic community is a diverse one, according to the Pew Center's Lopez:

• Country of origin: Among eligible Hispanic voters, 58 percent are Mexican Americans, 14 percent are Puerto Ricans, and 6 percent are Cubans. (The remainder are from Central and South America). Historically, Cubans have supported Republican candidates more than other Hispanic groups; in Florida this year, 49 percent of Cubans went for Obama and 47 percent for Romney.
• Youth: People ages 18-29 make up about a third of all eligible Hispanic voters, but just 20 percent of all general voters.
• Naturalized U.S. citizens: Among Hispanic eligible voters, 25 percent are immigrants who are naturalized. But among whites, only 3 percent are naturalized U.S. citizens.

Callazo said that despite this diversity, Hispanics displayed a rather consistent, Democratic-leaning voting pattern across many states.

“The numbers of how Latinos voted in Arizona compared to Ohio and Colorado were fairly close,” Callazo said.

“Yes, there are differences and nuances … but if you look at the polling and all the anecdotal work and the outreach we’ve done over the years, the core issues are very, very similar," he added.  "At end of day, Latino voters are voting for the candidate they feel will best reflect their values."

NBC Latino contributed to this story.

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