Suggesting a potential fracture in Fernando Ferrer’s Latino base, some of New York City’s Mexican-American political leaders are expressing dissatisfaction with the Democratic mayoral front-runner, saying he is ignoring the Mexican-American community and taking their votes for granted.

The political organizer of the Asociacion Politica Mexico-Americana de Nueva York, Manuel Guerrero, said the Ferrer campaign had ignored since December the group’s requests for a meeting at which the former Bronx borough president could present his platform and explain his positions on issues of interest to the Mexican-American community.

Mr. Ferrer’s neglect of the Mexican-American community at the expense of other Latino groups, Mr. Guerrero said, was further marginalizing a demographic group already at New York’s political edges. Because Mr. Ferrer is the only Latino candidate in the race, by ignoring the fastest-growing segment of his Latino constituency, he is acting as an obstacle to Mexican-Americans’ political development, Mr. Guerrero said.

“It’s shameful,” Mr. Guerrero said in Spanish yesterday.

“If he doesn’t pay attention to us as a candidate, he’s not going to do it as mayor,” he said.

Mr. Guerrero cautioned against Mr. Ferrer’s taking the Mexican-American vote for granted, saying the community would not vote for him simply because he is the lone Hispanic in the race. Mr. Guerrero said the association was meeting with hundreds of Mexican-Americans to register voters and to educate them about the mayoral race. Those New Yorkers, he said, would be voting for the candidate who presented the best positions on issues such as health care, education, domestic violence, economic development, and immigrant documentation – and not out of Latino solidarity.

The president of CecoMex, a New York Mexican-American association that boasts 5,700 members, Juan Caceres, joined Mr. Guerrero in expressing disappointment with Mr. Ferrer’s outreach to the Mexican-American community.

Echoing many of Mr. Guerrero’s sentiments, Mr. Caceres said, in Spanish, that his group “will work most with the candidate who offers the best options for our community” and would not determine its political loyalties simply on ethnic background.

Of the seven mayoral candidates, Mr. Caceres said, the Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields, and Mayor Bloomberg had been the most solicitous of Mexican-American input. Ms. Fields runs second to Mr. Ferrer in polls gauging support in the Democratic primary and has been gaining on Mr. Ferrer in recent surveys.

That Mr. Ferrer – who is a New York City native of Puerto Rican descent – has ignored the Mexican-American community, while Ms. Fields and Mr. Bloomberg have reached out to it, Mr. Caceres said, was especially insulting.

“It hurts more, because he’s Hispanic,” he said.

An activist with Casa Puebla, Miguel Rojas, said that because Mr. Ferrer appeared out of touch with the issues confronting Mexican-American New Yorkers, it was especially important for him to be more responsive to requests to appear with community groups. Casa Puebla is a New York-based organization with ties to the government of Mexico.

“It’s dangerous for him to ignore the Mexican community,” Mr. Rojas said in Spanish of Mr. Ferrer.

“They are already figuring out the voting situation,” he said, adding that Mexican-Americans – who make up New York’s third-largest Latino demographic group, after Puerto Ricans and Dominicans – are becoming increasingly savvy about politics.

While Mexicans are a significant and ballooning portion of New York’s Latino community, some argue that their political clout is lessened because a relatively small percentage of their population is eligible to vote. A professor of political science at Columbia University, Rodolfo de la Garza, said it is “impossible” to know how many Mexican-Americans in New York are voters. A pollster at the Mirram Group, Luis Miranda, concurred but estimated that they number several thousand. The Mirram consultants and Mr. Ferrer have long been closely allied.

Yet in a close election, the community activists said, those several thousand Mexican-Americans could be the deciding factor.

“Don’t underestimate the power of the Mexican community in New York,” Mr. Guerrero said.

Much of that power may lie in the perception Mexican-Americans are able to project during the campaign, according to a professor of political science at Baruch College, Douglas Muzzio. Of the Ferrer campaign and Latinos, Mr. Muzzio said: “They can’t have cracks in their base. They can’t even afford to have the perception of it, and that’s the rub – it’s all perception.”

The Ferrer campaign, however, disputed the perceptions of Messrs. Guerrero, Rojas, and Caceres.

“Fernando Ferrer has a long record of being a champion for Latino issues,” the candidate’s chief spokesman, Chad Clanton, said. “We would welcome the opportunity to meet with Mr. Guerrero anytime.”

A spokesman for another New York Mexican-American group, the Asociacion Tepeyac, Joel Magallan, bolstered Mr. Clanton’s point about Mr. Ferrer’s record.

“When he was president of the Bronx, he was available to us,” Mr. Magallan said.

As for Mr. Ferrer’s interactions with the Mexican-American community now as a mayoral candidate, however, Mr. Magallan declined to comment. He has not been following the campaign, he said, “so I don’t know exactly what he’s doing.”