{"id":13402,"date":"2023-08-08T16:05:30","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T16:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13402"},"modified":"2023-08-10T19:15:14","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T19:15:14","slug":"democrats-should-be-worried-about-the-latino-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13402","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Should Be Worried About the Latino Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Christian Paz <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The first warning sign of the new year came three days into 2020. \nSpeaking at a rally of conservative evangelicals in South Florida, \nPresident Donald Trump riffed on the targeted killing of Iran\u2019s Qassem \nSoleimani before the thousands assembled in the King Jesus International\n Ministry megachurch outside of Miami.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That night, the president captured headlines for declaring that \u201cGod is on our side<\/a>\u201d\n and for accusing Democrats of disloyalty for not supporting his \nairstrike. But for Domingo Garcia, the national president of the League \nof United Latin American Citizens, what the headlines\u2014and \nDemocrats\u2014missed was the significance of the rally\u2019s location: the \ncountry\u2019s largest Hispanic evangelical congregation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat should be a serious red flag to Democrats,\u201d Garcia told me. \nTrump\u2019s outreach to conservative Latinos in the South serves as a \nwarning sign for deeper concerns several Latino leaders and political \nactivists shared with me: that they are dissatisfied with the level of \nengagement they are seeing from the Democratic primary contenders and \nare noticing the same kind of poor strategizing by candidates that \nyielded disappointing turnout<\/a> among Hispanic voters in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By all demographic counts<\/a>,\n 2020 should be the year that Latinos make a decisive mark on national \npolitics: Their support could swing primary races in early-voting and \nSuper Tuesday states, possibly securing the nomination for one of the \nDemocratic contenders, and it could tip the scales<\/a> in the general election if they turn out to vote in the same record-breaking<\/a> numbers as they did during 2018\u2019s midterm elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But some of the Latino political organizers I spoke with describe the\n primary season so far as a master class in \u201cpolitical malpractice\u201d\u2014as \none person phrased it\u2014with candidates struggling to engage Latino \nvoters, address issues beyond immigration reform, and treat Latinos as \nthe influential voting bloc they are. Others reported a lack of \ncandidate interest in working with their organizations, including missed\n meetings and radio silence on questionnaires. (On top of it all, the \nonly Latino candidate in the race, Juli\u00e1n Castro, dropped out earlier \nthis month, leaving an all-white stage for tonight\u2019s debate.) There\u2019s a \nreal risk that if Democrats don\u2019t sort out these issues soon, they could\n struggle to attract and mobilize what could be the largest minority \nvoting bloc in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt feels like every four years there’s this clutching of the pearls \nand head-scratching about why the hell Latinos don’t vote,\u201d Marisa \nFranco, the cofounder of the Latino activist network Mijente, told me. \n\u201cI don’t think it’s an absence of interest. It’s a hunger for options.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only candidate still in the race to receive virtually universal \npraise from the organizers was Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. \nOrganizers from California to Texas highlighted the Sanders campaign’s \ngrassroots engagement, something that seems to be reflected in Latinos\u2019 \nconsistently strong support for the senator: In poll<\/a> after<\/a> poll<\/a>, Latinos, especially young Latinos<\/a>,\n rank Sanders as their top pick among the primary contenders. Chuck \nRocha, a top Sanders adviser, told me that the polls reflect the \nsenator\u2019s priority of expanding the electorate, including young Latinos \nwho have not voted before. Of the record 32 million Latinos eligible to \ncast a ballot in 2020, 4 million of them only turned 18 after the 2016 \nelection, Mar\u00eda Teresa Kumar, the CEO of the political-advocacy group \nVoto Latino, told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rocha and Sanders\u2019s national political director, Analilia Mejia, said\n the campaign has aired Spanish-language ads for the last eight months \nand hired more than 150 Latino staffers around the country. In vote-rich\n California specifically, the campaign opened most of its 14 field \noffices in heavily Latino communities, including East Los Angeles, \nOxnard, San Jose, and the Central Valley region. \u201cOn our campaign, we’re\n very clear about the rising Latino iceberg of voters, how for years to \ncome there will be a need to deeply motivate and mobilize Latino \nvoters,\u201d Mejia said. \u201cWhen you have people who belong to that community \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

you empower those folks, of course you’re going to do better \nwithin that community\u2014if you have folks who know how to navigate it, \nfolks who come from it, folks who respect it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders aside, the organizers I spoke with said the first signs of \ntrouble in the 2020 campaign were clear during the two nights of the \nfirst Democratic debate in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When several candidates broke into Spanish during those back-to-back performances, they quickly<\/a> faced criticism<\/a> from some quarters<\/a> for \u201cHispandering<\/a>.\u201d\n (Others said it was an attempt at displaying cultural competency that \nthey appreciated.) But perhaps even more concerning for the organizers \nwho spoke with me were how many of the candidates focused exclusively on\n immigration when speaking about \u201cLatino issues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, there are Latino citizens and voters who are more comfortable \nin Spanish, but people are interested in what kind of a candidate you \nare and \u2026 what are you planning to do,\u201d said Clarissa Martinez de \nCastro, the deputy vice president for policy and advocacy at UnidosUS, \none of the oldest Latino advocacy groups in the country. \u201cI think a lot \nof times, where Latino voters are concerned, they tend to be either \ntaken for granted and\/or attacked. And so our biggest fear is that we \nsee a continuation of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She and other organizers are concerned that both parties are \nfollowing an outdated political playbook that casts Latino interests as \nbeing alien to the concerns of working-class white Americans in the \nMidwest and Rust Belt states that Democrats are determined to win in the\n general election. As my colleague Ron Brownstein wrote last week<\/a>,\n demographic trends suggest that the Rust Belt states Democrats are \ntrying to wrest from Trump will only lose political influence as \nAmericans move south and west\u2014lending more political power to the states\n in which Latinos already reside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacqueline Martinez Garcel, the head of the California-based Latino \nCommunity Foundation, pointed to the Democratic sweep in longtime \nRepublican strongholds in Southern California during the midterms as \nevidence that candidates should think of Latino interests as part of \ntheir mainstream agendas beyond immigration. Democrats managed to flip \nfour House seats in Orange County, California, because of a significant increase in Latino participation<\/a>,\n driven by candidates who went door-to-door and collaborated with \ngrassroots activists in their communities, Martinez Garcel said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Representative Norma Torres of California told me that some \ncandidates seem to overlook how issues like education, affordable \nhousing, raising the minimum wage, and college affordability dominate \nthe minds of many working-class and young Latinos in particular. Torres,\n who emigrated to the United States from Guatemala as a child, said \nthree candidates have met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus\u2019 \npolitical arm, of which she is a member. In those meetings, the \ncandidates \u201cregurgitate old policy,\u201d she said, and \u201cforget that the \nmajority of Latinos live in communities like mine, which are very, very \npoor, working class.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, beyond their concerns about throwaway lines or policy \nblindspots, the organizers I spoke with said they fear the candidates \nare struggling to understand a key fact about Latinos in America: They \nare a tremendously diverse group ideologically and culturally. And that \ndiversity means there\u2019s an opening for Republican overtures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLatino conservatives in Florida and in Texas, by the way, are \namenable to the Republican message and are willing to forgive Trump’s \nanti-immigrant, anti-Latino rhetoric to a certain extent,\u201d said Garcia, \nthe LULAC leader. \u201cThat’s a small minority. But, you know, the \ndifference between 20 and 30 percent could mean the difference of \nwinning Texas or Florida or losing them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words: Republicans don\u2019t need to win all, or even a majority\n of, Latino votes to win in competitive states. Trump seems on track to \ncapture between 25 and 30 percent<\/a> of Latino voters in 2020, a steady showing from his 29 percent support <\/a>in 2016 and the roughly 32 percent<\/a> of Latinos who voted for Republicans in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a concern that never leaves my mind,\u201d said Representative \nJoaquin Castro of Texas, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic \nCaucus, who argued that his brother\u2019s now-defunct campaign demonstrated \nhow candidates should weave Latinos\u2019 economic and social concerns into \nbroader discussions of criminal-justice reform, affordable housing, and \neducation. (He said Jul\u00edan Castro plans to increase the presence of \nSenator Elizabeth Warren, whom they have both endorsed<\/a>, in Latino communities.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The common theme in my conversations with political activists is the stress they feel watching this campaign\u2014the stress that too many candidates assume they\u2019re doing enough for Latino voters, and that they\u2019ll be lulled into a false sense of security come the general election. After the primary, the eventual nominee could end up assuming that the Latino vote is theirs for the taking, the thinking goes, since Latinos couldn\u2019t possibly vote to reelect the president or sit out another cycle. But the nominee could be very, very wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christian Paz<\/a><\/em> is an editorial fellow at The Atlantic.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Christian Paz The first warning sign of the new year came three days into 2020. Speaking at a rally of conservative evangelicals in South Florida, President Donald Trump riffed on the targeted killing of […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[81],"class_list":{"0":"post-13402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latino-vote","8":"tag-latino-vote"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13402"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13853,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13402\/revisions\/13853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}