{"id":14317,"date":"2024-09-22T15:44:21","date_gmt":"2024-09-22T15:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14317"},"modified":"2024-09-22T15:44:21","modified_gmt":"2024-09-22T15:44:21","slug":"harris-is-changing-the-way-democrats-target-latino-voters-its-a-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14317","title":{"rendered":"Harris is changing the way Democrats target Latino voters. It\u2019s a risk."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The vice president is attempting to chart a path away from identity politics.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Megan Messerly<\/strong><\/a> and Daniella Diaz<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, POLITICO<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Kamala Harris doesn\u2019t talk often about her Black and South Asian American identity. She\u2019s not talking to Latino voters about theirs either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a major shift in how Democrats are targeting Latino voters this cycle \u2014 and a rebuke of the belief long held by many Democrats that overt appeals on race and progressive policies on immigration are key to winning Latino votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after Democrats hemorrhaged support from Latinos over the last decade, Harris is attempting to chart a path away from identity politics, including in the way she\u2019s courting Latino voters in states like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those battlegrounds, Harris campaign ads targeted at both English-<\/a> and Spanish-speaking Latinos<\/a> talk about the economy, high drug prices and crime. Harris, in a Spanish-language radio interview that aired earlier this week, stressed her support for stationing more immigration agents at the border and cracking down on the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Harris campaign understands what we\u2019ve been saying about Latinos for a long time, which is that we\u2019re not a monolith,\u201d said Matt Tuerk, the first Latino mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania, a predominantly Latino community that was a recent stop on the campaign\u2019s bus tour highlighting abortion rights. \u201cWe\u2019re all Americans, too. We have a lot of the same basic values that every American has.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latino strategists on both sides of the aisle said the strategy reflects the diversity of Harris\u2019 staff, which includes campaign manager Julie Ch\u00e1vez Rodr\u00edguez, who is the granddaughter of the labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Ch\u00e1vez. They say it also reflects a candidate who has a first-hand understanding of what it means to be defined by others on the basis of race or gender. And then there\u2019s the politics: Immigration is one of Democrats\u2019 weak points, and Harris has adopted tough-on-the-border rhetoric as a counter to the immigration-focused attacks that Donald Trump has made a hallmark of his political campaigns since his first run for president in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no question that this campaign is 180 degrees different with Latino voters than any other Democratic candidate in history,\u201d said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who focuses on Latinos and was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. \u201cThe great irony \u2014 and I think it\u2019s a beautiful one \u2014 is that it took a Black woman to help the Democratic Party break its headlock they\u2019d put themselves in on identity politics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strategists said the campaign\u2019s approach demonstrates a nuanced understanding of the Latino diaspora in the U.S. \u2014 which they argue has long been missing in Democratic politics \u2014 and how to message to various facets of it, from Puerto Rican and Dominican communities in Pennsylvania to Mexican Americans in Arizona and Nevada. For instance, the campaign recently cut an ad<\/a> with Puerto Rican radio host Victor Martinez, who is from Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, that will air on TV and radio in Spanish, but only in the Philadelphia, Allentown and Reading media markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey care about the diasporas and looking at this from a diaspora strategy, as opposed to just an overall, monolithic strategy that we often hear discussed and unfortunately played out in a lot of different areas,\u201d Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y.) told POLITICO. \u201cSo I think that as time goes on, we\u2019re going to see the results of that more refined approach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harris\u2019 shift away from progressive messaging on the border is in part a continuation of President Joe Biden\u2019s approach. Following the failure of a bipartisan border security bill in Congress, he infuriated many progressives with executive actions to clamp down on migrants seeking asylum<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Harris has been even more strident in her tough rhetoric on the border. Her stump speech touts how she \u201ctook on transnational criminal organizations\u201d as the attorney general of California, a border state, and she often talks about her support for the border security bill Trump\u2019s Republican allies in Congress scuttled. One of her first ads<\/a>, \u201cTougher,\u201d promises she will hire \u201cthousands\u201d more border agents if elected president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has come at a cost. Some Latino activists on the left are frustrated by Harris\u2019 border rhetoric and don\u2019t believe she has defined clearly enough what she plans to do on immigration reform beyond an \u201cearned pathway to citizenship.\u201d And they warn it has the potential to damage her at the ballot box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Democratic Party has backslid into this neocon conversation on, \u2018Immigrants are bad and they bring drugs.\u2019 At this point, there is very little difference on Democrats and Republicans when it comes to immigration, and I think it is a drastic misstep for Democrats up and down the ballot,\u201d said Leo Murrieta, Nevada director for the immigrant rights group Make the Road Action, which has endorsed Harris. \u201cQuite frankly, this rhetoric on the border dampens that excitement. It won\u2019t put out the flame, but it\u2019s definitely not feeding the fire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harris is still laboring to make up ground with Latinos, after Trump made inroads with them in the last presidential election. Though she has greatly improved her standing from where President Joe Biden was with Latinos before he dropped out of the race, she still trails Biden\u2019s 2020 numbers, including in a Entravision poll released Wednesday<\/a> that found Harris leading Trump 55 percent to 33 percent. In 2020, 61 percent of Latino voters cast ballots for Biden, and Democrats did even better with Latinos before that. Hillary Clinton carried 66 percent of the Latino vote in 2016, while Barack Obama won more than 70 percent of the Latino vote in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harris does talk about immigration on the campaign trail. And when she does, it tends to be in front of Latino audiences. During an interview on Spanish-language radio that aired on Tuesday, she decried former Trump\u2019s family separation policies while promising to \u201ctake care of\u201d Dreamers and \u201cprovide a pathway to citizenship for those who have earned it.\u201d And on Wednesday, in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in Washington, D.C., she laid into Trump over his call for \u201cmass deportations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, said it\u2019s reflective of the \u201cmore balanced\u201d approach to immigration Harris is trying to take that is \u201cabout acknowledging both the need for order at the border and a humane, practical approach to dealing with people who are already here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[It] contrasts well against Trump\u2019s more blustery proposals, especially when you come to like mass deportation of people who have been working and living here for decades,\u201d Odio said. \u201cThose are incredibly unpopular.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Odio said there is a \u201cnarrow but critical\u201d group of persuadable Latino voters that are \u201csoftly choosing one side or the other\u201d but are being \u201cheavily cross-pressured\u201d by the campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And a Harris aide, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about campaign strategy, said those persuadable Latinos want to hear more on border security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust based on the data I\u2019ve seen, you still see a fairly high percent of Latinos who are still getting to know her,\u201d said Harris pollster Matt Barreto. \u201cThe longer that campaign goes on and she takes her case to the Latino community, I would expect we\u2019ll continue to see two to three point increases every two to three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This weekend, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris\u2019 running mate, will be in Pennsylvania\u2019s Lehigh Valley at a Latino-focused rally with actors Anthony Ramos and Liza Col\u00f3n-Zayas. It\u2019s a continuation of the campaign\u2019s Hispanic Heritage Month events, which also included Chavez Rodriguez, Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) attending a super middleweight fight between Canelo Alvarez and Edgar Berlanga in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Harris campaign is devoting $3 million to new ads on Spanish-language radio over the next month. And it is specifically focusing on sports programming, which is where the campaign believes it can best reach a portion of persuadable Latino voters that are not yet engaged, the campaign aide said. And the campaign also recently launched a \u201cLatinos con Harris-Walz\u201d WhatsApp channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe campaign calls all the time and says, \u2018Where can you go? When can you go? We want to send you out there. We want to make sure our surrogates are on the road,\u2019\u201d said Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Rep. Nanette Barrag\u00e1n (D-Calif.). \u201cFor Latinos, it\u2019s all about touches and outreach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, Harris allies in Congress acknowledge Harris has a difficult balance to strike in courting the Latino vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of us Latinos, we want to get comprehensive immigration reform done, but we know we might have to do it in pieces because it\u2019s hard. That\u2019s why it hasn\u2019t been done in decades. I think you cannot avoid the fact that border security has to be addressed head on. The asylum challenges, we want to make sure that it\u2019s humane and that it continues to exist, but it also needs to be orderly,\u201d said Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.). \u201cI think she\u2019s threading the needle and I think she\u2019s doing a good job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The vice president is attempting to chart a path away from identity politics. By Megan Messerly and Daniella Diaz, POLITICO Kamala Harris doesn’t talk often about her Black and South Asian American identity. She’s not […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,70],"tags":[81],"class_list":{"0":"post-14317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-slider","8":"category-latino-vote","9":"tag-latino-vote"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14317","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=14317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14320,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14317\/revisions\/14320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}