By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON, Associated Press
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Progressive groups looking to reconnect with Latino voters are emphasizing economic hardship and highlighting President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda in an effort to regain support in places where the Republican leader made inroads.
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The $1.4 million digital ad and field campaign is led by a Democratic donor fund backed by a progressive network called Way to Win, which launched after Trump’s 2016 White House win. The Valiente Action Fund effort is tailored to connect with voters in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina and Texas by convincing them that some of Trump’s economic promises are falling short while his immigration tactics go too far.
Tory Gavito, a Democratic strategist and president of Way to Win, says the groups are trying to pivot to talk to Latinos “in their full experience” about housing and the cost of living without abandoning the case against Trump’s hard-line approach to immigration in his second term as president, including the use of helicopters and chemical agents in Chicago.
“The Chicago stuff should be more than a canary in the coal mine,” Gavito said. “This administration is using extreme enforcement measures to distract from the fact that housing is still just too damn expensive, our rent is still too expensive.”
Trump has promised to remove millions of people from the United States in the largest deportation program in American history. Gavito says the Trump campaign succeeded at crafting a message around the “scarcity of resources” and blaming immigrants for taking jobs. Some voters were persuaded, she said, because they want “access to a thriving economy.”
There are already signs that Trump’s immigration crackdown could impact the U.S. labor market. A July report by the Brookings Institution and the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute found that the loss of foreign workers will mean monthly U.S. job growth could be near zero or negative in the next few years.
FILE – Juan Ojeda, 33, who is Puerto Rican, attends a grand opening event at the “Latino Americans for Trump” office in Reading, Pa., June 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Joe Lamberti, FIle)
The fight to gain Latino support
Nationally, Hispanic voters shifted significantly toward Trump in the last election, though a majority still backed Democrat Kamala Harris: 43% of Hispanic voters nationally voted for Trump, up from 35% in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost. Hispanic voters in Texas and Florida shifted by a similarly large margin toward Trump. There were slight shifts toward him in New Jersey, New York and Arizona and no significant shifts in Nevada or Georgia.
Democratic operatives and strategists have been advising candidates to focus on voters’ pocketbooks to reverse the trend.
The progressive groups’ field operation involves partnering with local groups to knock on doors to do what they call “deep canvassing” — looking to have longer conversations about voters’ concerns and gather support to launch specific ballot initiatives.
Effort underway in New Jersey
In New Jersey, one of only two states with a governor’s race this year, ads started to roll out earlier this month, not specific to the governor’s race but criticizing Trump, who has endorsed GOP candidate Jack Ciattarelli.
The digital ads show images of Latinos while a narrator says that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is going after people who “look like him, like her, like us,” echoing racial-profiling concerns by human rights groups. A Supreme Court decision last month cleared the way for more robust immigration operations, lifting a restraining order that had banned arrests based on any mix of four factors: race and ethnicity; language; location; and occupation.
In another ad, narrators talk about the cost of food and electric bills rising as images of billionaires Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are shown.
One of the ads shares the story of how an immigrant advocacy group, Make the Road New Jersey, passed a ballot initiative capping rents in the Hispanic-majority city of Passaic, which leaned heavily Democratic in 2016 but backed Trump in 2024. The ad says the rest of New Jersey is still seeing rent costs rise, blaming Trump and GOP lawmakers who oppose rent caps.
“We do serve as a bellwether to what is sort of a hot take on what voters feel,” said Nedy Morsy, director of Make the Road New Jersey, who said messages are being tested with an eye toward next year’s midterm elections.
FILE – Kids play outside a polling precinct, Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Guadalupe, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)
Latino outreach in other states
In Nevada, the effort is targeting Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo as he seeks reelection in what is expected to be a highly competitive race in the battleground state, which Trump carried in 2024.
The director of Make the Road Nevada, Leo Murrieta, takes Lombardo to task for actions he has taken on the economy, including a veto of legislation that would have added tenant protections.
“We have to do everything we can to let our gente knows who out there has our backs and who is there stabbing us in the back,” Murrieta said, using the Spanish word for people.
