The Latino voter dilemma

Oct 16, 2024

By Megan Messerly, Brakkton Booker and Jesse Naranjo

What up, Recast fam. On today’s agenda:

How the Harris campaign is trying to shore up Latino voters in critical Arizona, via politics reporter Megan Messerly
The vice president sits for an interview with Charlamagne tha God
The League of Conservation Voters has new ads targeting Black voters

Photo illustration of torn-paper edge of Adrian Fontes speaking outside Surprise City Hall.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes speaks after voting on the first day of early in-person voting Oct. 9 at Surprise City Hall in Arizona. | POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP

PHOENIX — Here on the ground in Arizona, Democrats say they have a Latino problem.

The question is: How big? And is it enough to doom Kamala Harris in the Grand Canyon State?

Outside a coffee shop in Phoenix, Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state (an ex-Power Lister) and the highest-ranking Latino official here, told me Tuesday morning that his party needs to do better — and deeper — outreach with Latino voters. Latino men, he added, are “generally seen as being able to take care of themselves,” but “they’ve got to be courted just like everybody else.”

“I think this campaign’s doing a better job with that,” said Fontes, speaking as an elected Democrat and not in his official capacity. “But I still think, generally speaking, my party’s got to do a better job with people like me.”

A New York Times/Siena poll this weekend found Harris leading Donald Trump 56 percent to 37 percent with Latino voters. That’s well below the 61 percent of the Latino vote Joe Biden notched in 2020, the 66 percent Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 and the more than 70 percent Barack Obama won in 2012, according to Pew Research Center data. The Times poll, like others before it, also highlights Democrats’ particular challenge with Latino men: Harris’ advantage with them drops to just 3 percentage points.

“These voters are up for grabs. This is the first time I’ve seen brown voters really be up for grabs by either party, really in forever,” said Leo Murrieta , Nevada state director for Make the Road Action. “It shows that Democrats have truly dropped the ball on promoting their message, showing these voters why they’re the best ones for their family.”

The economy and concerns about border security — coupled with an overall disillusionment with the two-party system — have made Trump look increasingly appealing to some Latino voters, like 40-year-old Israel Rodriguez , who lives in Phoenix’s West Valley. A critical mass of voters like Rodriguez could be enough to tip the Sun Belt states of Arizona and Nevada in Trump’s favor, even as the former president leans into increasingly dark anti-immigrant messaging.

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“For me, being a hard worker, I work a lot of overtime, so I pay a lot more taxes than usual. I never used to care about where my tax money went. Why are we giving away so much, and there’s so many homeless people here?” said Rodriguez, standing in his driveway Tuesday afternoon. “How can we get so bad in four years? That’s what I’m going off of.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Jaime Florez , in a statement, said “it is not surprising that surveys show that the most important issues for Hispanics, facing the 2024 elections, will be inflation and the way that the Harris, Biden and the Democrats' economic agenda is affecting their pockets.”

Quote from Israel Rodriguez, Phoenix resident, reads "I never used to care about where my tax money went. Why are we giving away so much, and there’s so many homeless people here?"

Progressive Latino advocates and Democratic strategists in Phoenix and Las Vegas, where I’ve spent the last week, contend that — despite the drop in support — their party is taking a much more nuanced view of the diaspora than it has in the past. Here in the Southwest, Latinos are predominantly, but not uniformly, Mexican American; in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, they’re mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican American; and in Florida, Cuban Americans dominate.

The Harris campaign is more closely matching its messengers with the specific subgroups it's trying to message to. Last week in Philadelphia, America Ferrera spoke to a group of mostly Latinas. Victor Martinez , who spent most of his life in Puerto Rico and owns La Mega, the Allentown, Pennsylvania-based radio station, has emerged as an important messenger in Lehigh Valley. And Mesa, Arizona-based Republican immigration lawyer Yasser Sanchez has not only come out in support of Harris but cut a radio ad for her.

The campaign also recently launched a “Hombres con Harris” tour, to which it has already added stops, and held a press conference this morning in Doral, Florida — where Trump is participating in a Latino-focused town hall hosted by Univision today — with families who were separated under Trump’s immigration policies.

Harris' allies see signs that all of this is working. A large-sample poll of 1,900 Latino voters released Tuesday by Harris pollster Matt Barretto’s firm, taken for the Hispanic Federation and the Latino Victory Foundation, found Harris at 59 percent support (a few points higher than that NYT/Siena poll) and Trump at 37 percent nationally. And a recent CBS News/YouGov poll found Harris leading 63 percent to 36 percent with Latinos.

Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally.

Harris speaks during a Sept. 29 campaign rally in Las Vegas. | Mario Tama/Getty Images

“That is a result of the last six weeks — really, four weeks — of very targeted Hispanic Heritage Month events, her debate performance, her Univision town hall performance, her speech in Douglas, Arizona, her speeches in Phoenix and Las Vegas,” Barreto said. “She's done an incredible amount, and I think you're starting to see that now being reflected in the data that she is inching up.”

The Harris campaign has also adjusted its immigration messaging to better take into account voters’ worries on crime and the border. With Latino-specific audiences and at events in Arizona and Nevada, the vice president typically marries the message of stronger border security with a push for an “earned path to citizenship.” It’s a subtle but notable shift from the way Democrats spent years primarily focused on just the latter.

“Where Kamala Harris is at is where Latino voters are at,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who focuses on Latinos and was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “But can you overcome 15 years of bad branding in 100 days?”

Ted Pappageorge , secretary-treasurer of the politically powerful Culinary Union in Nevada, which has a majority Latino membership, argues that message is resonating.

“The idea that it makes sense to have law and order at the border, working class voters and Latino voters agree with that. But they see the hypocrisy on the Republican side. It's got to be done in a humane way, and it's also got to be done in a way that actually allows for the greatest economy on Earth to actually get enough workers to fuel that economy,” Pappageorge said.

THE INTERVIEW WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

Kamala Harris sits in an interview with Charlamagne Tha God.

Harris participates in an interview with Charlamagne tha God on Tuesday in Detroit. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Looking to improve her standing among Black men in the final stretch before Election Day, Harris turned to a well-established interviewer and provocateur — albeit one with immense credibility among a subset of Black voters who have not yet coalesced around her candidacy: Charlamagne tha God.

Tuesday evening’s hourlong town hall, moderated by the co-host of the popular radio program “The Breakfast Club,” allowed the vice president to take advantage of an easygoing format to sell her vision for helping Black Americans if she’s elected, our Brakkton Booker writes from Detroit.

The conversation was carried across some 140 radio stations — but perhaps no market was as important as the Motor City, where the interview took place and where Harris needs to rev up her base to improve her chances of winning battleground Michigan.

On Tuesday, Harris touched on a variety of subjects, from her views on reparations for slavery and economic equality to how she feels about Maya Rudolph’s portrayal of her on “Saturday Night Live.”

“Hasn’t Maya Rudolph been wonderful?” she said with a wide smile. “I think it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself and each other … in the spirit of comedy, not belittling of people.”

Although this conversation failed to produce any of the viral moments that have become hallmarks of her previous interviews with Charlamagne (like when he asked in 2021 , “Who is the real president of this country, is it Joe Manchin or Joe Biden, madam vice president?”), it allowed her to speak directly to Black men who have voiced concerns about the party taking their votes for granted and have grown frustrated at the “scolding” they seem to get from party elders.

In the end, she warned the audience not to succumb to misinformation being spread by Trump and his allies, adding: “Part of the challenge that I face is that they are trying to scare people away because they know they otherwise have nothing to run on.”

A recent NYT/Siena poll shows that 70 percent of Black men support Harris’ candidacy — but that's more than 20 points below what Biden got in 2020..