Hispanic-Americans

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Latinos Shape California. Why Are So Many Sitting Out the Recall?

      by

      LOS ANGELES — The political power of Latinos has never been stronger in California.They are the largest ethnic group in the state and make up roughly 30 percent of registered voters. They have propelled Democratic victories in California for decades, helping the party win supermajorities in both houses of the State Legislature, where Latino senators and Assembly members hold powerful positions and pass some of the most immigrant-friendly legislation in the country.But as Gov. Gavin Newsom tries to prevail in a recall election in a matter of days, the very Latino voters he is relying on appear to be disengaged and ambivalent about the prospect of his being ousted from office.In 2018, exit polls showed Mr. Newsom with support from roughly two-thirds of all Latinos. Now, polling suggests Latinos are almost evenly split on the recall. And so far, just 15 percent of all registered Latino voters have mailed in their ballots, compared with 29 percent of white voters, according to Political Data Inc., a Sacramento-based research group.For many Latino voters, the mixed feelings stem from a continued struggle with the pandemic, as they face higher infection and death rates, as well as unemployment. For others, there is a deep disconnect with the Democratic Party and Mr. Newsom himself, a multimillionaire Napa Valley winery owner whom they view as aloof and distant.Interviews with Latino voters, strategists and advocates throughout the state reveal a frustration among Hispanics that Mr. Newsom has never tapped into. The pandemic has further entrenched inequality statewide and deepened the anger over the pervasive class divide Mr. Newsom’s wealth only highlights.Karla Ramirez, 43, a Democrat who lives in Downey, a heavily Latino suburb southeast of Los Angeles, said she believed that Mr. Newsom had generally handled the pandemic well. But Ms. Ramirez, who owns a commercial cleaning business with her husband, said she planned to sit out the race and did not have the wherewithal to pay attention to state politics with the virus still raging. Her 9-year-old daughter and her husband both tested positive for Covid-19 and have been recovering from mild symptoms.All registered voters received ballots by mail and have the option of either mailing them in, dropping them off at ballot boxes or voting in person from now until Election Day on Sept. 14. Voting by mail is no longer an option for Ms. Ramirez.“I got my ballot, and I tossed it in the trash. I don’t feel I’d be fair,” Ms. Ramirez said. “I’m busy making sure my kids get back to school and get vaccinated.”Karla Ramirez, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, said she did not plan to vote in the recall election. Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesWith just one week to go before ballot boxes close, public polling suggests that Mr. Newsom will remain in office. But many see his struggle with Hispanic voters as a troubling warning sign for Democrats both in the state and nationally, a glimpse of the consequences for failing to deeply engage with a vital political force whose allegiance is up for grabs. Democrats fretted after the 2020 presidential election, when many Hispanic voters in Florida, Texas and other parts of the country swung toward President Donald J. Trump. But the problem is potentially even more consequential in a state where Latinos make up nearly a third of the electorate.“The real issue is that Governor Newsom has not engendered enthusiasm among Latino voters,” said Thomas A. Saenz, the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who has been involved in California politics for decades. “That is part of why he is threatened. They have not been motivated by his policies and his practices, and he has utterly failed to address the Latino community as a Latino community and acknowledge its importance in the state.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Newsom’s campaign aides deny that they have failed to engage or listen to Latino voters. Aides point to his expansion of Medi-Cal to residents above the age of 50, including undocumented immigrants, and a lengthy moratorium on evictions during the pandemic as two key policies they say have helped thousands of Latinos in California. His campaign has repeatedly boasted of appointing Alex Padilla to the U.S. Senate, making him the first Latino from the state to serve in that body.Nathan Click, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom’s campaign, said the governor’s strategy in reaching out to Latino voters had been essentially unchanged. All along, Mr. Click said, the campaign viewed Latinos — and young Latinos in particular — as difficult but essential to reach.“We’ve known since Day 1 that voters who vote in presidential years but don’t vote in midterm elections and really don’t vote in special elections are the No. 1 target for all of our efforts,” he said.A generation ago, Proposition 187, a ballot initiative that would have barred undocumented immigrants from receiving most public services, gained widespread support among California Republicans, including Gov. Pete Wilson. The anti-immigrant measure largely drove Latino voters away from the Republican Party and into the embrace of Democrats, who have publicly credited the ballot measure as central to their rise to power.But many Latino voters are too young to remember the battle over Proposition 187 in the early 1990s and do not feel any particular loyalty to Democrats. For all the talk of Latino political potential in California, no governor in recent memory has effectively rallied Latinos to become staunch supporters.Mr. Newsom spoke to former farmworkers at a clinic in Fresno last month. Eric Paul Zamora/The Fresno Bee, via Associated Press“We haven’t adequately made the case for a long enough period of time that things are different and better, especially for young Latinos,” said Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat who represents a heavily Latino and working-class area of San Diego in the State Assembly. “It’s as if doing no harm to Latinos has become enough for a lot of Democratic politicians.”The recall is also coming as many are still reeling from the impact of the pandemic. Latinos in California were far more likely to contract and die from the virus than were white residents. The unemployment rate among Latinos remains above 10 percent, and many Latino small-business owners have lost significant income in the last year and a half.Frank Oropeza, 27, a barber in Montebello, just east of Los Angeles, said he had voted for President Biden last year and considered himself a Democrat. But he said he had given little thought to how to vote in the recall. He said he had been torn, reading posts on social media from fellow barbers and hair stylists who were in favor of recalling Mr. Newsom, who twice shut down their businesses, and from others who viewed things differently.“I’m so easily swayed,” he said with a laugh. “It’s like, ‘Close your eyes and throw a dart.’”Mr. Oropeza said that he understood the need for some pandemic restrictions. But he was frustrated that barbers and hair stylists had been required to stop working for a second time, even after they had implemented precautions such as universal masking.The criticism is one Mr. Newsom’s opponents have jumped on, using the argument to try to persuade more Latinos to vote in favor of the recall.“Many of those small businesses that closed forever are owned by Black and brown people,” Larry Elder, the conservative talk radio host who has become the Republican front-runner in a crowded field of recall candidates, told reporters last week.At the virtual news conference, Mr. Elder appeared alongside Gloria Romero, a Democrat and former state lawmaker who is now a vocal advocate for charter schools. She was featured prominently in a recent Spanish advertisement the Elder campaign sent to Latino voters via text.“This is about sending a message about how the Democratic Party has largely abandoned Latinos,” Ms. Romero said. “We’ve been taken for granted.”Latino voters are a force in every part of the state and represent a wide spectrum of political views. While college-educated liberals in urban centers are part of the Democratic core base, working-class moderates in the suburbs of the Inland Empire and Silicon Valley are essential to winning statewide. And in Orange County, the Central Valley and the far northern reaches of the state, religious voters and libertarians have helped elect Republicans in key congressional districts.And there are signs that Republicans are having some success courting support from Hispanic voters, including first-time voters.“I am tired of the way things are,” said Ruben Sanchez, 43, a construction worker who lives in Simi Valley, a conservative stronghold north of Los Angeles. Mr. Sanchez, who attends an Evangelical church, said that he had cast his first ballot in 2020 and voted for Mr. Trump largely because of his religious beliefs and that he planned to vote for Mr. Elder in the recall. “This governor and this state are not for working people, for people who care about this country.”Officials with Mr. Newsom’s campaign have promised a blitz targeting Latino voters in the final days before the election. Last week, the Newsom campaign released an advertisement featuring Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the former presidential candidate who became so popular among many young Latinos in California that some refer to him as Tío Bernie, meaning Uncle Bernie.During the Democratic presidential primary, the Sanders campaign focused much of its outreach on Latino voters from the beginning, opening campaign offices in heavily Latino neighborhoods and releasing videos meant to be passed around on social media. The efforts were widely credited as a kind of playbook for effectively reaching Latino voters, and some Democrats have criticized the Newsom campaign for not doing more to replicate them.Beyond outreach, Mr. Sanders appealed to many young Latino voters in large part because of his ideology, calling for Medicare for all, forgiving of student loans and sweeping bills to combat climate change.“Latinos still have some core frustrations that Bernie was speaking to that have not been resolved,” said Rafael Navar, who was the California state director for the Sanders campaign. “We’ve had high death rates, high unemployment and massive inequality.”Despite the skepticism over Mr. Newsom, many Hispanic voters say they are fearful of what would happen if a Republican were to take office. Yet even as they are repelled by the Republican brand of politics, some liberal voters do not call themselves enthusiastic Democrats. Party loyalty, they said, is not as important to them as supporting a candidate who will address their concerns more directly.Ernesto Ruvalcaba, 27, a mapping specialist who lives in Los Angeles, said that while he had cast his ballot against the recall because Mr. Newsom was “getting the job done,” he remained dissatisfied.“Things he did, he could’ve done better,” Mr. Ruvalcaba said. “The parties are just really old — both of them. They just need to break up.” More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Census Shows a Nation That Resembles Its Future More Than Its Past

      by

      For Democrats, there was much to cheer in the growth of cities and suburbs. But Republicans, imperiled by the falling white population, are still well positioned for redistricting.At first blush, Thursday’s release of census data held great news for Democrats. It painted a portrait of a considerably more urban and metropolitan nation, with increasingly Democratic metropolitan areas bustling with new arrivals and the rural, Republican heartland steadily losing residents. It is a much less white nation, too, with the white non-Hispanic population for the first time dropping in absolute numbers, a plunge that exceeded most experts’ estimates, and the growth in the Latino population slightly exceeding forecasts.But the census paints a picture of America as it is. And as it is, America is not very Democratic.Besides the census, the other great source of data on American politics is the result of the 2020 election, which revealed a deeply and narrowly divided nation. Despite nearly the full decade of demographic shifts shown by the census, Joe Biden won the national vote by the same four-point margin that he won by as Barack Obama’s running mate eight years earlier — and with fewer votes in the Electoral College.Democrats face great challenges in translating favorable demographic trends into electoral success, and the new census data may prove to be only the latest example. While the census shows that Democratic-leaning groups represent a growing share of the population, much of the population growth occurred in the Sun Belt, where Republicans still control the redistricting process. That gives them yet another chance to preserve their political power in the face of unfavorable demographic trends. And they are well prepared to do so.The new data will be used by state legislatures and commissions to redraw electoral maps, with the potential to determine control of Congress and state legislatures across the country in next year’s midterm election.Thursday’s release, the most detailed yet from the 2020 census, depicted a nation that increasingly seems to resemble its future more than its past. The non-Hispanic white share of the population fell to 57.8 percentage points, nearly two points lower than expected, as more Americans identified as multiracial. Vast swaths of the rural United States, including an outright majority of its counties, saw their populations shrink.“Democrats have reason to be happy with this census data set,” said Dave Wasserman, House editor of the Cook Political Report, who cited the higher-than-expected population tallies in New York and Chicago and the steady growth of the nation’s Hispanic population.Many Democrats had feared that Latino and urban voters would be badly undercounted amid the coronavirus pandemic and the Trump administration’s effort to ask about citizenship status.It is still possible that the census undercounted Hispanics, but the results did not leave any obvious evidence that the count had gone awry. The Hispanic share of the population was in line with projections. New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic, showed unexpectedly strong population growth.The surprising decline in the white and rural population is likely to bolster Democratic hopes that demographic shifts might help progressives secure a significant electoral advantage.But the possibility that demographic changes would doom conservatives has loomed over American politics for more than a decade, helping to exacerbate conservative fears of immigration and even to motivate a wave of new laws intended to restrict access to voting. Tucker Carlson, the Fox News television show host, has repeatedly stoked racist fears of “white replacement,” warning his viewers that it is a Democratic electoral strategy.Yet despite the seemingly favorable demographic portrait for Democrats depicted by the 2020 census, the 2020 election returned another closely divided result: a 50-50 Senate, one of the closest presidential elections in history, and a House majority so slender that it might be undone by the very data that Democrats were celebrating on Thursday.The nation’s electoral system — which rewards flipping states and districts — has tended to mute the effect of demographic change. Many Democratic gains in vote margins have come in metropolitan areas, where Democratic candidates were already winning races, or in red states like Texas, where Democrats have made huge gains in presidential elections but haven’t yet won many additional electoral votes.But Democrats haven’t fared much better over the past decade, as one would have expected based on favorable demographic trends alone. It’s not clear they’ve improved at all. Barack Obama and Joe Biden each won the national popular vote by four percentage points in 2012 and 2020. Demographic shifts, thus far, have been canceled out by Republican gains among nonwhite and especially Latino voters, who supported Mr. Trump in unexpectedly large numbers in 2020 and helped deny Democrats victory in Florida.The new census data confirms that the nation’s political center of gravity continues to shift to the Republican Sun Belt, where demographic shifts have helped Democrats make huge inroads over the past decade. Georgia and Arizona turned blue in 2020. Texas, where Hispanic residents now roughly equal non-Hispanic whites, is on the cusp of becoming a true battleground state.Phoenix vaulted ahead of Philadelphia to become the fifth most populated city in the United States since the last census.Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesJust 50.1 percent of Georgians were non-Hispanic whites, according to the new census data, raising the possibility that whites already represent a minority of the state’s population by now.But despite Democratic gains in the Sun Belt, Republicans continue to control the redistricting process in most of the fast-growing states that picked up seats through reapportionment.The relatively robust number of Latino and metropolitan voters will make it more difficult for Republicans to redraw some maps to their advantage, by requiring them to draw more voters from rural Republican areas to dilute urban and metropolitan concentrations of Democratic-leaning voters. It may also help Democrats redraw maps to their favor in Illinois and New York, where they do control the redistricting process.But there are few limits on gerrymandering, and even today’s relatively favorable data for Democrats are unlikely to be enough to overcome the expected Republican advantages in states where they enjoy full control over the redistricting process.The Democrats may be relying on the Republicans’ growing bashful about gerrymandering, said Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida.“What the Republicans will have to do is crack the urban areas, and do it pretty aggressively,” he said. “It’s just one of those things we’ll have to see — how aggressive Republicans can be.”Nick Corasaniti More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Muchos votantes latinos apoyaron al Partido Republicano, pero Biden quiere recuperarlos

      by

      ¿Los demócratas dieron por sentado el voto hispano en 2020? Algunos en el partido creen que sí y que no pueden permitirse los mismos errores en el futuro.En la primavera, Alejandra Gomez quedó sorprendida, pero agradecida, por la avalancha de llamadas telefónicas de la Casa Blanca que le ofrecían información actualizada sobre sus labores encaminadas a una reforma de inmigración. Los funcionarios también le preguntaron qué pensaba su grupo de defensoría de Arizona acerca de su trabajo con respecto al derecho al voto y cómo el paquete de ayuda por la pandemia estaba afectando ese estado.“Es totalmente diferente de lo que hemos visto antes”, señaló Gomez, al comparar esos esfuerzos con gobiernos demócratas anteriores, los cuales por lo general solo empezaban a establecer contacto durante las campañas de reelección.No era la única. Los líderes de la Asociación Nacional de Funcionarios Latinos Electos y Designados se quedaron estupefactos cuando tanto el presidente como la vicepresidenta se comprometieron a pronunciar un discurso en su convención de junio, la primera vez en las décadas que tiene de historia el evento en que los principales funcionarios de la Casa Blanca habían aceptado participar en un año no electoral.También en Wisconsin, los miembros de Voces de la Frontera, un grupo que representa a los trabajadores inmigrantes de bajos ingresos, quedaron encantados cuando la Casa Blanca se comunicó con ellos para organizar un diálogo con el secretario del Trabajo Marty Walsh durante una gira que hizo por Milwaukee.“Tuvimos la oportunidad de que todos nuestros miembros fueran a escucharlo y de que él nos escuchara”, señaló Christine Neumann-Ortiz, directora ejecutiva de la organización. “Es una buena señal que no se hayan olvidado de nosotros después de las elecciones”.Durante años, los activistas y organizadores latinos se quejaron de que los esfuerzos de los demócratas por conquistar a sus comunidades casi siempre parecían una idea tardía, un conjunto heterogéneo de anuncios en español, literatura de campaña traducida de manera descuidada y un puñado de miembros del personal de divulgación añadido a las campañas.Sin embargo, después de las elecciones del año pasado, cuando los republicanos obtuvieron una cantidad significativa de votos latinos en todo Estados Unidos, los líderes demócratas están viendo la posibilidad de tener un acercamiento más activo.Encabezado por una Casa Blanca que ha contratado a organizadores latinos importantes en los puestos de alto nivel del gabinete y con una primera dama, Jill Biden, que tiene un interés especial por llegar a los votantes latinos, este nuevo esfuerzo construye un puente en el partido e integra la política, las comunicaciones y la organización política. Este acercamiento incluye una amplia cantidad de líderes comunitarios y estrellas de redes sociales, como, por ejemplo, el cómico mexicano Eugenio Derbez, así como reuniones con líderes religiosos hispanos.Estos esfuerzos reflejan cuán importantes son los electores latinos para el éxito del Partido Demócrata, pero también la magnitud del trabajo que se necesita para volver a ganar a un grupo que representa casi el 20 por ciento de la población. Desde hace mucho tiempo, los demócratas han visto a estos electores —un grupo diverso que incluye docenas de diferentes países de origen y una amplia variedad de niveles socioeconómicos— como un bloque casi monolítico que podía darse por sentado y operaban como si el factor más importante fuera solo la participación; la lógica era que, si los electores latinos votaban, lo harían por los demócratas.Sin embargo, el año 2020, con una cifra histórica de 18,7 millones de votos emitidos por latinos, fue una prueba de lo equivocada que estaba esa teoría. Pese a que más o menos el 60 por ciento votó por el presidente Joe Biden, la inclinación hacia Donald Trump hizo que los demócratas entraran en un periodo de examen de conciencia.Aunque no ha habido un análisis detallado y concluyente, las encuestas de salida y los grupos de muestra de ambos partidos señalan que Trump ganó los votos de los latinos sin formación universitaria que criticaron los mandatos de cierre de actividades en medio de la pandemia y que creían que el expresidente sería un mejor administrador de la economía. Los republicanos también ganaron votos de los cubanos, los venezolanos y los colombianos del sur de Florida que consideraban que los demócratas apoyaban el socialismo, así como de los mexicoestadounidenses del sur de Texas y otras regiones que respaldaban sus políticas fronterizas. Los evangélicos conformaron una parte significativa de los latinos seguidores de Trump por su rechazo al aborto.Ahora, el Partido Demócrata está intentando usar los datos para entender mejor a los electores latinos y tratar de ampliar un conocimiento más detallado de cómo los diversos orígenes de nacionalidad, el nivel económico y otros factores cambian el comportamiento en las votaciones.Como candidato y presidente electo, Biden ha tenido un éxito desigual en su comunicación con los latinos. En las elecciones primarias a principios de 2020, siguió de cerca a su rival Bernie Sanders entre los electores latinos. Altos funcionarios latinos se frustraron durante su campaña el año pasado por la ausencia de representantes hispanos en su círculo más cercano.Algunos activistas califican en voz baja los nuevos esfuerzos como mediocres y señalan que, aunque la comunicación ha aumentado, no ha habido ninguna victoria importante de la política en torno a un asunto primordial como una reforma de inmigración. Pero reconocen que hay una aceptación cada vez mayor de que para ganar los votos latinos se necesitará más que hacer visitas en taquerías e insertar frases, en un mal español, en los discursos de campaña.“En términos de su compromiso, están haciendo un trabajo mucho mejor en este momento que durante el primer gobierno de Barack Obama”, dijo Arturo Vargas, el director ejecutivo de la Asociación Nacional de Funcionarios Latinos Electos, que recientemente informó a los miembros del personal de la Casa Blanca sobre las prioridades políticas de la organización. “No tuvimos este tipo de acercamiento con Obama”.“Espero que se haya aprendido la lección de que no se puede dar por sentado el voto latino”, añadió Vargas. “Llevamos décadas diciéndolo, y creo que ahora llegó a oídos más dispuestos”.Los esfuerzos de los demócratas también se ajustan para convencer a los votantes de que vean los beneficios de las políticas del partido, sobre todo en lugares claves como el sur de Florida y el Valle del Río Grande, donde un mayor abandono podría costarles escaños en el Congreso.Arturo Vargas, director ejecutivo de la Asociación Nacional de Funcionarios Latinos Electos, dijo que el acercamiento del gobierno de Biden hasta ahora era una mejora sobre el primer mandato del presidente Barack Obama.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesDesde que Biden tomó posesión, la Casa Blanca ha celebrado decenas de reuniones, muchas de ellas virtuales, con dirigentes de todo el país. También está encontrando maneras de comunicarse de modo directo con los votantes latinos y no depender solo de los grupos de defensoría.Hay reuniones bisemanales con las organizaciones de latinos acerca de las labores de vacunación y las políticas económicas, así como reuniones cara a cara y sesiones informativas sobre temas más específicos. Durante varios meses, los funcionarios responsables de la contratación sostuvieron reuniones semanales con organizaciones externas a fin de ayudar a desarrollar una cartera de candidatos latinos para puestos en el gobierno. El esfuerzo ha tenido éxito: ahora, una gran cantidad de organizadores y estrategas latinos tienen puestos de alto nivel en la Casa Blanca y el gabinete.Los asesores de la Casa Blanca afirman que muchas de las prioridades más importantes de la política serán beneficiar a los electores latinos de manera significativa; por ejemplo, el crédito tributario por hijos podría tener un efecto impactante en la población latina desproporcionadamente joven. En una encuesta privada de votantes latinos compartida con The New York Times, Building Back Together, un grupo administrado por aliados de Biden, se descubrió que los asuntos económicos y de salud pública estaban situados en los dos primeros lugares y que la inmigración estaba en el tercero.El gobierno tiene cubierta la televisión en español y se ha acercado a las publicaciones en español y en inglés que leen los votantes latinos, incluso en zonas a menudo olvidadas de Oklahoma, Luisiana y Minnesota. Un alto funcionario del gobierno aparece en Al Punto, el programa matutino de los domingos presentado por Jorge Ramos, dos veces al mes.Animada por su jefa de gabinete latina a intensificar su participación, la doctora Biden hizo su primera aparición matutina en televisión en Hoy Día, un programa de noticias de Telemundo, y una serie de paradas en barrios latinos desde Salt Lake City hasta Osceola, Florida.Hay llamadas quincenales con organizaciones latinas sobre los esfuerzos de vacunación y las políticas económicas, así como reuniones individuales y sesiones informativas sobre cuestiones más específicas. Los funcionarios responsables de la contratación mantuvieron durante meses llamadas semanales con organizaciones externas para ayudar a desarrollar una cantera de candidatos latinos para los puestos en el gobierno. El esfuerzo ha tenido éxito: varios organizadores y estrategas latinos ocupan ahora puestos de alto nivel en la Casa Blanca y el gabinete.Los asesores de la Casa Blanca afirman que muchas de las principales prioridades políticas beneficiarán significativamente a los votantes latinos; la desgravación fiscal por hijos, por ejemplo, podría tener un impacto enorme en una población latina que es desproporcionadamente joven. En un sondeo privado de votantes latinos compartido con The New York Times, Building Back Together, un grupo dirigido por aliados de Biden, encontró que las preocupaciones económicas y la salud pública eran los temas más importantes, con la inmigración en tercer lugar.Los altos asesores afirmaron que estaban especialmente contentos de que, al parecer, sus esfuerzos de vacunación hayan rendido frutos, ya que se ha reducido la brecha entre los latinos y los estadounidenses blancos que han recibido la vacuna. A los latinos les ha afectado la pandemia de manera particular, en parte porque conforman una cantidad desproporcionada de los trabajadores esenciales y porque su esperanza de vida está disminuyendo mucho.“En definitiva es intencionado”, señaló Emmy Ruiz, directora de estrategia política de la Casa Blanca, “en todo lo que hacemos, hay un latino involucrado”.Es un planteamiento que difiere del pasado. Durante el gobierno de Obama, gran parte del acercamiento venía después de las elecciones intermedias y se enfocaba principalmente en la legislación sobre la atención médica y la Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia, la cual permitía a los inmigrantes jóvenes que ingresaron al país de manera no autorizada vivir y trabajar en Estados Unidos.Sin embargo, los esfuerzos no son suficientes para lo que muchos líderes latinos esperan ver, sobre todo a raíz de las elecciones del año pasado, cuando los votos de los latinos tomaron por sorpresa a muchos funcionarios demócratas.“En este momento se requiere un gran esfuerzo”, comentó Carlos Odio, cofundador de Equis Labs, un grupo de investigación que ha pasado los últimos meses analizando los cambios entre los electores latinos durante el último ciclo electoral. “Me preocupa que exista la creencia de que el año pasado fue anómalo y de que solo tiene que regresar a la normalidad. Eso es inquietante sobre todo si los republicanos regresan a hacer campaña para obtener esos votos”.Parte del empuje es preventivo, diseñado para asegurar que los votantes latinos reconozcan que los demócratas están al menos tratando de aprobar una revisión de la inmigración.Hay un amplio apoyo a la legislación para conceder a los dreamers un camino hacia la ciudadanía, incluso entre los republicanos latinos. Incluso entre los votantes latinos que no ven la inmigración como su principal problema, la mayoría dice que no votaría por un candidato que se oponga a dicha legislación, según las encuestas de Building Back Together.Seguidores del entonces presidente Donald Trump vitorean en un mitin durante la noche de las elecciones en el barrio de la Pequeña Habana de Miami en noviembre.Scott McIntyre para The New York TimesEntre los demócratas latinos, existe la creencia generalizada de que el país está mejorando, incluso para los propios latinos. Pero los republicanos hispanos dicen que la situación en Estados Unidos ha empeorado en el último año, según una encuesta reciente del Pew Research Center.“Los demócratas están en código rojo: lo ven, lo entienden y se apresuran a poner todas las manos en la masa”, dijo Daniel Garza, director ejecutivo de Libre, un grupo latino conservador.Los estrategas demócratas, que todavía están lidiando con los resultados de 2020, han culpado a varios factores de las pérdidas: la preocupación por la delincuencia, el miedo al socialismo avivado por la campaña de Trump e incluso el machismo de los hombres latinos.Para tratar de evitar una nueva caída de apoyos durante las elecciones de mitad de mandato, los comités de campaña demócratas ya invierten millones para instalar organizadores en distritos con gran presencia de latinos en Florida, Texas, Arizona y Georgia.“Cuando tienes un grupo que es tan nuevo, tan grande y que está creciendo a tasas tan altas, requiere una conversación constante”, dijo Matt Barreto, un encuestador demócrata que se ha centrado en los votantes latinos durante décadas y está involucrado en los esfuerzos de Building Back Together. “Queremos tener años de conversación para que, cuando llegue una campaña, no estemos tratando de gritarle a la gente”.Jennifer Medina es reportera de política estadounidense que cubrió la campaña presidencial de Estados Unidos de 2020. Originaria del sur de California, anteriormente pasó varios años reporteando sobre la región para la sección National. @jennymedinaLisa Lerer es una corresponsal política nacional que cubre campañas electorales, votaciones y poder político. @llerer More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats Try to Win Back Latino Voters After 2020 Election

      by

      Did Democrats take the Hispanic vote for granted in 2020? Some in the party think they did, and can’t afford the same mistakes going forward.Alejandra Gomez was surprised, but pleased, by a flurry of phone calls from the White House in the spring, offering updates on its efforts toward an immigration overhaul. Officials also asked what her Arizona-based advocacy group thought of its work on voting rights and how the pandemic relief package was affecting the state.“It’s absolutely different than what we’ve seen before,” Ms. Gomez said, comparing the efforts to those of previous Democratic administrations, which typically waited to reach out only during re-election campaigns.She wasn’t alone. Leaders of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials were taken aback when both the president and vice president committed to speaking at their conference in June, the first time in the event’s decades-long history that the top two White House officials had agreed to speak in a non-election year.And in Wisconsin, Voces de la Frontera, a group that represents low-wage immigrant workers, was thrilled when the White House reached out to arrange a conversation between their members and Marty Walsh, the secretary of labor, during a swing he made through Milwaukee.“We had an opportunity for all our members to come listen to him and for him to listen to us,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the executive director of the organization. “That’s a good cue that they haven’t forgotten us after the elections.”For years, Latino activists and organizers complained that Democratic efforts to woo their community often seemed like an afterthought, a motley collection of Spanish-language advertisements, haphazardly translated campaign literature and a handful of outreach staff members tacked on to campaigns.But after last year’s election, when Republicans peeled away significant amounts of Latino support across the country, Democratic leaders are trying a more aggressive approach.Led by a White House that recruited top Latino organizers to high-level staff positions, and with the first lady, Jill Biden, taking a particular interest in reaching out to Latino voters, the new effort bridges the party, encompassing policy, communications and political organizing. The outreach encompasses a broad number of community leaders and social media stars, such as Eugenio Derbez, a Mexican comedian, and meetings with Hispanic faith leaders.The efforts reflect how vital Latino voters are to the party’s success, but also the extent of the work needed to win back a group that makes up nearly 20 percent of the population. Democrats have long viewed these voters — a diverse group that includes dozens of countries of origin and a wide range of socioeconomic status — as a mostly monolithic bloc that could be taken for granted, operating as though the most important factor was simply turnout; if Latino voters cast ballots, the reasoning went, they will vote Democratic.But 2020, with a record 18.7 millions ballots cast by Latino voters, proved just how wrong that theory was. Though roughly 60 percent chose President Biden, the movement toward Donald J. Trump plunged Democrats into a period of soul-searching.While there has not been a conclusive detailed analysis, exit polling and focus groups from both parties show that Mr. Trump won over Hispanic voters without a college degree who were critical of shutdown orders amid the pandemic and believed the former president would be a better steward of the economy. Republicans also did well with Cubans, Venezuelans and Colombians in South Florida who viewed Democrats as sympathetic to socialism, as well as Mexican Americans in South Texas and other regions who backed his border policies. Evangelicals made up a sizable portion of Latino Trump supporters based on their opposition to abortion.The Democratic Party is now trying to use data to better understand Latino voters, and to try to develop a more granular understanding of how different national backgrounds, economic status and other factors change voting behavior.As a candidate and president-elect, Mr. Biden has had uneven success with Hispanic outreach. In early 2020 primaries, he trailed his rival Bernie Sanders among Latino voters. Top Latino officials were frustrated during his campaign last year by the absence of Hispanic officials in his inner circle.Some activists are quietly criticizing the new efforts as lackluster, and point out that while outreach has increased, there has not been a major policy victory on a critical issue like an immigration overhaul. But they acknowledge that there is a growing recognition that winning over Latino voters will take more than stops at taco shops and inserting mangled Spanish slogans into stump speeches.“In terms of their engagement, they are doing a much better job at this point than during the first Obama administration,” said Arturo Vargas, the chief executive officer of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, who recently briefed White House staff members on the organization’s policy priorities. “We didn’t get this kind of outreach under Obama.”“I would hope the lesson has been learned that you cannot take the Latino vote for granted,” Mr. Vargas added. “We’ve been saying that for decades, and I think that has now fallen on ears that are open.”Democrats’ efforts are also geared toward persuading voters to see benefits of the party’s policies, particularly in key places like South Florida and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where more defections could cost them congressional seats.Arturo Vargas, chief executive officer of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, said the Biden administration’s outreach so far was an improvement over President Barack Obama’s first term. Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesSince Mr. Biden entered office, the White House has held dozens of meetings, many of them virtually, with leaders across the country. It is also finding ways to reach out directly to Latino voters and not rely solely on advocacy groups.The administration has blanketed Spanish-language television and reached out to Spanish and English language publications read by Latino voters — even in often overlooked pockets in Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Minnesota. A senior administration official appears on “Al Punto,” the Sunday morning show hosted by Jorge Ramos, twice a month.Encouraged by her Latino chief of staff to step up her involvement, Dr. Biden made her first morning television appearance on Hoy Día, a Telemundo news show, and a series of stops in Latino neighborhoods from Salt Lake City to Osceola, Fla.There are biweekly calls with Latino organizations on vaccination efforts and economic policies, as well as one-on-one meetings and briefings on more specific issues. Officials responsible for hiring held months of weekly calls with outside organizations to help develop a pipeline of Latino candidates for administration posts. The effort has been successful: A number of Latino organizers and strategists now hold high-level posts in the White House and the cabinet.White House aides say that many of the top policy priorities will benefit Latino voters significantly; the child tax credit, for instance, could have an outsize impact on a Latino population that is disproportionately young. In private polling of Latino voters shared with The New York Times, Building Back Together, a group run by Biden allies, found that economic concerns and public health were the top-ranking issues, with immigration ranking third.Top aides said they were particularly pleased that their efforts on vaccination had appeared to pay off, as the gap between Latino and white Americans receiving vaccinations has narrowed. Latinos have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, in part because they make up a disproportional number of essential workers, and have seen life expectancy decrease significantly.“It’s definitely by design,” said Emmy Ruiz, the White House director of political strategy, “In everything that we do, there’s a Latino frame to it.”It’s an approach that differs from the past. During the Obama administration, much of the outreach came after the midterms and was focused largely on health care legislation and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allowed young undocumented immigrants to legally live and work in the United States.Still, the effort falls short of what many Latino leaders hope to see, particularly in the wake of last year’s election, when the Hispanic vote caught many Democratic officials by surprise.“This moment requires a full-court press,” said Carlos Odio, a co-founder of Equis Labs, a research group that has spent the last several months examining the shifts among Latino voters during the last election cycle. “My concern is that there is a belief that last year was an anomaly, and that it is just going to go back to normal. That’s especially troubling if Republicans go back to campaigning for those votes.”Some of the push is pre-emptive, designed to ensure that Latino voters recognize that Democrats are at least trying to pass an immigration overhaul.There is widespread support for legislation to grant Dreamers a path to citizenship, including among Latino Republicans. Even among Latino voters who do not view immigration as their top issue, the majority say they would not vote for a candidate who opposes such legislation, according to polling from Building Back Together.Supporters of President Donald J. Trump cheered in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami in November. Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAmong Latino Democrats, there is a widespread belief that the country is improving, including for Latinos themselves. But Hispanic Republicans say the situation in the United States has worsened in the last year, according to recent polling from the Pew Research Center.“Democrats are at code red — they see it, they get it and they are scrambling to get all hands on deck,” said Daniel Garza, the executive director of Libre, a conservative Latino group. Still grappling with the 2020 results, Democratic strategists have blamed several factors for the losses: concern about crime, fears of socialism stoked by the Trump campaign, and even the “machismo” of Latino men.To try to avoid another drop in support during the midterms, Democratic campaign committees are already investing millions to install organizers in heavily Latino districts in Florida, Texas, Arizona and Georgia.“When you have a group that is so new, so big and is growing at such high rates, it requires constant conversation,” said Matt Barreto, a Democratic pollster who has focused on Latino voters for decades and is involved in the Building Back Together efforts. “We want to have years of conversation so that when a campaign comes, we’re not trying to scream at people.” More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Progressives’ Urgent Question: How to Win Over Voters of Color

      by

      A yearslong challenge for the left was starkly illustrated this week as its hopes faded in the New York mayor’s race.Can progressives win broad numbers of the Black and brown voters they say their policies will benefit most?That provocative question is one that a lot of Democrats find themselves asking after seeing the early results from New York City’s mayoral primary this past week.In a contest that centered on crime and public safety, Eric Adams, who emerged as the leading Democrat, focused much of his message on denouncing progressive slogans and policies that he said threatened the lives of “Black and brown babies” and were being pushed by “a lot of young, white, affluent people.” A retired police captain and Brooklyn’s borough president, he rejected calls to defund the Police Department and pledged to expand its reach in the city.Black and brown voters in Brooklyn and the Bronx flocked to his candidacy, awarding Mr. Adams with sizable leading margins in neighborhoods from Eastchester to East New York. Though the official winner may not be known for weeks because of the city’s new ranked-choice voting system, Mr. Adams holds a commanding edge in the race that will be difficult for his rivals to overcome.His appeal adds evidence to an emerging trend in Democratic politics: a disconnect between progressive activists and the rank-and-file Black and Latino voters who they say have the most to gain from their agenda. As liberal activists orient their policies to combat white supremacy and call for racial justice, progressives are finding that many voters of color seem to think about the issues quite a bit differently.“Black people talk about politics in more practical and everyday terms,” said Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University who studies the political views of Black people. “What makes more sense for people who are often distrustful of broad political claims is something that’s more in the middle.”He added: “The median Black voter is not A.O.C. and is actually closer to Eric Adams.”In the 2016 Democratic presidential primary race, Senator Bernie Sanders struggled to win over voters of color. Four years later, Black voters helped lift President Biden to victory in the Democratic primary, forming the backbone of the coalition that helped him defeat liberal rivals including Mr. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren.In the general election, Donald J. Trump made gains with nonwhite voters, particularly Latinos, as Democrats saw a drop-off in support that cost the party key congressional seats, according to a postelection autopsy by Democratic interest groups. In the 2020 election, Mr. Trump made larger gains among all Black and Latino voters than he did among white voters without a college degree, according to the Democratic data firm Catalist.On issues beyond criminal justice, data indicates that Black and Latino voters are less likely to identify as liberal than white voters. An analysis by Gallup found that the share of white Democrats who identify as liberal had risen by 20 percentage points since the early 2000s. Over the same period, the polling firm found a nine-point rise in liberal identification among Latino Democrats and an eight-point increase among Black Democrats.As votes were being tabulated in New York, Mr. Adams tried to capitalize on that tension between progressives and more moderate voters of color, casting himself as the future of Democratic politics and his campaign as a template for the party.“I am the face of the new Democratic Party,” he said at his first news conference after primary night. “If the Democratic Party fails to recognize what we did here in New York, they’re going to have a problem in the midterm elections and they’re going to have a problem in the presidential elections.”Extrapolating national trends from the idiosyncratic politics of New York is a bit like ordering a bagel with schmear in Des Moines. You’ll probably get a piece of bread, but the similarities may end there.Liberal activists argue that they’ve made important breakthroughs among nonwhite voters in recent years, pointing to Mr. Sanders’s gains among Latinos and younger voters of color over the course of his two presidential bids. Progressive congressional candidates, like the members of the so-called Squad, have won several heavily Democratic House districts with meaningful support from nonwhite voters.And of course, Black and Latino voters, like any demographic group, are hardly a monolith. Younger voters and those with college degrees are more likely to trend left than their older parents.Still, the traction some more conservative Democratic candidates like Mr. Adams have gained in Black and Latino communities threatens to undercut a central tenet of the party’s political thinking for decades: demographics as destiny.For years, Democrats have argued that as the country grew more diverse and more urban, their party would be able to marshal a near-permanent majority with a rising coalition of voters of color. By turning out that base, Democrats could win without needing to appeal affluent suburbanites, who are traditionally more moderate on fiscal issues, or white working-class voters, who tend to hold more conservative views on race and immigration.But a growing body of evidence indicates that large numbers of Black and Latino voters may simply take a more centrist view on the very issues — race and criminal justice — that progressives assumed would rally voters of color to their side.The New York mayoral primary provided a particularly interesting test case of that kind of thinking. As crime and gun violence rise in New York, polls showed that crime and public safety were the most important issues to voters in the mayoral race.The limited public polling available showed nuanced opinions among voters of color on policing. A poll conducted for the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, found that just 17 percent of Black voters and 18 percent of Latinos wanted to decrease the number of police officers in their neighborhoods. But 62 percent of Black voters and 49 percent of Latino voters said they supported “defunding” the New York Police Department and spending the money on social workers instead, the poll found.Other surveys found that Black and Latino voters were more likely than white voters to say that the number of uniformed police officers should be increased in the subways and that they felt unsafe from crime in their neighborhoods. Fears of violent crime led some leaders in predominantly Black neighborhoods to reject efforts to defund the police.Progressive activists who backed Maya Wiley, one of the more liberal candidates in the race, accused Mr. Adams of “fear-mongering” over rising crime rates in the city.“Voters were offered a false dichotomy between justice and public safety by the Adams rhetoric,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the New York state director of the Working Families Party. “We worked hard to dismantle that framework, but that dog-whistling does strike the real fear that people have when our streets are increasingly unsafe. It’s a very human experience.”Yet Mr. Adams’s personal history may offer particular appeal to voters with complicated views on criminal justice. A former police officer, he built his political brand on criticizing the police, speaking out against police brutality, and, later, the department’s stop-and-frisk tactics. After years in New York politics, he’s a member of the party establishment, enjoying the advantages of name recognition and decades-old relationships with community leaders.It’s the kind of biographical narrative likely to appeal to voters more likely to have intimate personal experiences with policing, who tend to live in neighborhoods that may have more crime but where people are also are more likely to face violence or abuse from officers.Some scholars and strategists argue that Black and Latino voters are more likely to center their political beliefs on those kinds of experiences in their own lives, taking a pragmatic approach to politics that’s rooted less in ideology and more in a historical distrust of government and the ability of politicians to deliver on sweeping promises.“These standard ways of thinking about ideology fall apart for Black Americans,” Dr. Jefferson said. “The idea of liberalism and conservatism just falls to the wayside.”He added, “It’s just not the language Black folks are using to organize their politics.”Nate Cohn contributed reporting. More

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Republicans Win Two Texas Mayoral Races, Including One in McAllen, Which is 85 Percent Hispanic

      by

      Republicans in Texas celebrated on Monday after winning two closely watched mayoral elections in the state on Saturday, taking control of cities in Democratic counties.The party was particularly buoyed by its performance in McAllen, a border city of 143,000 that is 85 percent Hispanic, where Javier Villalobos, a former chairman of the local Republican Party, defeated a candidate backed by local Democrats by 206 votes out of 9,282 cast.Texas Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott, hailed Mr. Villalobos’s victory as part of a larger political realignment of Hispanic voters that revealed itself in the 2020 election, when President Biden drastically underperformed against expectations, and previous Democratic margins, in several Texas border counties with large numbers of Hispanic voters.Mr. Biden won Hidalgo County, which includes McAllen, by 17 percentage points. Four years earlier, Hillary Clinton carried the county by 40 points.Mr. Villalobos, a local lawyer who is a city commissioner, celebrated his victory by riding a bicycle built for two with Jim Darling, McAllen’s departing mayor. Mr. Darling did not seek re-election after eight years in office.In Fort Worth, Democrats had hoped Deborah Peoples, a former Tarrant County Democratic Party chairwoman, could win an open-seat mayoral race. Ms. Peoples had endorsements from Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro, high-profile Texas Democrats who ran for president in 2020.But Ms. Peoples lost to Mattie Parker, a former chief of staff to Fort Worth’s departing mayor, retaining Republican control of the largest city in Tarrant County, which flipped to Mr. Biden in 2020 after decades of backing Republican presidential candidates.Though both municipal contests were officially nonpartisan, Ms. Parker and Mr. Villalobos each identified as Republicans while their defeated opponents said they were Democrats. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Democratic Report Raises 2022 Alarms on Messaging and Voter Outreach

      by

      A new report, in perhaps the most thorough soul-searching done by either party this year, points to an urgent need for the party to present a positive economic agenda and rebut Republican misinformation.Democrats defeated President Donald J. Trump and captured the Senate last year with a racially diverse coalition that delivered victories by tiny margins in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.In the next election, they cannot count on repeating that feat, a new report warns.A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left.The 70-page report, obtained by The New York Times, was assembled at the behest of three major Democratic interest groups: Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, which promote Black and Hispanic candidates. It appears to be the most thorough act of self-criticism carried out by Democrats or Republicans after the last campaign.The document is all the more striking because it is addressed to a victorious party: Despite their successes, Democrats had hoped to achieve more robust control of both chambers of Congress, rather than the ultra-precarious margins they enjoy.Read the reportThree prominent Democratic groups, Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, conducted a review of the 2020 election.Read Document 73 pagesIn part, the study found, Democrats fell short of their aspirations because many House and Senate candidates failed to match Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s support with voters of color who loathed Mr. Trump but distrusted the Democratic Party as a whole. Those constituencies included Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters in California, and Black voters in North Carolina.Overall, the report warns, Democrats in 2020 lacked a core argument about the economy and recovering from the coronavirus pandemic — one that might have helped candidates repel Republican claims that they wanted to “keep the economy shut down,” or worse. The party “leaned too heavily on ‘anti-Trump’ rhetoric,” the report concludes.“Win or lose, self-described progressive or moderate, Democrats consistently raised a lack of strong Democratic Party brand as a significant concern in 2020,” the report states. “In the absence of strong party branding, the opposition latched on to G.O.P. talking points, suggesting our candidates would ‘burn down your house and take away the police.’”Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat who lost re-election in South Florida in November, said in an interview that she had spoken with the authors of the report and raised concerns about Democratic outreach to Hispanic voters and the party’s failure to rebut misinformation in Spanish-language media.“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has in some ways lost touch with our electorate,” Ms. Mucarsel-Powell said. “There is this assumption that of course people of color, or the working class, are going to vote for Democrats. We can never assume anything.”The report, chiefly written by a pair of veteran Democratic operatives, Marlon Marshall and Lynda Tran, is among the most significant salvos yet in the Democratic Party’s internal debate about how it should approach the 2022 elections. It may stir skepticism from some quarters because of the involvement of Third Way, which much of the left regards with hostility.A fourth group that initially backed the study, the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United, backed away this spring. Tiffany Muller, the head of the group, said it had to abandon its involvement to focus instead on passing the For the People Act, a sweeping good-government bill that is stuck in the Senate.Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat, lost re-election in South Florida last year. She remains worried about her party’s outreach to Hispanic voters.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesMr. Marshall and Ms. Tran, as well as the groups sponsoring the review, have begun to share its conclusions with Democratic lawmakers and party officials in recent days, including Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.The study spanned nearly six months of research and data analysis that scrutinized about three dozen races for the House and the Senate, and involved interviews with 143 people, including lawmakers, candidates and pollsters, people involved in assembling the report said. Among the campaigns reviewed were the Senate elections in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as House races in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas, and in rural New Mexico and Maine.The study follows an internal review conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that was unveiled last month. Both projects found that Democratic candidates had been hobbled by flawed polling and pandemic-imposed limitations on campaigning.In the D.C.C.C. report, the committee attributed setbacks at the congressional level to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to attacks calling them police-hating socialists.Some lawmakers on the left have complained that criticism of left-wing messaging amounts to scapegoating activists for the party’s failures.Yet the review by Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund goes further in diagnosing the party’s messaging as deficient in ways that may have cost Democrats more than a dozen seats in the House. Its report offers a blunt assessment that in 2020, Republicans succeeded in misleading voters about the Democratic Party’s agenda and that Democrats had erred by speaking to voters of color as though they are a monolithic, left-leaning group.Representative Tony Cárdenas of California, who helms the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee, embraced that critique of Democratic messaging and said the party should discard the assumption “that voters of color are inherently more progressive.”“That’s been a ridiculous idea and that’s never been true,” Mr. Cárdenas said, lamenting that Republicans had succeeded in “trying to confuse Latino voters with the socialism message, things of that nature, ‘defund the police.’”Quentin James, the president of the Collective PAC, said it was clear that “some of the rhetoric we see from coastal Democrats” had been problematic. Mr. James pointed to the activist demand to “defund” the police as especially harmful, even with supporters of policing overhauls.“We did a poll that showed Black voters, by and large, vastly support reforming the police and reallocating their budgets,” Mr. James said. “That terminology — ‘defund’ — was not popular in the Black community.”A report by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attributed the party’s setbacks to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to Republican attacks.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesKara Eastman, a progressive Democrat who lost her bid for a House seat based in Omaha, said Republicans had succeeded in delivering a “barrage of messages” that tarred her and her party as being outside the mainstream. Ms. Eastman said she had told the authors of the 2020 review that she believed those labels were particularly damaging to women.Matt Bennett, a Third Way strategist, said the party needed to be far better prepared to mount a defense in the midterm campaign.“We have got to take very seriously these attacks on Democrats as radicals and stipulate that they land,” Mr. Bennett said. “A lot of this just didn’t land on Joe Biden.”Democrats maintained a large advantage with voters of color in the 2020 elections, but the report identified telling areas of weakness. Mr. Biden and other Democrats lost ground with Latino voters relative to the party’s performance in 2016, “especially among working-class and non-college voters in these communities,” the report found.The report found that a surge in Asian American turnout appeared to have secured Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia but that Democratic House candidates ran behind Mr. Biden with Asian American voters in contested California and Texas races. In some important states, Democrats did not mobilize Black voters at the same rate that Republicans did conservative white voters.“A substantial boost in turnout netted Democrats more raw votes from Black voters than in 2016, but the explosive growth among white voters in most races outpaced these gains,” the report warns.There has been no comparable self-review on the Republican side after the party’s severe setbacks last year, mainly because G.O.P. leaders have no appetite for a debate about Mr. Trump’s impact.Republicans will continue to have structural advantages in Washington because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College. Erin Scott for The New York TimesThe Republican Party faces serious political obstacles, arising from Mr. Trump’s unpopularity, the growing liberalism of young voters and the country’s growing diversity. Many of the party’s policies are unpopular, including cutting social-welfare and retirement-security programs and keeping taxes low for the wealthy and big corporations.Yet the structure of the American electoral system has tilted national campaigns toward the G.O.P., because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College.Democratic hopes for the midterm elections have so far hinged on the prospect of a strong recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and on voters’ regarding Republicans as a party unsuited to governing.Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat who was briefed on the findings of the report, called it proof that the party needed a strong central message about the economy in 2022.“We need to continue to show the American people what we’ve done, and then talk incessantly across the country, in every town, about how Democrats are governing,” Ms. Sherrill said.Largely unaddressed in the report is the immense deficit Democrats face among lower-income white voters. In its conclusion, however, Mr. Marshall and Ms. Tran write that Democrats need to deliver a message that includes working-class whites and matches the G.O.P.’s clear “collective gospel” about low taxes and military strength.“Our gospel should be about championing all working people — including but not limited to white working people — and lifting up our values of opportunity, equity, inclusion,” they write. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Key Question in NYC Mayoral Race: Who Will Get Latino New Yorkers’ Votes?

      by

      Hispanic voters, who may account for a fifth of turnout, are considered to be up for grabs.Eric Adams was not Representative Adriano Espaillat’s original choice to become New York City’s next mayor, but now that he had landed the coveted endorsement, Mr. Adams was in a forgiving mood.It was more of a come-to-Eric moment than a come-to-Jesus moment, but he credited divine intervention with winning over Mr. Espaillat, the first Dominican-American to serve in Congress.“Today, all of that praying, all of those candles that I’ve burned, all of those incense that I put in place, all of those Hail Marys that I called up,” Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, thundered earlier this month. “Finally, Jesus Christ looked down on me and brought me Congressman Espaillat!”Less than one month before the Democratic primary that will almost certainly determine the city’s next mayor, the battle for Latino voters and endorsers is accelerating, and the fight for that diverse constituency is emerging as one of the most crucial and uncertain elements of the race to lead New York.All the leading Democratic mayoral candidates sense opportunity. In the race’s final weeks, they are pressing their cases through advertising, Spanish-language phone banks and Latino affinity groups, deployment of surrogates and rallies in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods across the city.Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, and Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, went up with Spanish-language advertising last week. Others, including Mr. Adams and Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller who lost Mr. Espaillat’s initial endorsement, had already released ads in Spanish.The next major Democratic debate, set for Wednesday night, is being co-hosted by Univision 41 Nueva York and the Hispanic Federation, among other sponsors, and may further focus the candidates’ attention on those voters.“When we look back at the winner of this primary, what put them over the top, even with ranked-choice voting, is their ability to connect late with Hispanic voters,” said Bruce Gyory, a veteran Democratic strategist who has closely studied the New York City electorate. “That’s what June is going to be about: Who finds a message that resonates, and who backs it up with resources?”In 2013, the last mayoral primary in New York City without an incumbent in the race, Hispanic voters made up 18 percent of the electorate, according to exit polls, and supported the eventual winner, Mayor Bill de Blasio, making up a vital part of his coalition. Those voters are expected to make up around 20 percent of the electorate again this year, Democratic consultants say, and strategists and lawmakers describe them as motivated by issues including economic opportunity; affordability and support for small businesses; education; public safety; and public health.“We know that Latinos, more than many other groups, were directly impacted in a very negative way” by the pandemic, said Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a New York Democrat who was the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and is supporting Maya D. Wiley in the mayoral race. “So people want to know, what are you going to do to address those inequities that were exposed during Covid-19?”The so-called Latino vote in New York is diverse generationally and geographically, culturally and ideologically. Indeed the political spectrum runs the gamut from young, left-wing Latino New Yorkers typified by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and up-and-coming lawmakers from parts of Queens, to culturally conservative voters across the city who voted for former President Donald J. Trump in surprising numbers last fall.New York City’s immigrant neighborhoods strongly favored President Biden — but virtually every predominantly Latino precinct shifted significantly to the right compared with the 2016 election results, including heavily Dominican neighborhoods in Manhattan and the Bronx, and in Corona, Queens, where there is a large Latino population.But without a front-running Hispanic candidate in the race, the political demographic is considered to be mostly up for grabs.“You have so many candidates running for mayor, and only one is really a Latina,” said the longtime political strategist, Luis A. Miranda Jr. He was referencing Dianne Morales, a left-wing candidate who identifies as Afro-Latina. (Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, is white, though her ex-husband is of Puerto Rican descent and she has referenced the fact that her children are half Puerto Rican.)“You really need validators from our community that are telling you, ‘So-and-so is good for the Latino community, so-and-so is good for the neighborhood you live in,’” Mr. Miranda said. (Neither Mr. Miranda nor his son, the actor and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, has endorsed a candidate in the race.)Mr. Adams may have the most significant institutional support in the field, reflecting his background as a veteran city politician with extensive relationships. He promises to be a “blue-collar” mayor who connects in working-class communities and prioritizes public safety.Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, stars in ads for Mr. Adams and is supporting him, as is Fernando Ferrer, the 2005 Democratic mayoral nominee who built a formidable coalition of Black and Latino voters in his unsuccessful bid.“I saw him in the South Bronx on a street corner where I used to shine shoes,” Mr. Ferrer said of Mr. Adams. “He’s comfortable. And you have to be comfortable with people.”Still, Mr. Adams has not always smoothly navigated his outreach over the years. In 1993, for instance, his remarks criticizing the Puerto Rican-born comptroller candidate, Herman Badillo, for not marrying a Hispanic woman became such a point of controversy that Mr. Badillo highlighted the issue in an advertising campaign.Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate who pledges to be an anti-poverty mayor, has also made a major push for Latino voters.He has been endorsed by a number of prominent younger Latino leaders, from City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, a left-wing Mexican-American who dropped out of the mayoral contest, to Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, who identifies as Afro-Latino. Mr. Yang spent Thursday in the Bronx, home to the city’s largest Latino population, laying out his public safety vision.“We know the Latino base is the one everyone is going after,” said Assemblyman Kenny Burgos, a 26-year-old Hispanic Yang supporter who represents the Bronx. “The youth vote, so to speak, is going to be something heavily in effect here.”Then there is Ms. Garcia, who has risen in some recent polls. Last Saturday afternoon, she was at a lively outdoor food market in the Bronx, greeting voters and discussing the biggest issues she hears from Hispanic New Yorkers.“Where’s the economy, do they feel safe, and are you educating the kids? Those are at the top of mind, and housing affordability, you hear it over and over again,” Ms. Garcia said. “They care about boots on the ground. They care about you showing up.”In a ranked-choice election in which voters may back up to five candidates in order of preference, Ms. Garcia’s surname may help her stand out, Mr. Miranda said..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“The city in which we live, it’s pretty tribal,” he said. “They’ll gravitate to a Spanish name because they’ll believe that person will be Latino.”There is limited public polling available on the mayor’s race overall, much less on Hispanic voters specifically. But a new survey out Wednesday from Fontas Advisors and Core Decision Analytics found Mr. Yang virtually tied with Mr. Adams among Hispanic voters, when including voters who leaned in their directions, with roughly a quarter of those voters undecided. Ms. Morales, a former nonprofit executive, came in third place among Hispanic voters in that poll.Ms. Morales is unlikely to connect with older Latino voters who are leery of calls to defund the police, but she had recently shown promise as a standard-bearer for young, deeply progressive voters from a range of ethnic backgrounds.Dianne Morales, a left-wing candidate who identifies as Afro-Latina, may alienate some older Latino voters because of her calls to defund the police.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times“We might see maybe a little bit of a wild card in this election because young people are so energized by her campaign,” Assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas of Queens said in an interview last week. “She’s been very intentional about bringing young people into the conversation.”Later in the week, internal turmoil from the Morales campaign spilled into public view, and it is not yet clear how a late-stage campaign shake-up nearly three weeks before the primary will affect that standing.Ms. González-Rojas, however, said on Wednesday that she stood by her remarks. She has also said that she had pitched Ms. Morales’s candidacy to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s team.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, is among the most powerful potential endorsers still remaining on the sidelines of the mayoral race. Ms. Velázquez, who has recorded radio ads on behalf of Ms. Wiley, has spoken with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez directly about the contest, encouraging her to meet with Ms. Wiley, she said.Other candidates are also ramping up their Latino engagement. Ms. Wiley released an agenda aimed at Latino communities last week. In his new ad, Mr. Donovan narrates in Spanish, and he visited a major Latino church in Queens this weekend. Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive, has Spanish-language radio ads and the support of, among others, Assemblyman Robert J. Rodriguez of East Harlem. Mr. Stringer, for his part, has long seen opportunities to cement his standing with Latino voters in the final weeks of the race. He lost Mr. Espaillat’s backing, among others, following an accusation that he made unwanted sexual advances during a 2001 campaign, which he has denied.But even lawmakers who retracted their endorsements say that Mr. Stringer remains well known in some of their neighborhoods.He is planning a rally aimed at Latino voters in Washington Heights, where he grew up, on June 12. His stepfather, Carlos Cuevas, is Puerto Rican and narrates a Spanish-language ad for Mr. Stringer, and Mr. Stringer’s extended Puerto Rican family is expected to join him at the rally, his campaign said.Many Latino voters are just starting to take notice of the race, said Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz of Queens, who pulled her endorsement from Mr. Stringer and has not backed anyone else. “They don’t really start talking about the election until like a month out,” she said. “You will see them start paying a lot more attention in the couple weeks leading up to the election itself, unless there’s somebody that completely electrifies them.” More