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      Mayra Flores, a Latina Republican, Sends a Message to Democrats

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      Last week, Mayra Flores, a Republican candidate for Congress who was born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States at the age of 6, flipped a congressional seat in a region of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas that had voted Democrat for 150 years. Flores’s victory came with the usual bluster from the G.O.P. and all the head-scratching from the national media that accompanies rightward voting swings in any nonwhite population. “G.O.P. wins big in Rio Grande Valley district. Does it portend shift of Hispanic voters?” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram asked in a headline. The conservative National Review called Flores’s victory “An Earthquake in South Texas” and said that her win “portends a major shift in the major American political landscape.”Before I get into my own portending, let me offer up a bundle of caveats. This was an extremely low-turnout special election for a vacated congressional seat that will once again be up for grabs this November. The lines of the district will be significantly different in a few months — Flores won over an electorate that Joe Biden won by four points back in 2020. In November, Flores will be in the odd position of being a near-five-month incumbent running in a newly drawn district that, had it existed in 2020, Biden would have won by 15.5 points. This is presumably why Monica Robinson, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (D.C.C.C.), dismissed Flores’s victory as a “rental” seat.So we can and should throw some cold water on the grand claims about what this electoral result means for the future of the Republican Party. Flores’s campaign outraised that of her Democratic opponent Dan Sanchez by a 16-to-1 margin. It also spent more than $1 million on television ads. The imbalance in spending and resources was so extreme that after the results had come in, Sanchez’s campaign manager said in a statement, “The D.C.C.C., D.N.C. and other associated national committees have failed at their single purpose of existence: winning elections.”I think it’s perfectly fair to take Robinson and the D.C.C.C. at their word when they say that they did not think it was worth expending too much effort on a seat that will almost certainly swing back to Democrats at the start of 2023. What seems far more interesting to me is why the G.O.P. put so much effort into securing Flores’s victory. Why did they care?The simple answer is that since the 2020 general election showed surprising gains for the G.O.P. among Latino voters, especially in Florida and the Rio Grande Valley, Republicans have spent a considerable amount of time and money to turn what ultimately might have been an electoral blip into a national reality. They wanted Mayra Flores to win because it’s good for Republicans to show that they can win seats in districts like this one, with an 85 percent Latino population.Chuck Rocha, a political consultant and a former senior adviser for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, told me that even if Flores ultimately only serves for five months, her campaign is “a brilliant marketing strategy by the Republicans.” He believes Flores’s victory will result in a “fund-raising boom” that will allow G.O.P. operatives to go out and solicit funds for other races in places with significant Latino populations. Flores’s victory, then, will allow the G.O.P. to raise money and mobilize public opinion around the narrative that the Latino vote is swinging fast. Any close race with a large Latino population will now seem up for grabs.But a lot of the excitement around Flores has to do with Flores herself. She is a 36-year-old immigrant and a respiratory-care therapist who works with elders. She is married to a Border Patrol agent. In her own words, she is “Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment, and Pro-Law Enforcement.” It’s hard to imagine a more perfect face for the future of the G.O.P. — a working Mexican American woman telling the public that everything the Democrats think and say about the people of South Texas is out of touch and wrong. In one television ad put out by the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, which opens with a photo of Joe Biden smiling at a podium, an unidentified voice speaking in a mild Hispanic accent says, “From up there, he’ll never get us down here. Forty years in office and not one visit to the border. He’s left us behind. That is why Mayra Flores is running for Congress. She’s one of us.”“One of us” is the purest expression of identity politics, and while Republicans have long used this tactic to convince white voters to vote for white candidates, it’s rarely, if ever, been used by the party to endorse a Latina and underscore her connection to her working-class community. (The Flores campaign did not respond to a request for an interview.)Much has been made over the past five years about how the Democratic Party can reach the working class. These conversations, which invoke coal miners and factory workers, are almost invariably concerned with the white working class. What’s almost never discussed is whether the Democrats are losing the nonwhite working class as well.“The Democratic Party has walked away from blue-collar messaging, which is really aligned with the new immigrant community, mainly Latinos, and actually in some states A.A.P.I., because they’re working those jobs,” Rocha said.This has opened the door for politicians like Flores to reimagine what the politics of her community should be. This has a special power within immigrant groups — even those who have been in America for a few generations — because their political allegiances aren’t calcified. According to a January Gallup poll, 52 percent of Latinos identify as independent, which is 10 percent higher than the proportion of independents among the American population as a whole. While this is a crude way to measure voter flexibility, it’s also true that over the past 40 years, both major immigrant groups in America — Latinos and Asian Americans — have swung between the two parties at a rate that far outpaced Black and white Americans.So who does Flores imagine is “us”? Her messaging mostly centered around economic hardship, family and opportunity. In a flier titled “Mayra Flores Will Restore the American Dream,” Flores promises to “stop out-of-control spending to end inflation,” “secure the border” and “expand, not limit, access to health care.” In another, she promises to “get the economy back on track” and “stop inflation in its tracks, and keep more money in your pocket.” And in her acceptance speech last week, Flores said, “The policies that are being placed right now are hurting us. We cannot accept the increase of gas, of food, of medication, we cannot accept that. And we have to state the fact that under President Trump, we did not have this mess in this country.” Her messaging is clear: “Us” refers to the struggling, working-class families who grew up with socially conservative values. “Them” is everyone else.Flores, then, can act almost as a proof of concept for future Republican candidates. Her invocation of Trump might have caught the attention of headline writers, but her campaign only occasionally mentioned the former president and stayed on message about economic factors, family and what she said were the real values of the people of South Texas: border security, religion, affordable health care, well-funded police and the Second Amendment.It’s time for Democrats to ask a very simple question: What, exactly, does their party offer working-class immigrants? Note that here I am not talking about the broad, humanitarian ideal of immigration, wherein a government puts aside its nativist tendencies and welcomes people from around the world. I am talking about the millions of first- and second-generation immigrants who still identify strongly with their country of origin but who have mostly come to the United States seeking economic opportunity. They are largely apolitical or independent voters. They get their news from non-English sources far from the reach of things like this newsletter. Like everyone else in America, they tend to vote based on which party better reflects their self-interest.This is a question I’ve been turning over in my head for the past five or so years, since I noticed that many of the communities I was reporting on — mostly Asian American — did not seem all that concerned with the threat of Donald Trump. This wasn’t a surprise to me. I was not born in this country, grew up in an immigrant household and have spent much of my career reporting on immigrant communities. For many first- and second-generation immigrant families, racism and white supremacy are secondary political concerns. (A Pew poll in 2020 showed that “racial and ethnic inequality” was fourth on the list of Hispanic voter priorities. The economy and health care were at the top of the list. Immigration, for what it’s worth, was eighth, below Supreme Court appointments and climate change.)Most immigrant families, mine included, assume that racism will be a part of their lives. But because they still believe in American economic opportunity, economic and health care issues will always be more of a political priority than the squishier and sometimes more abstract competition between which party they think will be more racist than the other. This is especially true of working-class immigrants, many of whom come from the socially conservative, religious backgrounds that Flores defines as “us.”If Flores’s low-turnout, likely temporary victory “portends” anything, it’s that immigrant identity politics rooted in economic talk can work for the right just as well as it has worked in the past for the left. What many in these communities want is a voice that will talk about economic hardships while also invoking a type of identity politics that will allow them to feel like they are part of a community.For the past two years I have been writing about how the Democratic Party has taken immigrant votes for granted with the warning that if this continues, a new politics rooted in “us” will arise, paired with the grievance that liberals do not actually care about “our” issues. This is precisely what Flores did. In one of her many interviews after her victory, she said Democrats had taken South Texas “for granted” and that “they feel entitled to our vote.”“I’m their worst nightmare,” Flores said of the Democrats in an interview with Newsmax. “They claim to be for immigrants. I’m an immigrant. They claim to be for women. I’m a woman. They claim to be for people of color. I’m someone of color. Yet I don’t feel the love.”Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.” More

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      Will Kathy Hochul’s Low-Key Primary Come at a Cost? Allies Fear Yes.

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      Charles B. Rangel, the longtime dean of Harlem politics, had a blunt question for two of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s top political aides at a private meeting last month: Where’s the campaign?Mr. Rangel told the campaign officials they were concerned that the governor was unwisely leaving vote-rich Black and Latino neighborhoods unattended. No posters, no palm cards, no subway surrogates or other ground operations typically used to drive voters to the polls for the June 28 primary for governor of New York.“There was absolutely nobody that knew anybody that was doing anything,” Mr. Rangel recalled recently. “There was absolutely no action at all in the district.”Representative Gregory W. Meeks, the head of the Queens Democratic machine, shared similar concerns around the same time. In a call with Ms. Hochul, he urged her to give more attention to communities like his and put together a more diverse political operation that could excite voters.And more recently, three major union leaders backing Ms. Hochul who spoke with The New York Times said they were perplexed that the governor’s team has not asked for help to canvass, rally or perform other political errands her predecessors demanded. One of them said flatly he saw no evidence of campaign activity.By all accounts, Ms. Hochul is headed toward a comfortable primary win. She has cornered nearly every major political endorsement and collected record-breaking donations, while outspending her opponents, Thomas R. Suozzi and Jumaane D. Williams, by millions of dollars on television and digital advertising.The commanding lead has enabled Ms. Hochul’s team to deploy a so-called Rose Garden strategy, eschewing the kind of all-out, on-the-ground campaign used by her challengers in an effort to conserve cash and position a new governor still introducing herself to New Yorkers above the political fray ahead of a grueling general election this fall.Most of the political appearances she has made this spring — in Black churches or marching in parades, for instance — have been official government events or unpublicized appearances. In the last month, her campaign has flagged only five official events for the media.In interviews over the last week, a broad spectrum of elected officials, party leaders and Democratic strategists expressed worry that the governor’s low-key approach may come at the cost of building the kind of old-fashioned political ground game and enthusiasm with bedrock Black, Latino and union voters that a relatively untested candidate from Western New York like Ms. Hochul will need to drive Democratic voters to the polls in November.They fear that the governor’s campaign strategy could cause Democratic turnout in the state’s largest liberal stronghold to falter, leaving Democrats in key congressional and state races vulnerable, if not endangering the party’s hold on the governor’s mansion.A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, will face off against Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi in a Democratic primary on June 28.Adams’s Endorsement: The New York City mayor gave Ms. Hochul a valuable, if belated, endorsement that could help her shore up support among Black and Latino voters.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A Trump prosecutor. An ex-congressman. Bill de Blasio. A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Maloney vs. Nadler: The new congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.“She’s not from New York City, she’s from Buffalo,” Mr. Meeks said in an interview, suggesting that Ms. Hochul needed to “move very vigorously” to expand a team currently led by top advisers from upstate New York, Colorado, Washington, D.C., and North Carolina, by bringing more labor, business and nonwhite voices to the table.“She acknowledged lots of people in her campaign ran statewide but are not necessarily endemic to New York City politics, which is important,” he added. “When you’re running for governor, you’ve got to expand that base. That’s what she is doing.”Representative Gregory Meeks said that Gov. Hochul needed to diversify her campaign team, especially as a candidate with few ties to New York City.Pool photo by Sarah SilbigerAnd although Ms. Hochul seems poised to win the primary, Democratic strategists warned that soft turnout in the primary could hurt her running mate, Antonio Delgado, who is in a tighter contest against Ana María Archila and Diana Reyna, and potentially saddle Ms. Hochul with an adversarial running mate in the fall.“Everyone is scratching their heads. She’s held no rallies and she needs to get out the vote,” said George Arzt, a Democratic strategist who has run campaigns in New York City since the 1980s. “The person who’s in jeopardy is not her, but her running mate.”Tyquana Henderson-Rivers, a senior adviser to Ms. Hochul with deep ties among New York City Democrats, defended the governor’s approach in an interview, acknowledging that the campaign was taking a “slower build” approach than some elected officials might be used to. But it has its reasons.This is the first year New York’s primary for governor is occurring in June, rather than September, extending the campaign season between the primary and the general election. The pandemic still makes certain in-person campaign tactics difficult. And Ms. Hochul’s team is consciously conserving resources to prepare for a greater general election threat than her Democratic predecessors have faced in years.“We hear you,” Ms. Henderson-Rivers said, when asked about fellow Democrats raising concerns to the campaign, before adding that Ms. Hochul’s operation would be humming when it matters. “It will not be cold, I assure you. We’re revving.”To be certain, there are signs that the governor’s campaign is ramping up.Ms. Hochul attended a breakfast hosted by Mr. Meeks in southeast Queens with more than 200 clergy and civic leaders in mid-June. Mr. Rangel acknowledged that the Hochul campaign had increased its presence in Harlem, where dozens of volunteers and paid staff, including from the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, fanned out this past weekend to knock on doors and hand out literature.A campaign spokesman, Jerrel Harvey, said that Ms. Hochul’s paid media and field program “will reach voters where they are, and benefit all Democrats now and in November.”The campaign says it has spent more than $13 million on TV and radio airwaves so far, another $1 million-plus on digital advertising, and the state party has targeted more than 400,000 households with traditional mail, many of them African American, Latino and Asian — figures far higher than any of her rivals.“If I were the Democrats, I’d be worried about a lot of things in November,” said Jason Ortiz, a veteran political operative with close ties to the hotels and casino union. “But Kathy Hochul being governor would not be one.”And yet, second-guessing about Ms. Hochul’s approach has been relatively common. Some supporters of the governor are quietly making comparisons to her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, a ruthless political tactician who deployed labor unions, political surrogates and wielded the governor’s office to run up big margins.Mr. Cuomo made particular use of organized labor, using them as de facto political staff, deploying union members to shadow his opponents, knock on doors and create a sense of momentum around his campaign.Ms. Hochul, with notable exceptions, has so far largely limited her requests to donating money. Some of the unions, who requested anonymity to avoid alienating Ms. Hochul, said they planned to start get-out-the-vote efforts of their own volition.“It’s an unusual approach for a governor, but I think it’s a strategic one that may prove to be better in the city than one would expect,” said Henry Garrido, executive director of the city’s largest public union, District Council 37. “Normally what would happen, we have a model where you try to get as much momentum through physical presence, showing up everywhere, rallying and speaking.”Instead, Mr. Garrido said, the governor had enlisted his help in quieter events in Latino communities in Inwood and the Bronx. He predicted they would work in her favor.Unlike Mr. Cuomo, Ms. Hochul has tended to shun the political spotlight for many more overtly political events, like a Monday stop in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of Borough Park, electing not to publicly announce them beforehand.“She’s walked the streets with me,” said Representative Adriano Espaillat, who represents Mr. Rangel’s old district. Mr. Espaillat has tweeted about the events, but he said Ms. Hochul’s decision not to broadly publicize them was her prerogative: “They do what they think is best.”From left to right, Governor Hochul; Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney; and Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado at the Puerto Rican Day Parade in June.Porter Binks/EPA, via ShutterstockIn central Brooklyn, home to another large block of Black voters whose votes help power winning Democratic coalitions, Ms. Hochul appears to still have work to do to win over two powerful leaders who could help galvanize votes: Letitia James, the popular New York attorney general who briefly ran against her, and Representative Hakeem Jeffries.Mr. Jeffries has formally endorsed Ms. Hochul (Ms. James has not), but he has yet to campaign with her and has told associates he is disappointed Ms. Hochul did not speak out against a court-imposed congressional redistricting plan that wreaked havoc on some communities of color and the state’s delegation to Washington.Asked if he thought Ms. Hochul was doing enough in communities of color in New York City, Mr. Jeffries said he had no comment. Ms. James’s campaign also declined to comment when asked if she expected to make an endorsement in the race.Democratic officials and campaign strategists in Latino strongholds in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx have shared their own concerns.Luis A. Miranda Jr., a founding partner of the MirRam Group, a political consulting firm that is working on Ms. James’s re-election campaign, said he emerged from a recent dinner with Ms. Hochul impressed with both the governor and a new “Nueva York” initiative by State Democratic Party leaders dedicated to turning out Latinos. But he said the governor and her team had more to do to persuade Latino voters and leaders, some of whom have cast doubt on Mr. Delgado’s claim to Afro-Latino roots.“Where she has to do the work is not exclusively with her campaign, it’s with the Democratic Party that should be serving her and her ticket,” he said. “Everyone thinks that if they hire three people and have a slogan, they are reaching to the community. It’s window dressing.”For his part, Mr. Meeks said he was confident Ms. Hochul understood the gravity of correcting course, and would generate a strong showing in his part of Queens. But given the stakes for the party, he said “of course there can be improvement.”“It’s essential,” he said, summoning memories of Republican Gov. George E. Pataki’s 1994 victory. “The one time that we ended up with a Republican governor, I remember that very vividly because it was a low turnout, particularly in the African American community in the City of New York.” More

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      Hochul’s Lt. Governor Pick Says He Is Afro-Latino. Some Latinos Object.

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      The three major Democrats running to become New York’s second-in-command have Latino roots, but Antonio Delgado’s claim to the heritage is being challenged.In New York’s Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, one goal had unified two outsider candidates, Diana Reyna and Ana Maria Archila: vying to be the first Latino elected to statewide office.Achieving that objective has now gotten more complicated.This month, Gov. Kathy Hochul named Representative Antonio Delgado as her new lieutenant governor and running mate, replacing Brian Benjamin, who resigned in April after being indicted on federal bribery charges.In announcing the choice, Ms. Hochul heralded Mr. Delgado’s Afro-Latino ethnicity, and noted his membership in both the Black and Hispanic congressional caucuses.Prominent Latino Democrats, who lobbied Ms. Hochul on the decision and have long pushed for greater representation in state government, were quick to celebrate an appointment that, once it becomes official, will make Mr. Delgado the first Latino to hold statewide office in New York.But as the congratulatory statements began to circulate, so did questions about Mr. Delgado’s background, putting a spotlight on issues of ethnicity, self-identity and representation in advance of the June 28 primary.Asked about his Afro-Latino heritage at the news conference where he was introduced as Ms. Hochul’s choice for lieutenant governor, Mr. Delgado gave a winding answer. He said people had surmised that he was Afro-Latino because of his name, or perhaps because he briefly lived in Puerto Rico, where he played semipro basketball. He then seemed to suggest that his Latino heritage stemmed from his family’s ties to Cape Verde, a small island nation off the west coast of Africa that was once a Portuguese colony.The answer mystified some of his supporters, and created an opening for his opponents to scrutinize his claims of being Latino.Luis A. Miranda Jr., a founding partner of the MirRam Group, a political consulting firm, posted celebratory comments on Twitter about Mr. Delgado’s appointment when it was announced. But after hearing his remarks at the news conference, Mr. Miranda said he was “puzzled by his explanation on ethnicity.”Mr. Delgado, in an interview with The New York Times, described the complexity of how he views his ethnicity. He said his mother grew up at a time when she felt safe identifying only as Black or white, but eventually embraced the Mexican, Colombian and Venezuelan ancestry of her father, whom she did not know.“She became someone who identifies as a proud Black woman with Latino roots,” Mr. Delgado said in the interview. “And as I’ve tried to orient myself and my sense of identity through her, that is the entry point.”Asked how he identified himself, Mr. Delgado said: “I am a Black American man with Cape Verdean roots and Latino roots. When it pertains to my Latino roots, that comes from my mom’s side, whose own story around her identity is multifaceted and complex.”When Ms. Hochul picked Mr. Benjamin for the job, her choice was influenced by a desire to have her running mate be a person of color from the New York City area as a way to help broaden her appeal beyond her base as a white politician from western New York.Mr. Delgado offered many of the same qualities, giving the governor a running mate with name recognition and the potential to appeal to downstate Black and Latino voters as she seeks a full term this year.Ms. Archila, who has been endorsed by Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the House, and Ms. Reyna said they understood why Ms. Hochul would want a Latino running mate. Latinos are the second-largest ethnic group in the state and make up 19 percent of the population. But the two women questioned Mr. Delgado’s rationale for describing himself as Latino and cast Ms. Hochul’s decision as a political ploy.“Gov. Hochul is being extremely opportunistic and simplistic,” said Ms. Archila, whose running mate is Jumaane Williams, New York City’s public advocate. “I think he should say more than, I have an ancestor who once was born in Colombia.”In selecting Mr. Delgado, Gov. Kathy Hochul, right, chose a running mate of color who may appeal to downstate voters who are not part of her natural base.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesMs. Reyna, whose running mate is Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, said at a recent campaign event that a “last name does not make you Latino.” The first statewide Latino official should be “authentic,” have “lived experience” and a record of helping Latino communities, she told Encuentro New York, a Latino advocacy group.“She tells us that her lieutenant governor is a member of the Latino community,” Ms. Reyna said of the governor. “This is not about identity politics. This is about being truthful.”Ms. Hochul and her campaign have said little about the questions surrounding Mr. Delgado’s ethnicity. They referred to him as Afro-Latino in the third line of a news release announcing his appointment; an email sent out the next day about a fund-raiser did not mention his ethnicity.“He identifies as Afro-Latino,” Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for Ms. Hochul’s campaign, said.The focus on Mr. Delgado’s ethnicity adds a new wrinkle to the primary for lieutenant governor, which was upended after the resignation of Mr. Benjamin, the presumptive favorite. For weeks, it appeared that he would remain on the primary ballot despite the criminal charges, but state lawmakers ultimately passed a bill allowing him to remove himself.It was then that Ms. Hochul chose Mr. Delgado to succeed Mr. Benjamin.Camille Rivera, a Democratic political strategist who identifies as Afro-Latina, said Ms. Hochul had missed an opportunity to energize an important voting bloc that could help decide the general election. Among the issues Latino leaders say they want state government to address are affordable housing, child care and inequalities in health care.“You have no statewide Latino representation, right?” Ms. Rivera said. “Here was an opportunity to actually lift up Latinos in a real way.”There has been little scrutiny of Mr. Delgado’s Latino heritage. Several news articles over the years have identified him incorrectly as Puerto Rican. Some articles from 2018, when he defeated John J. Faso, the Republican incumbent, to claim the House seat representing the Hudson Valley and Catskills regions, referred to him as Black.Asked whether he had ever corrected the record about being Puerto Rican before the news conference where he was introduced as lieutenant governor, Mr. Delgado said in a statement that he was “raised as a blend of heritages,” including “Latino roots.”“That’s the background I grew up with and how I identify,” he said in the statement. “My mom’s maiden name is Gomez and she grew up identifying as having Latina roots.”Racism and colorism may also play a role in how Mr. Delgado’s description of being Afro-Latino is being received, said Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, who identifies as Afro-Latino.“I find it curious that those of us with Black skin often have our Latino identity questioned,” said Mr. Torres, who supports Mr. Delgado. “As an Afro-Latino, I have been told repeatedly that I do not look Latino, whatever that means, and therefore, I must be less authentically Latino than those with lighter skin.”Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores, an associate professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, said she understood why some Latinos were upset about the appointment. Being Afro-Latino in the United States, she said, involves a complicated mix of race, language and culture.“Experience informs what you see, how you perceive things, how you bring in issues that might go unseen or unrecognized,” Professor Dinzey-Flores said. Choosing someone from an Afro-Latino background so that constituency is represented in government, she added, should be about “authentically” capturing that experience and not “checking a box.”Melissa Mark-Viverito, a former New York City Council speaker who was born and raised in Puerto Rico, concurred, saying that Mr. Delgado’s claim of Latino heritage “raises the question and the concern of people loosely taking on certain identities and not being completely honest.”“That concerns me because as someone who fully embraces the importance of representation, we have two qualified Latinas running and a chance to make history,” Ms. Mark-Viverito said, referring to Ms. Reyna and Ms. Archila. “Yet it feels like we are being duped. It’s all very messy.”Days after Ms. Hochul named him as Mr. Benjamin’s successor, Mr. Delgado gave a 15-minute speech at the Harlem headquarters of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Mr. Sharpton said he was surprised that Mr. Delgado did not address the confusion about his Afro-Latino identity.“I think it’s something he can’t ignore,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview after Mr. Delgado spoke that day.Instead, Mr. Delgado reminisced about growing up in a Black Baptist church and drew hearty amens and nods of approval from the mostly Black crowd. He talked about why he pursued a career as a rapper after graduating from Harvard Law School, an issue opponents tried to use against him when he first ran for Congress.“I know the power of the culture,” Mr. Delgado said. “I am the culture.” More

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      While Democrats Debate ‘Latinx,’ Latinos Head to the G.O.P.

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      Democrats working to save their slim majority in the House in November’s elections have been sounding alarm bells lately over research showing that Republican attacks on culture-war issues are working, particularly with center-left, Hispanic and independent voters. Hispanic voters, many of us alienated by progressive labels and mottos like “Latinx” and “defund the police,” have been drifting rightward as Donald Trump marginally increased the G.O.P. Hispanic vote share in 2016 and again in 2020 — a phenomenon, it should be noted, that goes beyond Mr. Trump or any individual campaign.Democrats now understand that they are losing support among Hispanics on culture as well as pocketbook issues, leaving little in the message arsenal for the party’s candidates to use to stanch what appears to be a long-term bleed.The Democrats’ problems with Hispanics are especially glaring when you consider that Republicans are not exactly flawless when it comes to appealing to these voters. Both parties have committed a mind-boggling form of political malpractice for years: They have consistently failed to understand what motivates Hispanic voters, a crucial and growing part of the electorate.As the growth of the Hispanic eligible electorate continues to outpace other new eligible voting populations, the caricatures and stereotypes of “Hispanic issues” are proving further and further removed from the experience of most Hispanics. Yet, for all the hype and spin about Republican gains with Hispanic voters, the rightward shift of these voters is happening despite Republicans’ best efforts, not because of them.In the eyes of some on the American right, Hispanics are hyper-religious Catholics or evangelicals, entrepreneurial, anti-communist, social conservatives reminiscent of the ethnic white voters of yesteryear. To some on the left, we’re seen as angry, racially oppressed workers of the cultural vanguard who want to upend capitalism while demanding open borders. While none of these caricatures are accurate, in them there are enough grains of truth to lull self-righteous partisans on both sides into believing that they may be on the winning side of the emerging ethnically pluralistic American majority.In our current era of negative partisanship, voters are as often motivated to oppose the party they dislike or view as extreme as they are to support the party with which they align. Latinos, of course, are no different, and it is at the cultural extremes where Democrats face the greatest threat to losing what they have long viewed as the foundational base of their long-term majority prospects. As “culture” grows as a proxy for “race,” the electoral math for Democrats will most likely get bleaker as political campaigns continue as referendums on “critical race theory” and “defunding the police.” It will be worse still if Hispanics increasingly do not view themselves as an aggrieved racial minority.This understanding will help determine which party controls Congress and the White House, beginning with the 2022 midterms. Under newly drawn district lines, four of the most competitive House seats will have Hispanic populations of at least 38 percent and are in California, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. Additionally, Hispanic voters will be essential components of Senate and other statewide contests in Arizona and Nevada. The Latino voters in these states and districts are important for both parties. As the Democratic Party drifts away from its working-class roots and emphasizes cultural issues, Republicans are well positioned to pick up these politically untethered voters and with them the reins of power.The recent debate over the term “Latinx” symbolizes the cultural alienation of institutions far removed from the realities of life for an overwhelming number of working-class Hispanics. “Latinx” was created as a gender-neutral alternative term in Spanish, a gendered language, that refers to males as “Latino” and females as “Latina’.”Commonly used by media, political and academic elites as a sign of gender inclusivity, it is virtually nonexistent in the communities it refers to. In 2020 Pew Research revealed that only 3 percent of Latinos use the term, while 9 percent of white liberals think it is the most appropriate term to use. In fact, only 14 percent of Latinos with just a high school degree or less had even heard of it.This was not a sign of intolerance but rather was emblematic of one class with the luxury of being consumed with such matters trying to impose their values on working-class families trying to keep up with paying the rent on Friday. Members of the Democratic Party don’t just live in a distinct cultural bubble removed from the realities of their blue-collar counterparts, they are so removed from the rapidly growing Hispanic working class that many of them are now literally speaking a different language.The growing cultural divide in America, in which Hispanics appear to be increasingly turned off by progressive mottos and movements, is linked to the education divide in America between college-educated and noncollege-educated voters of all ethnicities. According to Pew Research, Republicans increasingly dominate in party affiliation among white noncollege voters, who make up 57 percent of all G.O.P. voters. This in a country where 64 percent of voters do not have a college degree.The Democratic Party is losing its brand among white, working-class voters and Hispanics. This is especially pronounced among Hispanic men and Hispanic noncollege-educated voters, who are trending more Republican, just as their white noncollege-educated peers are. Latinos are increasingly voting similarly to noncollege whites, perhaps because they don’t view themselves all that differently from them. Pew Research studies on Hispanic identity have shown that fully half of the country’s Hispanics view themselves as “a typical American”; fewer responded as identifying as “very different from a typical American.”For all the discussion about diversity within the Latino community, and the now-trite adage that the community is not ‘‘monolithic,’’ in fact what unites most Hispanics is that they are an important share of the blue-collar noncollege-educated work force, and their presence in the labor force is only growing. The “essential workers” of the pandemic are disproportionately Black and Latino, and as a decidedly younger demographic, Hispanic workers are filling the roles of manufacturing, agricultural and construction trades in states with large Hispanic populations.Democrats have increasingly become a party shaped by and reliant upon white voters with college degrees. Compared with 40.1 percent of white adults age 25 and older, only 18.8 percent of Latino adults in this age group have a bachelor’s degree. Latinos are, and increasingly will be, a key part of the blue-collar work force of the future and their politics are reflecting that.From 71 percent support for President Barack Obama in 2012 to 66 percent for Hillary Clinton and 59 percent for Joe Biden in 2020, Democrats find themselves slowly but measurably losing hold of Latinos, the fastest-growing segment of the electorate. As Latino voters grow in number in key battleground states, they are increasingly rejecting the minority construct promulgated by the media, academia and Democratic politicians and consultants.The party that is able to express the values of a multiethnic working class will be the majority party for the next generation. As we continue to watch the country’s culture war increasingly divided by education levels, it is quite likely that Latino voters will continue to trend, even if marginally, into the ranks of Republican voters. The country stands on the precipice of a significant political shift. As President Ronald Reagan once quipped, quoting a Republican sheriff nominee, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”Mike Madrid is an expert in Latino voting trends, was a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, where he taught “Race, Class and Partisanship,” and is on the board of directors of the League of Minority Voters.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why Republicans in Nevada Are Targeting Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s Seat

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      Seizing on signs that suggest Democrats are losing support among Hispanic voters nationwide, Republicans are targeting Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s seat.When Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and her allies unveiled their first paid ads of the 2022 election cycle, the Nevada Democrat’s intended audience was clear: the state’s quarter-of-a-million Latino voters, a critical swing vote.Majority Forward, the nonprofit arm of the Senate Democratic super PAC, has a Spanish-language ad called “Siga Protegiendo” — “Keep Protecting” — airing on Telemundo in Las Vegas. It hails Cortez Masto for her work as Nevada attorney general and in the Senate to “fight sex trafficking rings” and “protect our children.”Another ad, titled “Led the Fight,” shows Cortez Masto speaking with Gladis Blanco, a Las Vegas hotel worker.“When Covid first hit, there was a lot to worry about,” Blanco says as she wheels a cart of clean towels down a hallway. “My first priority was keeping my family safe, and I was very worried about making a living.”“In times like that,” she added, “you want someone looking out for you. That’s what Catherine Cortez Masto did.”It’s hardly the first time Nevada Democrats have made the Latino community a priority. In many ways, the state’s Latino voters are the backbone of the political machine built by Harry Reid, the Nevada senator and former majority leader who died in December. Nevada’s economy is powered by tourism, and the state’s powerful service-sector unions are closely intertwined with Latino politics.Allies of Cortez Masto, the first Latina to serve in the U.S. Senate, also insist that it’s not usual to communicate this early in an election cycle with Latino voters. Their experience, they say, shows the importance of making persuasive arguments to the Hispanic community throughout a campaign — and not just toward the end.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.“Nevada’s a state where you need a bilingual strategy,” said Arturo Vargas, the chief executive of the NALEO Educational Fund, a national civic engagement organization. He noted that service-industry workers had suffered heavily during the Great Recession, and again during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when Las Vegas casinos were forced to shut down their operations. He said it made sense for Democrats to speak to their economic concerns.But Republicans now sense an opportunity to peel away many of those votes, and in ways that could have national political reverberations. Some data in the latest Wall Street Journal poll suggest why. According to the poll, Republicans enjoy a 9-point advantage over Democrats in the so-called congressional generic ballot among Latino voters — meaning that, by a 9 percentage-point margin, respondents said they would prefer to elect a Republican to Congress.There are reasons to be skeptical of these specific numbers: The poll sampled only 165 Latino voters, and the margin of error was plus or minus 7.6 percentage points. And Latino voters are hardly a monolith — the anti-socialism messages that have appealed to Cuban Americans in Florida differ widely from the jobs and health care-themed proposals that are effective with Mexican Americans elsewhere.Plenty of other data suggests Democrats ought to be concerned, however. John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster who helped to conduct The Journal’s poll and a previous one in December, has called Hispanics “a swing vote that we’re going to have to fight for.”Last year, a study by the Democratically-aligned firm Equis Labs found that Democrats had lost support among key Latino communities during the 2020 election. In 2020, exit-poll data showed that Donald Trump had made gains among Latino voters in Nevada specifically, even as he lost the state in that year’s presidential election. And more recently, our colleague, Jennifer Medina, reported that the shift toward Republicans among Latino voters in South Texas has continued.“It’s not in question whether the Democrats are going to get a majority of the Hispanic vote in 2022 and 2024,” said Fernand R. Amandi, a managing partner of the Miami-based polling firm Bendixen and Amandi. “The problem for Democrats is they keep leaking oil against Republicans, and that is a trend that I think has been borne out over the last five years.”Republican challenger seeks Latino voteAdam Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general whose campaign has the backing of both Donald Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, launched “Latinos for Laxalt” in an effort to appeal to Hispanic voters.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThe bigger problem for Cortez Masto may be the low approval ratings of President Biden, which are dragging Democrats down with voters in general.Public polls of the Senate race put her ahead of her likely opponent, Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general and the scion of a Nevada political dynasty. But even in one January survey, showing Cortez Masto up 9 points over Laxalt in a head-to-head matchup, registered voters said they disapproved of Biden’s performance, 52 percent to 41 percent.Last week, the Laxalt campaign — which has the backing of both Trump and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader — launched “Latinos for Laxalt” in an effort to appeal to Hispanic voters. Cortez Masto’s allies have made sure to use Spanish-language criticism by Latinos against Laxalt — what they say is just smart, hard-nosed campaigning.The Democratic Party in Nevada is also suffering from an unusual schism. In effect, the party has split in two between a group aligned with former allies of Reid, the late senator, and a smaller faction led by allies of Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont progressive.The state’s top Democrats — including Cortez Masto, Senator Jacky Rosen and Gov. Steve Sisolak — are all working through a new entity called Nevada Democratic Victory, which is coordinating field operations and other statewide campaign spending with the Democratic National Committee in Washington.It’s not completely clear what role the official Nevada State Democratic Party will play in the 2022 midterms. That group, which is led by Judith Whitmer, a Sanders ally, announced it had just half a million dollars on hand at the outset of the campaign season — money that it, nonetheless, said would be used to “mount a huge field campaign.” And while Cortez Masto’s allies insist that everything is running smoothly and that any tensions between the two groups have been ironed out, several also confess to having little idea of what the state party is doing.The Cortez Masto campaign says it is taking no community in the state for granted, and is simply continuing the senator’s longstanding efforts to engage with an important constituency that was hit hard by the economic disruptions of the last few years.“While Senator Cortez Masto continues to build on her strong record of fighting for the Latino community in Nevada, Adam Laxalt continues to show he can’t be trusted,” Josh Marcus-Blank, a spokesman for the Cortez Masto campaign, said in a statement.Vargas, the head of the NALEO Educational Fund, said that mobilizing Latino voters, especially younger voters, will be a critical factor in November. His group has projected that turnout among Latinos will grow by 5.8 percent in Nevada during the 2022 midterms, but he declined to speculate as to which party might benefit.“In the past, we’ve seen Latino voters express greater support for some candidates at the national level, but then it plummeted with other candidates,” he said. “The most recent election did suggest that, but it takes more than one election to determine a trend.”What to read President Biden said the United States would strip Russia of normal trade relations, joining the European Union and other allies in doing so, Ana Swanson reports. Keep up with our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.A well-timed congressional endorsement by Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina created some distance from Donald Trump, even as she was embracing him at the same time. Jonathan Weisman reports.The Democratic National Committee is expected to work on the sequence of presidential primary states. Astead W. Herndon reports.viewfinderJudge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, met with Senator Cory Booker at his office in Washington on Tuesday.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesLayers of historyOn Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Michael A. McCoy captured the photo above on Tuesday, as Senator Cory Booker met with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, in his office. Here’s what McCoy told us about capturing that moment:I was amazed by his book collection (and his Star Wars collection). One book was called Picturing Frederick Douglass, who was the most photographed person in the 19th century. I moved to the right side of Booker’s office, and once I was there, I saw how Jackson and Booker were speaking next to that photograph of Frederick Douglass. There were so many layers on top of layers in that photo. If it weren’t for Frederick Douglass, there would be no Cory Booker, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Mike McCoy, or anyone else of color who works in politics. My body, my soul — that picture just caught me.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you on Monday.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Some Texas Hispanics Drawn to Republicans Share Immigration Grievances

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      Former President Donald J. Trump’s brand of populism has been widely viewed as an appeal to white voters. But similar grievances have resonated in the Rio Grande Valley in a profound way.BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Mayra Flores, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, has done much of her campaigning in South Texas in Spanish. She has heard one phrase repeatedly from voters as she and other candidates try to become the first Republicans to represent the Rio Grande Valley in Congress.¿Y nosotros?And what about us?“I hear every day that they’re tired — they feel that there is so much attention and help being given to the immigrants,” Ms. Flores said. “The attention’s on all these illegal immigrants, and not on them.”Grievance politics, it turns out, translates.Donald J. Trump’s brand of populism has been widely viewed as an appeal to white voters: Republicans around the country continue to exploit the fear that the left is attacking religious values and wants to replace traditional white American culture with nonwhite multiculturalism. But similar grievances have resonated in the Rio Grande Valley in a profound way, driving the Republican Party’s successes in a Democratic stronghold where Hispanics make up more than 90 percent of the population.The difference is in the type of culture believed to be under assault. Democrats are destroying a Latino culture built around God, family and patriotism, dozens of Hispanic voters and candidates in South Texas said in interviews. The Trump-era anti-immigrant rhetoric of being tough on the border and building the wall has not repelled these voters from the Republican Party or struck them as anti-Hispanic bigotry. Instead, it has drawn them in.“Our parents came in a certain way — they came in and worked, they became citizens and didn’t ask for anything,” said Ramiro Gonzalez Jr., a 48-year-old rancher from Raymondville, on the northern edge of the Rio Grande Valley. “We were raised hard-core Democrats, but today Democrats want to give everything away.”Ramiro Gonzalez Jr., a rancher in Raymondville, is among Latino conservatives who are reshaping South Texas politics.Jason Garza for The New York TimesFor years, the Republican primary in the Rio Grande Valley was an afterthought, a sleepy election overshadowed by a Democratic primary that grabbed all the attention and candidates. But this year, in the run-up to the Texas primary election on Tuesday, there has been a flurry of Republican rallies, door-knocking and events, including at the Hispanic community center that the Republican National Committee opened in McAllen four months ago.The Republican gains run far deeper than Mr. Trump and, in some ways, predate him, interviews with Hispanic voters and candidates showed. Republican candidates are building on a decades-long history of economic, religious and cultural sentiment that has veered toward conservatives. George W. Bush performed even better in his 2004 re-election campaign in the region than Mr. Trump did in 2020. Many of those who voted for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for president and then flipped for Mr. Trump had previously backed Mr. Bush.For the moment, Republicans in the Rio Grande Valley remain a minority. Last year, a Republican was elected mayor of McAllen, the Valley’s second-most populous city, and a Democratic state lawmaker in Rio Grande City switched to the Republican Party, both of whom earned praise from the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. But Democrats still dominate the vast majority of local elected offices in the Valley.A sign outside the Republican National Committee’s Hispanic community center in McAllen.Jason Garza for The New York Times“It’s still relatively insignificant, when you look at Democrat versus Republican overall,” said Representative Vicente Gonzalez, a South Texas Democrat who narrowly won his 2020 re-election. He is now running in a redrawn neighboring district and is likely to face Ms. Flores as his Republican opponent in November. Though he said he was confident voters would “come home” to Democrats this fall, Mr. Gonzalez criticized the party for not doing more to focus on the region.A Guide to the Texas PrimaryThe 2022 midterm elections begin with the state’s primary on March 1.Governor’s Race: Gov. Greg Abbott’s rightward shift will face a test in November. His likely challenger, Beto O’Rourke, is haunted by his 2020 presidential bid.Attorney General’s Race: Whether Ken Paxton can survive the G.O.P. primary may be the biggest test yet of Donald Trump’s continued power over voters.A Changing Landscape: Issues like abortion and immigration are driving Hispanic voters in Democratic strongholds to switch parties and prompting liberal candidates to shift tactics.A Deepening Divide: Competitive districts are being systemically erased across the country. Texas is an especially extreme example.New Voting Law: Officials have rejected thousands of absentee ballots based on new requirements, an alarming jump ahead of the primary.“So far I see no action,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “I’ve had to rely on myself, not on the national party coming down here to save us, so in that respect, it’s sad.”For decades, conventional wisdom held that the more Hispanic voters showed up to the polls, the more precarious the political future would be for Republicans. But the inverse has lately been reshaping South Texas politics: As tens of thousands of new voters have gone to the polls, Republicans have gained more than Democrats. In Hidalgo County, which includes McAllen, Mr. Trump received nearly twice as many votes in 2020 as he did four years earlier.Mr. Trump’s performance in these border counties was one of the big surprises of 2020, rattling Democrats who had assumed that Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric would alienate Latinos. In this year’s midterm elections, South Texas is the setting for the only competitive House race in the state, and both parties now consider Hispanic voters across the country a potentially decisive swing vote.At a dinner for Ms. Flores’ campaign at Don Chucho Tacos y Tequilas in the border city of Brownsville, her supporters began with a prayer and the pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag. They wore wide-brimmed cowboy hats and red MAGA caps. They applauded when the mariachis took the stage — and when Ms. Flores introduced her husband, an off-duty Border Patrol agent.“We’ve been voting California values, Austin values, but not South Texas values,” Ms. Flores told the crowd. She added, speaking the Spanglish so prevalent in the region, “Spread the chisme. Somos Americanos.” Spread the word. We are Americans.“This,” she continued, “is our country.”“I want to bring God back into politics,” said Luis Cabrera, the pastor of City Church in Harlingen, Texas.Jason Garza for The New York Times‘We feel under attack’Pastor Luis Cabrera, 44, remembers the fear in his parents’ eyes when they fled Nicaragua in 1979, in the midst of the Sandinista revolution.His father, a lawyer for the ousted president, received death threats and after obtaining visas from the American embassy there, the family left nearly all they had behind, flying with $10,000 in cash on a flight to Washington, D.C. Eventually, Mr. Cabrera’s father found work as an immigration paralegal in Houston, and then took the family to the Rio Grande Valley.Now, Mr. Cabrera runs City Church, a small congregation in a former warehouse in the border city of Harlingen. He estimates that his church is 96 percent Hispanic, and 100 percent Republican.“The people coming now seem to be less willing to work and are more dangerous compared to how it used to be,” Mr. Cabrera said. “I’m not saying all of them, but trust me, there’s a lot of people who are crossing this border and they don’t care about this country. They want to just commit crime. They want to just come make money the wrong way. They don’t want the American dream.”The Rio Grande Valley lies at the southeast corner of the U.S.-Mexico border, an amalgam of dozens of small cities and towns across four counties, a mix of recently developed strip malls and centuries-old ranch land. The Stars and Stripes and other flags fly from the back of large pickup trucks and flagpoles installed on front yards. The vast majority of the Valley’s nearly 1.4 million residents speak Spanish and have ties to Mexico. Pockets of deep poverty remain, and residents have long viewed Border Patrol and other law enforcement jobs as a reliable path to the middle class. For all the talk by Republicans of border chaos and of dangerous migrants, crime in McAllen is at a historic low.Mr. Cabrera sells T-shirts at the entrance of his church.Jason Garza for The New York TimesThe gulf between the undocumented Central American migrants crossing the border and the Latino residents of the Valley is deep and wide.Many residents are Mexican Americans who have lived in the region for four or five generations, or proudly proclaim their parents and grandparents came to the United States legally. They know both Border Patrol agents and undocumented Mexican immigrants who have lived and worked in border cities for years. Those who are Republicans say they do not see their views on immigration as hypocritical or anti-Hispanic. Instead, they see themselves as a bulwark for law and order. A few thousand Border Patrol agents live and work in the region, many of them Hispanic, adding to a pro-law enforcement ethos that shows up in churches, schools and local politics.“We’re in a war — a war of ideas,” said Jessica Martinez, 33, a Brownsville stay-at-home mother who said she had never voted until she cast a ballot for Mr. Trump in 2020, after she grew frustrated with the relentless outrage against him from liberals. “That’s how we as Christians see it. We feel under attack.”In Harlingen, Mr. Cabrera turned the entrance of the church into a retail space. He displays and sells T-shirts reading Make America Godly Again and Make America Repent. For years, he said, he avoided speaking about politics from the pulpit. But in the last year he has hosted several Republican leaders at the church, including Mr. Abbott.“I want to bring God back into politics,” Mr. Cabrera said. “And so that’s what I’m doing.”‘I worry about our values’Joe Cadriel, a 57-year-old veteran of the gulf war’s Desert Storm and a retired social worker, has rarely placed campaign advertisements on his front lawn. But he made an exception for Ms. Flores, the Brownsville Republican running for Congress.Mr. Cadriel and his wife, Diana, a retired educator, both voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and then cast their ballots for Mr. Trump four years later, convinced that he would best protect the southern border, a mere 10 miles from their Weslaco home.The couple grew up in the Rio Grande Valley as children of conservative Democrats, and they harbored a proud independent streak. Mr. Cadriel has been infuriated by illegal immigration for as long as he can remember — he said he once left a job because he felt too angry seeing food stamps and other benefits going to children of unauthorized immigrants.“I’m OK with people coming in saying I’m going to do something productive,” Mr. Cadriel said. “But that wasn’t what was happening. You’d have these people claiming they needed food stamps for their children, but their children were babies, so who do you think was benefiting from it? They were just trying to take advantage.”Joe and Diana Cadriel of Weslaco, Texas, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Donald Trump in 2020.Jason Garza for The New York TimesThe Cadriels equate walking away from the Democratic Party with getting an education, not from college courses or books, but from conservative media and scripture. A retired educator and churchgoing Catholic, Ms. Cadriel, 57, slowly began to feel that her family’s traditional values were under attack. She stopped watching Good Morning America and The View in favor of Fox News.“I worry about where we’re headed, about what will and won’t be allowed,” she said. “I worry about our values.”Republican candidates like Ms. Flores hope to capitalize on the Cadriels and other former Democrats.Ms. Flores’ parents worked as migrant farmworkers, moving each year to pick cotton in West Texas. Though her parents were Democrats, Ms. Flores said she was raised with “conservative values” and was drawn to Republicans because of her anti-abortion views. Soon after graduating from South Texas College in 2019, she became involved with the Hidalgo County Republican Party, volunteering as the Hispanic outreach chair while she worked as a respiratory therapist.Ms. Flores’ campaign signs do not mention policy or party, but instead highlight three words: “Dios, familia, patria.” God, family, country. More

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      Progressive Jessica Cisneros Challenges Rep. Cuellar in Texas

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      LAREDO, Texas — Two years ago, a 26-year-old immigration lawyer named Jessica Cisneros came within 3.6 percentage points of pushing out the longtime Democratic congressman here, running aggressively on the progressive vision of the national liberals who had bankrolled her insurgent campaign.This time around, at the ripe age of 28, she’s scorching the already brown earth of South Texas, attacking Representative Henry Cuellar not so much for his conservative policy positions, but for being what she describes as a corrupt politician — rich, out of touch with his poor constituents, and quite possibly a felon.“We’re going after him,” Ms. Cisneros said at a picnic table outside the taqueria next to her campaign headquarters, with the confidence of a seasoned political street fighter. “Everything we’ve been doing has been very intentional.”Texas will kick off the 2022 primary season on Tuesday, launching what promises to be a grueling series of contests that could pull both Democrats and Republicans toward their political extremes, while testing the grips that President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump have over their respective parties.In South Texas, another test is developing over the power of identity politics and whether liberals can answer the fears that conservatives are stoking about “open borders,” “critical race theory” and rising crime. In the primary campaign for Texas’ 28th district, it is Mr. Cuellar’s experience versus Ms. Cisneros’s storytelling: the powerful and connected versus the underdogs, the community, the “pueblo.”There have been many changes here since Ms. Cisneros first challenged Mr. Cuellar, but the most significant may have been the shock for both parties of seeing Hispanic voters lurch toward Mr. Trump in 2020. Zapata County, just south of here, is heavily Latino; Hillary Clinton won it by more than 30 points in 2016, then it went to Mr. Trump by about five points. Ms. Clinton’s 60-point margin in Starr County, which is 96 percent Latino, shriveled to a five-point advantage for Mr. Biden.In response, Ms. Cisneros is running a campaign against the 17-year incumbent that could easily have been engineered by a Republican. She still favors Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, more liberal immigration policies and abortion rights, but those have not been her focus.Instead, she has played up her biography and hit Mr. Cuellar hard on rising prices. She has portrayed him as a Washington insider, greasing his pockets with money from big corporations, and presented herself as embodying the struggling community he left behind.“My medicines cost more, insurance more,” intones an older Latina in one of Ms. Cisneros’s most recent ads, as the woman sweeps the stoop of her modest house and laments that nothing has changed in Laredo. “Now it’s food and gas, but we don’t make more. If you ask me, Henry Cuellar has been in Washington too long.”The mysterious raid last month by the F.B.I. of Mr. Cuellar’s Laredo home and campaign office presented a late, potentially devastating twist that seemed to confirm all that Ms. Cisneros had been saying of the congressman — and she pounced on it.Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a fellow progressive, campaigned recently for congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros in San Antonio.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesJustice Democrats, the progressive insurgent group that has greatly bolstered her campaign, has piled on with a decidedly nonideological advertisement blanketing South Texas that accuses Mr. Cuellar of hitching rides on donors’ private jets, fixing his BMW with campaign cash and drawing that raid by the F.B.I.Progressives have been on a losing streak of late. In August, a hero of the left, Nina Turner, lost a special election in Cleveland to a candidate backed by establishment Democrats. Representative Marie Newman of Illinois, who in 2020 defeated one of the last House Democrats who opposed abortion, is under an ethics investigation, accused of enticing a primary rival out of the race two years ago with a promised job in her congressional office. Democratic leaders have struggled to distance themselves from the sloganeering of “Defund the police,” while Republicans have demonized progressive views on race and gender.A Guide to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Like Ms. Cisneros, liberal organizations are trying to adjust.“We are definitely aware of the Trump swing,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman and strategist for Justice Democrats, which helped Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts defeat veteran Democratic incumbents over the past four years.Mr. Cuellar and his supporters have greeted the onslaught with disbelief. The veteran Democrat may be the last in the House who opposes abortion, and he has taken a tougher line on immigration, border security and law enforcement than many of his colleagues. But that is not what the campaign seems to be about.“They really don’t talk much about what they want to do, except in general terms,” Mr. Cuellar said. Instead, he said, “it’s attack, attack, attack, attack, attack, attack.”He said in January in a video statement on Twitter that the ongoing investigation — which appears linked to a broader inquiry into the political influence of Azerbaijan — will show “no wrongdoing on my part.”Supporters of Ms. Cisneros — and some Democratic thinkers — see in her shift a model for the party in the Trump era of personal politics. Republicans, and to some extent Mr. Cuellar, have created a frightening narrative that feels more urgent than any policy debates in Washington. That story contends that decent, hard-working people are playing by the rules, but strangers are pounding at the door, and neighbors are grabbing all they can from the government.Ian Haney López, a public law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied the Hispanic shift in South Texas, said Ms. Cisneros is using identity to try to galvanize support without alienating the white voters who remain the majority nationwide — though not in the 28th district of Texas.Since the rise of Trumpism, with its appeals to white grievance and fears, he said, Democrats have taken two approaches, both of which have failed. The progressive wing has called out Mr. Trump and his supporters as racist, and urged voters to band together to fight white racism.“That identity story casts the majority of Democratic voters as part of the problem,” he said. In addition, 2020 proved that tactic was also not helpful to the Democratic cause with people of color, especially Latinos. “You’re not going to get them to sign on to a story that says you’re on the margins, you’re widely hated, and your children’s lives will be truncated by racism.”Jessica Cisneros hands out campaign flyers in Laredo, Texas. She is supported by the same progressive group that helped Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts defeat veteran Democratic incumbents.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesMore centrist Democrats, recognizing the perils of that approach, have eschewed identity politics altogether and stuck with dry policy arguments — a strategy Mr. Lopez called “nonsense on stilts.”In Ms. Cisneros’s campaign, he sees an identity-first approach, in which she casually toggles between English and Spanish, speaks of identifying with South Texas and its struggles, contrasts that to the outsiders in Washington, then pivots to issues like health care and reproductive rights.After the Trump shake-up, the region could be ready for a new approach, said Cecilia Ballí, an anthropologist and researcher at the University of Houston who did extensive interviews in South Texas after Mr. Trump’s 2020 gains. For decades, the region has been run by insular political families like Mr. Cuellar’s. His brother is the sheriff of Laredo’s Webb County; his sister is a former municipal judge and tax collector there.Ms. Ballí said that with no real competition between the parties, Democrats have won loyalty with rallies and free food, but no emphasis on issues or retail politics. Mr. Trump’s brand of personality-driven, outsider bombast broke through to many disillusioned Hispanic voters.Ms. Cisneros agreed: “They’ve been voting Democrat for such a long time, and obviously, the poverty rate hasn’t gone down, the uninsurance rate hasn’t gone down. People still have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet.” she said. Add the pandemic and a shutdown of border crossings that crippled Laredo commerce, “and I think that just led to the perfect storm.”Mr. Cuellar has weapons of his own: an unrivaled network of backers in the political establishment and a seat on the House Appropriations Committee, from which he has plied the sprawling district with federal largess, from $45,520,000 in transportation projects for Atascosa County in the district’s north to $15,142,000 for cattle health in Zapata County in the south.Then there are the fears that a Cisneros victory March 1 would hand newly confident Republicans the seat. Ms. Cisneros insists that she is the answer to the Republican rise, an outsider voice to give hope to the region’s frustrations. Redistricting changes actually made the 28th slightly more Democratic, with more voters from San Antonio’s Bexar County, a potential boon to Ms. Cisneros’s chances — on Tuesday and in November. The district shifted from 76.9 percent Hispanic to 75.3 percent, but a slight rise in Anglo voters could actually help Ms. Cisneros if those new voters are San Antonio liberals.But Mr. Cuellar beat his Republican challenger handily in 2020, with 58 percent of the vote, while Mr. Biden eked out 51.5 percent. Those Trump-Cuellar voters could move to the Republican House candidate that emerges from the seven-candidate primary.“If Henry loses, then they have won this seat,” Anna Cavazos Ramirez, a former Webb County attorney, said of the Republicans.The negative tone of Ms. Cisneros’s campaign has turned off some voters, who speculated that the raid last month — still unexplained — was somehow the work of her supporters. Pastor Tim Rowley, who ministers at one of Laredo’s largest evangelical congregations, Grace Bible Church, said the campaign had left him saddened.“Whether you’re Democrat or Republican, rather than getting up and fully debating the issues, it just seems to be a smear campaign,” he said, suggesting he would likely vote for Mr. Cuellar because “this has to stop.”Miguel Sanchez, 35, was not so quick to dismiss what he called “that incident,” when F.B.I. agents were seen carrying items from Mr. Cuellar’s Laredo home. Mr. Sanchez had come to a rally at Texas A&M International University for Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat running for Texas governor, but the longtime Cuellar supporter was giving the House primary a lot of thought.“Cisneros, she seems to be a breath of fresh air,” he said, adding, “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a grassroots-type Democrat.” As for the incumbent, Ms. Cisneros’s message has gotten through.“I don’t know,” Mr. Sanchez said, shaking his head. “We don’t need politicians like that in Washington.” More

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      How the Fight Over Abortion Rights Has Changed the Politics of South Texas

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      In the Laredo region, long a Democratic stronghold, that single issue appears to be driving the decision for many voters, the majority of whom are Catholic.LAREDO, Texas — Like the majority of her neighbors in the heavily Latino community of Laredo, Angelica Garza has voted for Democrats for most of her adult life. Her longtime congressman, Henry Cuellar, with his moderate views and opposition to abortion, made it an easy choice, she said.But as up-and-coming Democratic candidates in her patch of South Texas have leaned ever more liberal, Ms. Garza, a dedicated Catholic, cast a ballot for Donald Trump in 2016, primarily because of his anti-abortion views.In choosing Mr. Trump that year and again in 2020, Ms. Garza joined a parade of Latino voters who are changing the political fabric of South Texas. In the Laredo region, where about nine out of 10 residents are Catholic, many registered voters appear to be driven largely by the single issue of abortion.“I’m willing to vote for any candidate that supports life,” said Ms. Garza, 75. “That’s the most important issue for me, even if it means not voting for a Democrat.”With a pivotal primary election just a week away, Ms. Garza is ready to to turn away from Democrats. Pointing at a wall covered in folkloric angel figurines at the art store she owns in Laredo, she explained why: “They are babies, angels, and I don’t think anyone has the right to end their life. We have to support life.”Angelica Garza voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because of his anti-abortion views.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesVoters like Ms. Garza are worrying Democratic leaders, whose once tight grip and influence on the Texas-Mexico border region has loosened in recent electoral cycles. Republicans have claimed significant victories across South Texas, flipping Zapata County, south of Laredo on the bank of the Rio Grande, and a state district in San Antonio. They also made gains in the Rio Grande Valley, where the border counties delivered so many votes for Mr. Trump in 2020 that they helped negate the impact of white voters in urban and suburban areas of the state who voted for Joe Biden.Much is at stake in Laredo, the most populous city of the 28th Congressional District, where Latinos are a majority, and which stretches from the eastern tip of San Antonio and includes a western chunk of the Rio Grande Valley. Since the district was drawn nearly three decades ago, the seat has been held by Democrats. Mr. Cuellar has represented the district since 2005. His moderate and sometimes conservative views — he was the only Congressional Democrat to vote against a U.S. House bill that would have nullified the state’s near-total ban on abortion that went into effect last September — have frequently endeared him to social conservatives and Republicans.But he now finds himself locked in a tight fight against a much more liberal candidate backed by the progressive wing of the party that includes Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Cuellar, whose home was raided last month by the F.B.I. as part of an investigation that neither he nor the government has disclosed, beat his opponent, Jessica Cisneros, by four percentage points in 2020.Should he lose the primary on March 1 to Ms. Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration lawyer who supports abortion rights, the path to flip the House of Representatives could very well run through South Texas, as Republicans have vowed an all-in campaign focused on religious and other conservative values. More