Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Democrats admit they\u2019re losing ground with Latino voters.<\/p>\n
But Latino Democratic leaders and operatives are increasingly worried that time is running out to do anything that would make a significant difference ahead of the 2022 midterms, when the party needs a robust Latino turnout to preserve its slim majorities in Congress.<\/p>\n
For years, those leaders have warned that the party needs to invest earlier in outreach, hire more Latinos for decision-making positions and talk to Latino voters about more issues than just immigration. <\/p>\n
But even after a presidential election marked by former President Donald Trump\u2019s impressive gains with Latinos across the country \u2014 not just in Latino-heavy South Texas and South Florida \u2014 they see a lack of urgency in addressing those issues. Between that and a failure to keep pace with GOP efforts to communicate with Latinos on newer platforms, there\u2019s a creeping fear that the traditional Democratic advantage with Latino voters will continue to erode in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cIntellectually, Democrats know they have a problem,\u201d said Maria Teresa Kumar, founding president and CEO of Voto Latino, a grassroots political organization. \u201cBut I haven\u2019t seen the investment that needs to happen for it to translate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Latinos \u2014 the largest of the nation\u2019s fastest-growing demographic groups \u2014 have long been viewed as solidly blue Democratic voters. While President Joe Biden captured the majority of the Latino vote in 2020, Trump improved his margins<\/a> in 78 of the nation\u2019s 100 majority-Hispanic counties.<\/p>\n Since then, a spate of reports, analyses and polls have made it clear that the party has reason to worry if it doesn\u2019t change its current approach. A recent report by Democratic research firm Equis<\/a> found that a majority of Latinos believe that Democrats take them for granted. It also found that Trump\u2019s policies on the coronavirus pandemic and economy were popular among Latinos and that GOP attacks claiming Democrats embrace socialism have been effective.<\/p>\n Another analysis by Democratic voter data firm Catalist<\/a> found that, while six in 10 Latino voters backed Biden, Trump\u2019s share of the Latino vote increased by 8 percentage points compared to 2016. <\/p>\n Kumar points to Florida \u2014 where Trump saw some of his largest gains with Latinos, both among conservative-leaning Cuban Americans and voters from other Latin American countries, such as Colombia, Venezuela and Nicaragua \u2014 as an example of Democrats having \u201ca deficit in communications and connection.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTrump and the Republican Party never left Florida. They kept cultivating and communicating with the Latino community,\u201d Kumar said. \u201cSure, a lot of it was disinformation and messaging that Biden is a communist and a socialist, but they kept doing it \u2014 and it was effective.\u201d<\/p>\n One Democratic super PAC found that the party\u2019s English-language ad spending dwarfed Spanish-language ads in numerous Latino-heavy House districts that Republicans flipped in 2020. <\/p>\n According to a spreadsheet shared with POLITICO \u2014 assembled out of frustration by the super PAC, which favored more Spanish-language ads \u2014 Democratic groups combined to spend almost $5 million in English-language ads in California\u2019s 39th Congressional District, and not a cent on Spanish-language ads.<\/p>\n In that district, which is more than 30 percent Latino, Democratic incumbent Gil Cisneros lost to now-GOP Rep. Young Kim by just over 4,000 votes.<\/p>\n In the nearby 48th District, which is about 20 percent Latino, Democrats spent just $33,000 in Spanish-language ads, compared to more than $12 million spent in English-language ads. Democratic incumbent Harley Rouda lost narrowly there to Republican Michelle Steel.<\/p>\n \u201cIt should be a wake-up call to Democrats. When there are no people of color at the decision-making level of a campaign, our constituency becomes an afterthought and you underperform because you\u2019re not reaching out to them with the same priority as white suburban \u2018persuadable\u2019 voters,\u201d said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders\u2019 (I-Vt.) presidential campaign. <\/p>\n Latino operatives say part of the problem is that there is still a contingent in the party denying there\u2019s a \u2018Latino problem,\u2019 despite mounting evidence that it\u2019s no longer a certainty that Democrats will receive an overwhelming majority of the Latino vote in elections.<\/p>\n \u201cIs it going to change? Well, the first step is admitting there\u2019s a problem, and there\u2019s a lot of people in my movement and my party that don\u2019t,\u201d Rocha said. \u201cI love Democrats, and I\u2019ve never voted for anybody that wasn\u2019t a Democrat, and I\u2019ll admit there\u2019s a problem\u2026 because that\u2019s the only way to change.\u201d<\/p>\n One reason why Democrats fail to change their game plan with Latinos, Rocha said, is because campaigns don\u2019t hire Latinos for top jobs and keep hiring the same consultants that have lost races in Latino-heavy districts. In many of the 2020 races, all the Spanish-language ads by Democrats were done in the last 30 days before the election, he said, signaling that Latinos were not a priority. The ads also came after many Latinos already had hardened opinions about the candidates, making it too late to persuade voters, he added.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, he said, Republicans saw success in 2020 as they \u201cstarted spending real resources in bilingual communications to a broad target\u201d and connected on Facebook, YouTube and via mail with a \u201cwhole bunch of Latinos who have never heard a compelling argument from Democrats about why they should vote for them.\u201d<\/p>\n Some Latino Democratic operatives noted that the GOP is making a concerted effort to make inroads with Latinos and is already spending money to communicate with Latinos ahead of the 2022 midterms. <\/p>\n \u201cDemocrats are not doing that in the same way. They\u2019re trying to get up to speed, and I think they realize they\u2019re kind of outgunned right now,\u201d said Colin Rogero, partner and creative director for Democratic firm 76 Words, who has worked on many campaigns in Latino-heavy districts. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the biggest challenge we face going in: Our messages are coming in late \u2014 and we\u2019re not going to be able to win that way anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephanie Valencia, co-founder and president of Equis, explained that a large majority of Latinos are getting their news and information now from YouTube, a \u201cplace largely uncontested by progressives.\u201d Democrats, she said, need to work on how they engage with Latinos there and on other platforms, like WhatsApp, which is widely popular among Latin Americans and other immigrant communities in the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cDemocrats really need to think about expanding the way they think about where they are talking to Latino voters, not just what they are talking to them about,\u201d said Valencia, pointing out that 50 percent of eligible Latino voters didn\u2019t participate in the 2020 election. \u201cWhy are those people on the margins, and who is speaking to them?\u201d <\/p>\n There have been some tangible improvements since 2020, particularly with spending and hiring at the party committees. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for example, has been hiring Latinos to senior positions, built a team focused on diversity and changed their process for soliciting vendors to bring in more diverse ones, Latino operatives said. <\/p>\n Still, by ceding ground on issues that defined the party for decades, they said, Democrats are facing an erosion in support. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen we as Democrats allow Republicans like Donald Trump to steal our economic populist message, we should be knocked up around the head,\u201d Rocha said. \u201cWe allow them to have that narrative when we\u2019re talking about whatever social issue of the day is a hot button instead of digging into populist economic issues that say, \u2018We are here to work for you.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Kristian Ramos, campaign manager for Way to Win\u2019s midterm message research project and a Latino outreach specialist, said his concern isn\u2019t that \u201csuddenly Latinos are going to become Republicans,\u201d but, instead, that support for Democrats is \u201csoft.\u201d <\/p>\n