How to Court Hispanics: Show Up
Being anti-Trump isn’t enough. Democrats need to be ready with a plan.
People cast their votes at a polling station in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles, on November 8, 2016.(DAVID MCNEW/GETTY IMAGES) "TU CUENTAS." YOU COUNT. That was the theme of this week's Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute conference in Washington, D.C., and the message could not have been more clear. It was meant to empower the mass of Latino leaders assembled to discuss issues affecting their community. It was a strong statement that Hispanics want to make sure they are all included in the 2020 U.S. Census. And it was a direct telegram to presidential hopefuls that Latinos are a pivotal political force in the 2020 elections, and they expect candidates to show up, pay attention and earn the votes of a group projected to be the single biggest minority voting block (13%) within the American electorate next year.
Just three of the 10 Democratic presidential candidates invited to address the group showed up to make their respective cases to the assembled Latino influencers, a number of whom wondered aloud, with disappointment, why they didn't warrant more attention. And it underscored a problem Democrats had in 2016 and activists fear will repeat next year: taking Hispanic voters for granted and making too-little, too-late efforts to get Latinos registered and to the polls in next year's critical contests.
Cartoons on the 2020 Election
"I think the community is growing to the point where it's not in the interests of any candidate to ignore the (Latino) population anymore," says Marco Davis, president of CHCI, a nonpartisan and nonprofit group. And while "I think there are efforts being made to engage the community by all the political campaigns … more can be done," Davis adds. In recent elections, Latinos typically vote 2 to 1 for Democrats, but that doesn't mean the party can relax, says Clarissa Martinez de Castro, deputy vice president of UnidosUS, the nation's largest Latino advocacy group. Hispanics need to be given a reason to vote for a candidate, and running against an unpopular figure like President Donald Trump isn't enough, she says. "A lot of times, there's this sense that they're taking the vote for granted," Martinez de Castro says. And then, "when it doesn't come out the way a particular candidate may wish, rather than looking at what kind of outreach was done, the tendency is to blame the voters," she adds. "Candidates matter. Their positions matter. And meaningful outreach is non-negotiable." CHCI invited the 10 Democratic nominees who qualified for the debate in Houston. Attending were Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota along with South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. (Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, the only Latino in a field that at its biggest had two dozen announced contenders, was held up by travel complications and had to cancel, Davis says). 2020 Democratic Field Is Likely to Shrink After the Debate At Unidos's conference in San Diego in August, five of the contenders – Castro, Klobuchar, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Kamala Harris of California – spoke. Organizers say they understand candidates' schedules don't always allow them to attend every event they'd like – CHCI's conference, for example, was held in the days before the Houston debate – yet it's clear they are making a calculated decision. The majority of Democratic contenders, after all, managed to make it to a hastily planned gun safety forum in Iowa in August. And Latinos, Davis and others note, largely have the same concerns as the electorate at large: health care, education and providing for their families. Immigration, too, always of importance for Hispanics, has also become a broader issue for all Americans, he says. "The real question is not that there are different or niche issues (for Hispanics), but that folks need to make sure they are speaking to us and listening to us," Davis says. Yet there are peculiarities to the Latino vote that can make it a harder group to motivate, analysts and activists say. First, Latinos themselves are a diverse group, with Central Americans, South Americans, Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans often having different perspectives or interests. And within those groups are added complicators. Cuban Americans have long been a more Republican-voting group – though for younger Cuban Americans, that is far less the case, pollsters say. When many thousands of Puerto Ricans fled the island during the fiscal crisis ahead of the 2016 elections, Democrats hoped they'd get a critical voting bloc.
Democrats took the lessons of 2016 to heart in 2018, pollsters and activists say, working harder to engage Hispanic voters.
But in Puerto Rico, voters align themselves generally into three camps – those favoring statehood, those wanting to stay a U.S. commonwealth and a small group that favors independence. So while Puerto Ricans in general tend to vote for Democrats here, there isn't the same sort of party identity or loyalty there is, for example, among African Americans. And for those who fled to Florida post-Hurricane Maria, many were too busy trying to find homes and navigate their new lives than to pay attention to politics, Martinez de Castro says. Hispanics candidates, too, face barriers – often because they don't have the experience of other successful Latinos to draw on. Candelario Cervantez, the 36-year-old national diversity director for Teach for America, is hoping to get elected this fall to the City Council in Houston – a city that is 45% Latino but has a small Hispanic presence on the council. Democrats are doing a "better job" than they were, Cervantez says, but should not assume they will get Latino votes. "Even as a Latinx candidate, I (need to show) I have been actively working in this community. I'm not just running on my name," he says. Democrats took the lessons of 2016 to heart in 2018, pollsters and activists say, working harder to engage Hispanic voters. And it paid off: in the 2018 congressional elections, there were a dozen seats that flipped red to blue because of the Latino vote, and another 10 where the Hispanic vote was consequential, pollster Matt Barretto, co-founder of Latino Decisions, said in a conference call with reporters Texas, a state Democrats are eyeing as a developing battleground, sent its first two Latinas to Congress in 2018, in part because of Hispanic support and turnout, Democratic operatives say. An anti-Trump sentiment and disappointment with Republicans is part of it, Barretto says. He noted that when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, 56% of Latinos said Romney was mostly ignoring them, and 12% said he was hostile to their community. In Latino Decisions' spring 2019 poll, 51% percent of Latinos said Republicans were outright hostile to them. In other poling, Latino voters overwhelmingly, at 73%, said Trump was having a negative effect on their communities, Barretto said the polling showed. Political Cartoons on the Democrats That's helpful to Democrats but still not enough to provoke a massive Latino turnout for them, say organizers on the ground. Nevada, for example, has been moving solidly to blue status in recent elections but is still very much a battleground state next year – and one Democrats could lose if they rest on their successes there, said Kenia Morales, Nevada state director for America Votes. "By no means is a third cycle of Democratic gains guaranteed," she told reporters. "We need to do early investment, an all-out education" of potential Democratic voters to hang onto the state next year, she said. Voter registration is key, says Martinez de Castro, noting that 80-83% of Latinos registered to vote in a presidential election actually turn up to vote. Yet "there is very little investment in voter registration," a gap Unidos is working to fill, she says. Democratic contenders, meanwhile, will have to court Latino voters and come up with a stronger argument than just being anti-Trump, activists say. "It's no longer a question of, 'Do candidates really have a choice?'" Davis says. "It's really a prerequisite now to actually gaining first the nomination – and ultimately winning any election." Showing up, Latino leaders say, is a good start. Susan Milligan, Senior Writer Susan Milligan is a political and foreign affairs writer and contributed to a biography of the ... READ MORE Tags: immigration, 2020 presidential election, Democratic Party
The 10 Worst Presidents
Andrew Soergel and Jay TolsonDec. 31, 2014
Cartoons on President Donald Trump
Sept. 13, 2019, at 11:53 a.m.
Photos: Obama Behind the Scenes
June 27, 2018