Newark, NJ (AP)-a Member of the congregation and former helicopter pilot from the US Navy secured the confirmation of the highest Hispanic officials in her state. A mayor emphasized his arrest by immigration officers. A congress member fought in a Latino supermarket. And another mayor decided to get his self -taught Spanish.
The New Jersey Guerverneuer test has developed as a crucial test for Democrats that want to regain Latin American support at the national level. It underlines the challenges in conventional blue areas in which the party’s loss of support under Hispanics in 2024 was even more pronounced than in the battlefield states. President Donald Trump lowered the democratic margins in New Jersey and New York and even switched some powerful Latin American cities, which he had lost in 2016 by 30 and 50 percentage points.
The democratic area code for the governor offers an experienced field of the current and former official: US representative Josh Gotheimer and Mikie Sherrill, the mayor of Jersey City, Steven Flop, the Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, President of the New Jersey Education Association and former President of Montclair Mayor Sean Spiller and former President of the Senate of the state, Steve Sweeney.
Although Trump made the closure of the US borders a central promise of his campaign, his economic message hit Latino’s home. More Hispanics saw inflation as the most vital concern last autumn as a white voter, as AP VoiceCast showed. In this year’s campaign with strategists, unions, organizers and politicians, this lesson came to mind that deviates from immigration and put on paperback concerns to the top of their appeals.
“If you are worried at the end of the day, to pay your bills and to be safe at night, everything else is secondary,” said Rep. Gotheimer in an interview. “I think that’s the focus in the Latino community before and.”
Warning sign for Democrats
Laura Matos, a member of the Democratic National Committee from New Jersey and board member of Latina Civic Action, said that the party is still driving with Hispanic voters, and warned that support cannot be considered for granted, even if Democrats gain most of it.
While there was a major legal swing under Hispanics in Texas and Florida in 2024, it was pronounced in blue states like New Jersey and New York. Here, 43% of Latino voters Trump, compared to 28% in 2020. In New York, 36% of Latino voters Trump supported 25% in 2020, according to AP Viewecast.
To understand that all Latino voters do not think or coordinate immediately. Compared to the 2020 elections, Trump won significantly with Dominican voters, where he rose 31% to 43% of the support. Of the 2 million Latinos in New Jersey, there are more than 375,000 Dominicans who make up the second largest Hispanic group in New Jersey after Puerto Ricans, a group in which Trump also increased his support from 31% to 39%, according to the survey.
But sometimes candidates rethink such targeted calls.
“The elections in November in parts of New Jersey should serve as a big warning sign that the Democrats have to think about how they communicate with some of these voters,” said Matos.
Last month, Sherrill’s campaign manager recognized in a memo to the trailers that “there was a real risk of republican profit in November”. New Jersey tends to the Democrat for Presidential and Senate elections, but the Republicans have won the governor in the past few decades.
Concentration on the economy
Strategists, organizers, union leaders and some candidates agree that what they hear from Latinos match the concerns of other voters in the working class.
Ana Maria Hill from Colombian and Mexican descent is the state director of the state of New Jersey of the International Union Local 32BJ, in which half of the members are Hispanian. According to Hill, the augment in the minimum wage and the summons of modern regulations for the limitation of rent increases are those who call to support Newark Mayor Baraka. She says that Democrats have lost the ground by not recognizing real fights that Latinos hit demanding after inflation after the pandemic.
“I think where we lost voters last year, the workers asked:” What’s wrong with the economy? “We said:” The economy is great. “And it could be true, but it is also true that eggs cost 10 US dollars, right?
Gotheimer took this lesson to heart and held a press conference in a Latino supermarket in Elizabeth, a lively Latino hub south of Newark, against a background of bottles of a corn oil that was used in many Hispanic kitchens. Sanrill went to a Colombian restaurant on Saturday, also in Elizabeth, to get a rally “Get Out of the Voice”.
One of her advisors, Patricia Campos-Medina, a work activist who ran for the US Senate last year, said candidates who visit Latino companies and talk about the economic challenges, as Sherrill did, show that they got it.
“She has a message that deals with many big problems. But when it comes to Latinos, we focus on the economy, affordable living space, transport and growth in small business,” said Campos-Medina.
When M. Teresa Ruiz, the majority leader of the Senate, the highest Hispanic official in the state, supported the best -oriented Hispanic officials last week, she cited her lawyer directly for affordable childcare.
Arrest of a candidate
Trump’s four months in office were defined by his aggressive approach to illegal immigration. This gave Baraka the opportunity to confiscate the limelight for a non -economic problem as a lawyer for immigrants in Newark. He was arrested when he tried to join a supervisory tour with an immigrant hustle and bustle center with 1,000 beds. Later, an indictment was for violation, but he sued the preliminary US lawyer Alina Habba last week because of the bogus prosecution.
“I think all of this stuff is a distraction,” he said recently. “But I also think that we are the consent that we do not answer. Our silence is approval. If we continue to allow these people to do these things and get through with it, they will continue to do them over and over again.”
In one of his last campaign ads in Spanish, he used film material from the arrest and the demonstrations to throw himself as a reluctant warrior, with text about the pictures said that he was “el único”, Spanish for “the only one” who confronts Trump.
Self -confident republicans
Former state meeting man Jack Ciattarelli makes his third offer for governor, and Trump’s support can facilitate. But Chris Russell, a Ciattarelli campaign consultant, also said the habit of the Democrats to misinterpret Latino voters.
“Democrats believe that the key to winning these people is identity policy.” He added: “You miss the boat.”
Ciattarelli faces four challengers for GOP nomination in Primary on Tuesday.
During a telephone meeting for Ciattarelli last week, Trump New Jersey described a “high tax sanctuary with high crime”, which accused local officials not to work with the federal immigration authorities.
The mayor of Jersey City, Steven Fulop, another contender to democratic nomination, said that he was not entirely convinced that the Democratic Party will always lose support in New Jersey. He believes that the governor race will be a referendum about the current governor Phil Murphy. Immigration and the economy can think of some Hispanic voters, but how it works is everyone’s assumption.
“The Latino community is two things in New Jersey. It grows considerably and it is a jumping ball. There is no one who has an absolute interior lane.”
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Gomez Licon reported Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
