The Hispanic electorate has found its place at the center of the national political discourse in an election marked by nativist rhetoric and punctuated by a “garbage” war.
In the final week of the election, the media turned its radar to Puerto Ricans in swing states — particularly Pennsylvania and North Carolina — not because the campaigns heightened their concerns, but because of an ill-conceived joke that denigrated the U.S. territory.
Broad origins aside, the moment when Puerto Rican voters are in the spotlight presents an opportunity for Latino voters at immense.
“This helps us combat misinformation and it helps us maintain our message that communities that have high turnout in elections are communities that have better resources.” [have] better schools, better hospitals, better parks,” said Frankie Miranda, president of the Hispanic Federation.
Miranda said that despite the raise in Latino voter turnout, “the headline is still ‘Latinos aren’t participating enough,’ or it’s Latinos – the ones who are ‘because they’re not participating enough that we lost a particular state.’ such as what happened to Florida in the past.”
Whether Democrats’ previous accusations in Florida — and the resulting headlines — are repeated in 2024 will largely depend on the election results in Pennsylvania.
The state’s Latino corridor stretches from the Maryland border along Highway 222 to Allentown, a majority-Hispanic city of 125,000 on the edge of New York City’s commuter belt.
Before former President Trump’s Oct. 27 rally at Madison Square Garden, where comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke about “a floating island of trash” received a mixed response, the campaigns had already committed significant resources to the corridor and will continue to do so until the bitter end End continue to do end.
Trump and Harris will hold dueling rallies in the Latino Corridor on Monday afternoon: Harris will be in Allentown and Trump will be in Reading.
But the unforced error of booking a shock comic for the New York rally is likely to energize low-propensity voters who the campaigns have been unable to reach through customary means.
“I mean Puerto Ricans, it’s their moment. If they don’t vote, show up and vote, guess what? …Puerto Ricans should be the new Cubans. It is a swing state. They are the largest Latino bloc in the state. You can all vote. Yes, this is your moment, guys. Don’t mess this up,” said Mike Madrid, a political consultant and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.
The Trump campaign initially struggled to contain the damage from Hinchcliffe’s joke, but on Tuesday President Biden muddied the waters with his own “garbage” comments on a call moderated by Voto Latino.
In the call, Biden appeared to refer to Trump supporters as “trash,” although the White House clarified that the president was referring to Hitchcliffe, an account the Trump campaign did not purchase.
From that point on, Trump assumed the role of the injured party, appearing in a garbage truck with a Trump logo and a reflective work vest.
“The problem with what Biden did is that he bought into history. It could have been bigger, longer and a stronger narrative. That’s all. That’s exactly what happened. He fucking stepped on their momentum,” Madrid said.
By Friday, the story had lost steam on cable news, with networks like CNN and MSNBC focusing on Trump’s recent attack on former Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, and Fox News devoting some airtime to the White House’s cleanup of Biden’s comments .
However, anecdotal evidence suggests that Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania still vigorously oppose Hinchcliffe’s joke.
“There is nothing, nothing that you could do to a Puerto Rican that would move them one way or the other, [apart from] Attack on Puerto Rico. You may have been here for four generations or you may have arrived just yesterday: it’s the punch in the gut, every time you talk about our ancestral island, our ancestral home, your heart starts beating faster,” Miranda said.
Given the back-and-forth so close to the election, it’s unlikely the polls will change significantly before Pennsylvania counts its official ballots.
But the bet is that the “garbage” war was overall negative for Trump.
“I think it’s absolutely more damaging to Trump because two of the groups that they need to entrench in the most important state – Pennsylvania – will be motivated by this. Puerto Ricans are angry. That alone could quantifiably cost them Pennsylvania,” Madrid said.
“[This] The freak show reminded a number of college-educated Republicans why they don’t like the Republican Party in the first place, or why they’re uncomfortable with why they don’t like the Republican Party in the Trump era. It’s a reminder that these guys – they’re crass, there’s a vulgarity that they’ve never liked about Trump. They voted for Trump despite him because they don’t like the Democrats and they like Republican policies.”
Still, the incident reflects a larger trend in which parties are prioritizing the Latino vote while not necessarily changing their broader focus.
For Republicans who want to separate just a fraction of the Latino vote, this approach can yield positive results.
For example, according to Ana Valdez, president of the Latino Donor Collaborative (LDC), the Trump campaign was successful in identifying cultural divisions within Latino communities and appealing to voters who were more likely to respond to its proposals.
“Someone [in the Trump campaign] understands what makes us tick, what makes us tick,” she said.
LDC, a think tank founded by business leaders, released a report last week that quantifies the political and economic size of the Latino electorate to drive home the idea that Hispanics can and will overturn elections.
“What we expect from this report is to bring some education, if you will, to shed some light on the true number of Latinos, the impact that they have and the potential of the impact if they do are engaged again. You know, the Latino vote is about parties losing, not the other way around. And these are the numbers that show it,” Valdez said.
