FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Progressive groups seeking to reconnect with Latino voters are emphasizing economic hardship and pointing to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans to regain support in places where the Republican leader has made inroads.
The $1.4 million digital advertising and field campaign is led by a Democratic donor fund backed by a progressive network called Way to Win, which was launched after Trump’s 2016 White House victory. The Valiente Action Fund’s efforts are tailored to appeal to voters in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina and Texas by convincing them that some of Trump’s economic promises are not enough while his immigration tactics go too far.
Tory Gavito, a Democratic strategist and president of Way to Win, says the groups are trying to talk to Latinos “in their full experience” about housing and the cost of living without abandoning the case against Trump’s tough immigration approach in his second term as president, including the operate of helicopters and chemical warfare agents in Chicago.
“The Chicago stuff should be more than a canary in the coal mine,” Gavito said. “This government is using extreme enforcement measures to distract from the fact that housing is still bloody expensive and our rent is still too expensive.”
Trump has promised to deport millions of people from the United States as part of the largest deportation program in American history. According to Gavito, the Trump campaign succeeded in conveying a message around “resource scarcity” and blaming immigrants for taking jobs. Some voters were persuaded because they wanted “access to a thriving economy,” she said.
There are already signs that Trump’s crackdown on immigration could have an impact on the US labor market. A July report from the Brookings Institution and the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute found that the loss of foreign workers will mean monthly U.S. job growth could be near zero or even negative over the next few years.
The fight for Latino support
Nationally, Hispanic voters leaned significantly toward Trump in the last election, although a majority still supported Democrat Kamala Harris: 43% of Hispanic voters nationally voted for Trump, up from 35% in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost. Hispanic voters in Texas and Florida leaned similarly toward Trump. There were slight shifts towards it in New Jersey, New York and Arizona; there were no significant shifts in Nevada or Georgia.
Democratic activists and strategists are advising candidates to focus on voters’ pocketbooks to reverse the trend.
The progressive groups’ field operation involves working with local groups to knock on doors and do what they call “deep canvassing” – with the goal of having longer conversations about voters’ concerns and gathering support for introducing specific ballot initiatives.
Efforts underway in New Jersey
New Jersey, one of only two states with a gubernatorial race this year, ran ads earlier this month that were not specifically about the gubernatorial race but were critical of Trump, who has supported GOP candidate Jack Ciattarelli.
The digital ads show images of Latinos while a narrator says that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is targeting people who look “like him, like them, like us,” reflecting human rights groups’ concerns about racial profiling. A Supreme Court decision last month cleared the way for more forceful immigration action, lifting an injunction that had banned arrests based on a mix of four factors: race and ethnicity; Language; Location; and profession.
In another ad, narrators talk about rising food and electricity bills while images of billionaires Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are shown.
One of the ads tells the story of how an immigrant advocacy group, Make the Road Action New Jersey, passed a ballot initiative to cap rents in the majority-Hispanic city of Passaic, which leaned heavily Democratic in 2016 but supported Trump in 2024.
“We serve as an indicator of what appeals to voters’ feelings in some way,” said Nedy Morsy, director of Make the Road Action New Jersey, who said the messages would be tested with an eye on next year’s midterm elections.
Latino deployment in other states
In Nevada, the action targets Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who is seeking re-election in what is expected to be a closely contested race that Trump holds in 2024.
Make the Road Action Nevada director Leo Murrieta is taking Lombardo to task over his actions on the economy, including a veto of legislation that would have increased protections for renters.
“We have to do everything we can to let our gentlemen know who is out there behind us and who is stabbing us in the back,” Murrieta said, using the Spanish word for “people.”
