Bringing GOP to Latinos
Houston Republican’s group wooing ‘dormant’ voters, but Democrats remain skeptical
Defiant cries of “Viva Sanchez!” rippled through the Hotel Derek ballroom in early December 2001 as Orlando Sanchez, a Republican Cuban immigrant and city councilman, conceded his bid to become Houston’s first Latino mayor.
Sanchez, even in defeat, had eclipsed his campaign’s target for Latino turnout, assembling a coalition of white Republicans and Hispanic voters from both parties. In his concession speech, he framed the loss as a signal of progress in “empowering a whole new group of Houstonians.”
The optimism was short-lived, as Sanchez failed to replicate his coalition when he ran again two years later. Texas Republicans, hoping a high-profile mayoral win would boost their efforts to reach more Latino voters, have failed to make sustained inroads since then, opening the door for Democrats to potentially win the state’s 38 electoral votes in this year’s presidential election.
Sanchez has grown frustrated with the Republican Party’s disjointed and at times barely visible plan for attracting Latino Texans. After losing his seat as Harris County treasurer in 2018, part of the bluewave that installed Democrat Lina Hidalgo as county judge, Sanchez formed a political organization, Texas Latino Conservatives, to increase Hispanic turnout in battleground areas and train Latino Republicans on being activists, campaign staffers and political candidates.
“I noticed that the Republican Party, with the exception of George W. Bush, was not doing the necessary heavy lifting to ensure that Latinos in Texas voted their values,” Sanchez said. “When George W. ran, he got in the high 40s, and ever since then
we’ve sort of dwindled.”
For years, Texas Democrats have acknowledged their political holy grail — turning Texas blue — depends on engaging the state’s fast-growing but politically detached Latino population. In 2020, with the Texas House in play and polls repeatedly showing President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden locked in a tight race statewide, the Texas Democratic Party is making what party officials say is their most furious push ever to mobilize Latino turnout.
That includes running paid advertising in South Texas and recently contacting some 1.3 million Texans who were not registered to vote, 40percent ofwhomwere Latinos, said Texas Democratic Party spokesman Abhi Rahman. Texas had 5.6 million Latino eligible voters as of January, according to the Pew Research Center, more than every state but California.
Texas Republican Party Chairman Allen West, asked about the party’s outreach efforts, touted his recent trips to Laredo, El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley to meet with Hispanic pastors and law enforcement officials. He said the Republican Party also has conducted several events with Hispanic Republicans of Texas, a similar group.
Though neither party has found much historical success in galvanizing Latino turnout, Democrats typically have won the vast majority of support from those who do vote. In 2018, 64 percent of Latinos voted for Democrat Beto O’Rourke, compared to 35 percent for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, according to CNN exit polls. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has proven to be a modest exception, winning 42 percent of the Hispanic vote that year.
Sanchez argues that with the right message, Latino voters form a natural constituency for Republicans. The party’s general support for lower taxes, he said, appeals to Latino small-business owners, a
group that grew by 34 percent over the past 10 years compared to 1 percent for all business owners, according to a January Stanford University study.
The Democratic Party also has seen democratic-socialist figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rise to prominence, which Sanchez said is repelling Latino voters of Cuban and Venezuelan descent, such as those in the House battleground area of Katy.
Lack of diversity
Still, Texas Republicans have faced a persistent struggle recruiting and electing Latino candidates. When state Sen. Pete Flores, R-Pleasanton, won a surprise victory in a 2018 special election, he became the first Hispanic Republican elected to the Texas Senate and one of only two in the entire Legislature. During the campaign, he found success emphasizing his anti-abortion stance to socially conservative Latino voters, including evangelical Christians.
“My votes reflect what I feel is
the sentiment of the majority of my constituents when it comes to issues dealing with faith and family,” said Flores, who is up for reelection this year in a district Trump lost in 2016 by more than 11 points.
Through its nonprofit side, Texas Latino Conservatives runs a program called Leadership Latino, which offers seminars and training where prospective candidates can learn the basics of campaign organization, ethics and public speaking. Another part of the curriculum covers the basics of various political jobs, such as campaign strategists, fundraisers and media consultants.
Some training sessions focus on activism and low-level political involvement, reflecting Sanchez’s dismay that Republican grassroots politics remain dominated by white people, especially in Houston.
“I will be very honest with you: The Republican Party of Harris County, the precinct chairs, do not represent the majority of conservatives in Harris County. We’ve got
to diversify our party at the grassroots level,” Sanchez said.
At the beginning, Texas Latino Conservatives focused its outreach and training on “promoting conservative philosophy,” Sanchez said, without much emphasis on the Republican Party itself. Earlier this year, the group began getting involved in several battleground Texas House races where it identified “dormant or low-propensity Hispanic voters,” Sanchez said.
“These are voters that one point in their life voted conservative but for some reason or another fell off the screen because nobody reached out to them, no one touched them,” he said.
Complicated by Trump
The group is running direct mail and digital ads, holding Spanishlanguage phone banking sessions and, in some cases, block-walking for candidates. The group also broadcasts Facebook Live interviews with candidates, most recently with state Rep. Sarah Davis, R-Houston, on Wednesday. On a recent Saturday, some Texas Latino Conservatives members blocked-walked for Republican Justin Ray, the nominee for House District 135 in northwest Harris County, in one of the district’s most heavily Hispanic precincts.
Complicating Sanchez’s mission is Trump’s harsh rhetoric toward Latino immigrants, his policies that have repelled some voters and his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately harmed Latino residents in Houston and Texas overall.
A June 2018 University of Texas/ Texas Tribune poll found that Latino voters opposed Trump’s policy of separating children and parents at the border, 55 to 27 percent, while a New York Times/Siena College poll released Thursday found Latino voters opposed building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, 65 to 32 percent.
State Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, argued Texas Republican lawmakers have lost Latino support through such policies as Senate Bill 4, the state’s anti-“sanctuary” legislation. He said Latino voters drove Democrats’ efforts to flip 12 state House seats in 2018.
“That doesn’t happen without a coalition of voters supporting these12 folks,” Walle said. “Latinos are everywhere. We’re not just in inner-city Houston. We live in the suburbs, as well. And that’s why you have (Latino) candidates out in the outer rings of our suburbs.”
Most Texas polls have not sampled enough Latino voters to provide dependable results, said University of Houston political science professor Jeronimo Cortina. Still, Biden lost the Texas Latino vote to Sen. Bernie Sanders during the March primary, suggesting he has room to improve.
“There is a handicap that Biden is bringing to the race,” Cortina said. “And if the Biden campaign does not start really putting his name out there and talking about the issues that are important for the Latino vote, (he could struggle) to get traction.”