Trump rhetoric turns off many Latino evangelicals
Hopeful’s rise puts evangelicals on spot
Insulting Mexicans and talk of border wall alienating voters.
LOS ANGELES— Samuel Rodriguez is the kind of Latino whom Republicans hoped they could count on in 2016.
An evangelical Christian pastor who opposes the Democratic Party’s stance on abortion and same-sex marriage, Rodriguez led a prayer onstage at the 2012 GOP national convention. This election cycle, he publicly praised Republican leaders including Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee and Marco Rubio.
Then Donald Trump became the party’s presumptive nominee. Now Rodriguez doesn’t know what to think.
Trump’s calls for mass deportations “have offended me andmy community,” said Rodriguez, who heads the National Hispanic Leadership Conference. “Those are our parishioners.
“Donald Trump is jeopardizing the very future of our churches,” he added.
Trump’s rise has put evangelical Latinos like Rodriguez in a difficult position. Many view the Democratic Party as hostile to conservative Christian values. Many also say they cannot support Trump, who has alienated Latinos by insulting Mexican immigrants by calling them drug dealers and rapists and pledging to build a massive border wall.
“We have a problem with the donkey, and we have a problem with the elephant,” Rodriguez said at his group’s annual convention in Anaheim, Calif., over the weekend, where Trump and Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, both addressed the crowd in videotaped remarks.
It’s a problem of great significance, given the size of the Latino vote and the growing influence of evangelicals in Latino communities.
record 27 million Latinos will be eligible to participate in the November general election, a figure that includes a rising number of evangelical Christians.
While a majority of Latino adults still belong to the Catholic Church, more and more are embracing evangelical Christianity, according to Pew Research Center. The percentage of Latinos who identify as evangelical or born-again Christian rose from12 percent in2010 to 16 percent in 2013, according to Pew.
Evangelical Latinos, who tend to hold more conservative social views than their Catholic and nonreligious counterparts, have long been viewed as potential recruits for the GOP. According to Pew, they are more likely to identify as Republicans than are other Latinos.
But Trump’s attacks on the immigrant community have forced some Latino evangelicals to put identity politics ahead of their religious beliefs.
“In good consciousness, I just can’t vote for him,” said Eddie Rodriguez, pastor of an Assemblies of God congregation in South Florida.
Rodriguez supported Rubio in the Republican primaries but has now resigned himself to voting for Clinton.
“It’s extremely difficult,” he said. “I have to pick between two people I disagree with.”
That’s a dilemma faced by the broader evangelical community, which has been divided between those who support Trump and those who have denounced his language and ideas as unChristian.
Next month, several hundred conservative leaders plan to meet privately with Trump to address concerns about his candidacy. The meeting, which was arranged by former presidential candidate Ben Carson, is expected to include some Latino leaders.
According to a recent Fox News Latino poll, 62 percent of Latinos supported Clinton, while only 23 percent backed Trump.
That would give the real estate mogul and former reality television star even less Latino support than Mitt Romney, whowon just 27 percent of the Latino vote as the Republican nominee against President Barack Obama in 2012.
Since becoming the presumptive nominee earlier this month, Trump has toned down his rhetoric slightly and has made a few overt pitches to Latino voters. On Cinco de Mayo, he tweeted a photograph of himself with a taco salad and wrote: “I love Hispanics!”
But some Latino evangelical leaders say it will take much more than that for them to consider voting for him.
“We’re people of faith, so our response is: ‘Say you’re sorry. Repent. Make it right,’ ” said Tony Suarez, an evangelical pastor from Virginia who was in Anaheim for the conference. “The ball is in his court,” he said.
But the Rev. Walter Contreras, a pastor in Pasadena who skipped the weekend event, said simply giving Trump a platform to speak was dangerous.
“We’re not going to tolerate that kind of rhetoric,” Contreras said. “It’s very destructive. It’s very real. It’s too late.”