Democratic contenders vie for Hispanic vote
Candidates participate in LULAC town hall event
The presidential race returned to Milwaukee with what amounted to a political doubleheader.
Democratic contenders came to the LULAC national convention Thursday while President Donald Trump was due to arrive Friday to tout the economy and raise some campaign cash.
The League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation’s oldest Hispanic civil rights organization, held a forum that featured separate conversations with U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke and former housing secretary Julián Castro.
A lot of the discussion revolved around immigration, as well as the president’s decision Thursday to abandon his push to have a question about citizenship on the 2020 census.
“Wow, he’s going to follow the law?” Warren said.
“This is more evidence of how erratic this president is,” Castro said during a meeting with reporters.
Asked about immigration raids that the Trump administration is
reportedly planning for the weekend, O’Rourke said, “To make our communities safe, we don’t need to round up people.”
“As president I will lead the effort of rewriting the immigration laws in our own image,” O’Rourke said.
Sanders lit into Trump, calling the president “a bigot, a racist, a xenophobe.”
“We are going to bring our people around an agenda that works for all of us and not just wealthy campaign contributors,” Sanders said.
Republicans countered that Trump has delivered economic benefits for Hispanics in Wisconsin and across the country.
“The economic policies championed by President Donald Trump have lowered Hispanic unemployment rates to record lows,” said Mandi Merritt, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee.
“The president’s policies are clearly working while the socialist platform adopted by the 2020 Democrat field would kill our economy.”
Sanders addresses his age
Sanders, 77, was asked about his age, and responded by touting his record and vision to drive the country forward.
“When you look at a candidate, age is a factor, the candidate’s record is a factor, mostly what that candidate stands for is a factor,” he said.
On his “Medicare for All” proposal, Sanders said, “We’re going to make Republicans an offer they can’t refuse” to get a measure passed through Congress.
Asked if he would give people an option to keep private health insurance under his single-payer plan, Sanders said: “No.”
He said Americans don’t like health insurance companies. “What American people do love is their doctors, hospitals and nurses. Under Medicare for All people will have freedom of choice in their doctors and hospitals.”
Warren reveals immigration plan
Earlier Thursday, Warren unveiled an immigration plan, writing on her blog that she seeks “to create a rules-based system that is fair, humane, and that reflects our values.”
Her plan would “decriminalize” migration, provide a “pathway to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants and separate “law enforcement from immigration enforcement.”
She vowed to “reshape ... from top to bottom” U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I will stop the crisis at the border,” she told the audience. “No great nation tears families apart. No great nation locks up children. And that’s critical.”
Warren accused Trump of “trying to stir up some more hate to try to get more people excited.”
And she hammered home her campaign theme of who the government should work for.
“We have a chance in 2020, in a democracy, to take this back and make this government work for all of us,” she said. “We can attack the corruption of a government in Washington that only works for those with money. We can attack it head on. And we can make this government work not just for those at the top, but for everyone.”
Warren was asked about the World Cup-winning U.S. women’s soccer team, which has fought for equal pay.
“This is a women’s team that gets out there every day and produces,” she said. “And when women produce then, by golly, women ought to be paid for it. Come on.”
Castro on decriminalizing border crossings
Castro defended his plan to decriminalize illegally crossing the southern border. He has called for repeal of Section 1325 of Title 8 of the U.S. Code, which makes illegal crossings a federal crime.
Jeh Johnson, the former Homeland Security secretary under Barack Obama, has criticized such proposals as “tantamount to declaring publicly that we have open borders.”
“I would say that Secretary Johnson is wrong, Vice President Biden is wrong on this and Congressman O’Rourke is wrong on this,” Castro said.
Asked how he would reduce gun violence, Castro said he favored commonsense gun reform, including universal background checks and a renewed assault weapons ban.
He also said would push for investment in mental health care to reduce suicides.
Ahead of the town hall, Castro addressed a unity luncheon and declared that Trump has “chosen to put a target on the back of the Latino community, especially our immigrant community.”
O’Rourke: ‘A movement’ will defeat Trump
O’Rourke, who has sagged in the polls, was asked why he was staying in the race instead of making another run for U.S. Senate in Texas.
O’Rourke said he wanted to serve the country “in the most consequential position possible.”
He said what he learned from losing his 2018 U.S. Senate race in Texas to Republican Ted Cruz was that if Democrats go everywhere, they can do “nearly the impossible.”
He talked about leading a grassroots movement across the country, claiming “a movement, not a person” will defeat Trump.
O’Rourke said Trump has become close to “strongmen and dictators” and vowed as president he would meet challenges with friends and allies across the globe.
“I want to make sure that we elevate the priority of this hemisphere in foreign policy,” he said.
O’Rourke expressed his gratitude to Border Patrol agents but said that gratitude was not a license to mistreat people.
“There has to be oversight, there has to be accountability, there has to be justice,” he said.
Gabbard, Jill Biden address conference
In a separate appearance at the convention, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii spoke at a breakfast honoring military veterans.
She said Trump “pays a lot of lip service to our veterans, to our troops,” but “at the very same time he is deporting service members who have volunteered to serve this country.”
“At the very same time his administration is rejecting citizenship applications from our service members at a much higher rate than applications from civilians. How is that supporting our troops?”
Jill Biden, the wife of former Vice President Joe Biden, spoke about education issues. She has been teaching for 30 years, including while her husband served with President Barack Obama.
“My students keep me grounded that everything we did in the ObamaBiden administration mattered,” she said.
“We need leaders who have a vision for a better path forward,” she said. “We need education policies that come from classrooms, not boardrooms. That’s what I keep saying to Joe, ‘We have to listen to the teachers.’ I don’t want our teachers talked down to, I want them to speak up and to have their ideas heard.”