San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Demsmust listen to Latinos to connect with them
Great anticipation and excitement abounded about the possibility of Texas electing a Democratic president after a hiatus of 44 years from when it delivered its then-26 electoral votes for Jimmy Carter.
The recordsetting turnout over the early voting period along with the state’s shifting demography featuring a growing Latino population certainly added intrigue to the possibility of Texas turning blue. Over the last four years, Latinos accounted for 3 of every 5 new people eligible to vote, bolstered by about 203,000 Latinos turning 18 every year.
Texas did not turn blue Tuesday night. Not only was the rising number of Latino voters not large enough to change the political hue of the state, but President Donald Trump gained a larger share of the Latino vote than he did four years ago. While Joe Biden won 14 border counties, Trump received a significant share of the vote in these counties ranging from 32 percent in El Paso County to 47 percent in
Starr County and 48 percent in Culberson County. Trump won six border counties, most prominently Zapata County, which he won by 5 percentage points and where four years earlier Hillary Clinton beat him by 30 points.
The double-take leads to people
asking: “What happened?”
We highlight some of our thoughts regarding significant factors that contributed to the outcome of the Latino vote. Tuesday it became more obvious that Latinos are not a monolithic group. They are diverse not only politically, but also with respect to social class, generational status, language use and so forth. A significant portion of Latinos, especially men, are politically conservative and do like Trump’s message.
Many Latinos are drawn to Trump’s pro-growth and entrepreneurial policies, and the Trump campaign used messaging effectively to make the connection, as in the case of his Spanishlanguage television ad titled “Despacito” (“Slow”) in which Trump
reminded Latinos that Biden presided over the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression and that Latino poverty levels peaked under his leadership. In weeks leading to the day of the election, the Trump campaign announced the American Dream Plan where Latinos would thrive in an economy that provided better health care and educational opportunities. Never mind that the plan lacked substance; the message was resounding.
Certainly, the Democratic Party missed an opportunity to get to know the Latino community. Rather than courting Latinos by asking and listening to them concerning their lives and issues that matter to them, the Democratic Party continues to identify
for Latinos the most important issues they face. Further, Biden never demonstrated that he knows Latinos and their issues. In the days leading to Nov. 3, a reporter asked Biden what he would do for Latinos in his first 100 days in office. Biden responded that he would create a federal task force to reunite the 500-plus children who were taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration. While that is certainly a political issue of importance, it is not one of the top three issues — the coronavirus pandemic, jobs and the economy, and health care costs — that Texas Latinos reported to a survey conducted by Latino Decisions, a Latinoowned poll firm.
In addition, the Democratic
Party neglected and took for granted the Latino vote. The Democratic National Convention shunned the nation’s largest minority group, with Latinos being virtually absent from the stage. Julián Castro, the only Latino presidential candidate, was a no-invite to the big show. While the Democratic Party did finally invest in trying to engage voters when Texas became a competitive state, funds were limited and came from outside the state, with Republicans crafting the narrative that liberals from California, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were trying to determine the outcome of the Texas election. Without adequate funds in the midst of the pandemic, Democrats could not mount a grassroots mobilization strategy involving door-to-door visits. Latino Decisions noted that about half of Latinos surveyed reported the Democratic Party had never contacted them. Vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris finally made an eleventh-and-a-half-hour visit to the Valley, proving to be too little and too late.
Where do we go from here? Will Texas ever turn blue? We think eventually this will occur, but not as rapidly as some would like. As long as the state and national Democratic Party establishment continues to be disengaged from the Latino community, that future time becomes more distant.