Latinos led California recall vote, setting up a model for midterms
If anyone will close the curtain on Trumpism, it will be people like Angélica Salas. She’s a 50-year-old Latina matriarch and immigrant rights activist who helped save Gov. Gavin Newsom in the recall election.
As executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, or CHIRLA, Salas knew early on that the Republican recall was an attack on Newsom’s pro-Latino policies.
Newsom acted boldly on behalf of the community, nominating Latinos for key leadership positions and securing numerous benefits for the undocumented.
For Salas, there was no question: Latinos had to rescue Newsom. The CHIRLA Action Fund, a political arm of her immigrant rights group, began organizing Latinos against the recall in April.
With the Million Voters Project Action Fund, which includes other grassroots organizations, they reached nearly a million Californians.
It worked. Data from the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative shows Latinos strongly led rejection of the recall
Salas and other activists have long registered and educated Latino voters to increase the community’s political power, including in Republican areas. Thanks to those efforts, even Central Valley Republican Rep. David Valadao recently voted for the American Dream and Promise Act.
Four days after Newsom’s resounding victory, Salas led hundreds of people on a march for a pathway to citizenship from MacArthur Park.
For years, nativists have waged war on immigration “amnesties” by appealing to racial anxieties. But now, the scapegoated immigrant community is fighting back.
Fatima Flores-Laguna, CHIRLA Action Fund’s political director, is a 31-year-old DACA recipient who came to the U.S. when she was 6. For the recall election, she organized contacts with more than 74,000 people.
Luis Sánchez, executive director of PowerCA Action, focused on Merced County, where Latinos disproportionately work in essential jobs that put them at high risk of COVID-19.
Sánchez’s group reached out to about 270,000 voters with the message that the recall was backed by pro-Trump nativists seeking to repeal masking mandates. Sánchez, a 46-year-old Chicano who came of age in the 1990s, when California was convulsed by anti-immigrant movements, told me that Latinos understood: “The Republicans represent the epitome of what puts them most at risk.”
Activists had to take on rightwing disinformation that targeted Latinos, such as the idea that Newsom sought to harm small business owners with pandemic restrictions. Jess Contreras, civic engagement manager at the Dolores Huerta Foundation — which mobilized thousands of Latino voters in the
Central Valley — told me her team got through by reminding people about eviction protections, paid family leave and other relief Newsom provided.
Her group also trained volunteers to watch the polls in places such as Kern County, where they’d previously learned of Latinos being turned away.
“We were there registering voters and making sure they weren’t intimidated so they could cast their ballots,” Contreras said.
In San Diego County, 80% of Latino voters rejected the recall. That’s largely thanks to the Alliance San Diego Mobilization Fund. Associate Director Chris Rice-Wilson told me he mobilizes Latinos and other voters of color “to build bridges between communities taught to fight each other.” His group recognized the Latino vote is crucial for awakening the “new American majority.”
Conservatives are increasingly characterizing the changing electorate as an existential threat to White people.
They’ve got that wrong — the Latino vote threatens political strategies based on xenophobia and racism.
The recall election’s Latinomobilizing efforts provide a roadmap for organizers nationwide come the 2022 midterms. The results were clear: When Democrats show up for Latinos, Latinos show up for democracy.