Washington, D.C. – Operación ¡Vamos! has been on the ground in Wisconsin since April talking to Hispanic voters. Mandela Barnes and Democrats in Wisconsin are completely out of touch with Hispanic voters, who care about crime, inflation, job quality, the economy and education as their top issues. Hispanics do not care about the Democrats’ woke ideology. This is a major blow to the Democrats’ hopes of retaining the Senate majority this election.
AP: In Milwaukee, Latinos fed up with crime weigh GOP appeal
MILWAUKEE (AP) — In two decades of street outreach on Milwaukee’s south side, evangelical pastor Marty Calderon has offered Bible study, gang prevention, a safe place to stay for those battling addiction, and help getting jobs for those newly released from prison.
But as he’s watched rising crime threaten those efforts to “clean up” his impoverished neighborhood, Calderon started bringing Republican politicians to his ministry, God Touch.
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Republican candidates across the country are seeking to expand recent gains the party has made with Hispanic voters from Florida to the Rio Grande Valley to Los Angeles. What seems to be driving them are bread-and-butter issues that Calderon’s neighbors constantly mentioned to Associated Press reporters last week – rampant lawlessness, struggling schools, and food and gas prices creeping beyond their paychecks’ reach.
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A month before the midterms, Johnson was talking about the importance of “renewed faith” as he met with Calderon and other community leaders in the Republican National Committee’s one-year-old Hispanic outreach center, two blocks from God Touch.
“We’re showing up,” Johnson said of the party’s outreach in communities like this. “We have a universal message.”
Minutes earlier, Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, whose southeastern Wisconsin district is just a few miles south, had also made a stop at the storefront center, decorated with yard signs, an elephant-shaped piñata and U.S. and state flags.
These efforts encourage Hilario Deleon, 21, who grew up on the south side and, after losing his dishwashing job during the COVID-19 lockdown, got involved in Republican campaigning.
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Little wonder that bilingual canvassers were door-knocking last week across Milwaukee’s south side. They came from both Voces de la Frontera Action, which endorses Democrats, and Operación Vamos (“operation let’s go,” in Spanish), the Republican Party’s new Hispanic outreach organization.
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Vamos canvassers faced a different kind of challenge with uncommitted Hispanic voters.
“Folks on the ground hear, ‘No one ever reached out to us before’ or ‘I didn’t expect Republicans to reach out to us,’” said Ana Carbonell, a consultant for Hispanic outreach with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which launched Vamos efforts this midterm season in nine key states, including Wisconsin.
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The historic lack of outreach to the Latino community leaves Hispanic voters to “bundle” their own issues, often based on faith, instead of buying into an “ideological package” from either party, said Ali Valenzuela, an American University professor of Latino politics. That can benefit Republicans when the focus is on the economy, as in these midterms.
Since April, Vamos in Wisconsin has contacted more Hispanic voters there than over the last three election cycles combined – voters like the woman who chucklingly told two Vamos canvassers last week, “You’re in the wrong neighborhood.”
“I can always learn more,” she nevertheless added, taking their flyers.
Nearby, Artemio Martinez, a construction worker from Mexico married to a U.S. citizen, said he was grateful Vamos knocked on his door.
As his 2-year-old daughter played with the bilingual flyer listing Republican statewide candidates under “¡Equipo Ganador!” – the “winning team,” described first as “pro-faith” and “pro-family” – Martinez said he hadn’t planned on voting.
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Read the full article HERE.
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