Washington, D.C. – With the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, we celebrate the generosity, opportunities, kindness and above all the freedoms of this great nation. While Democrats are trying to redefine and distort the United States, we must come together to defend our freedom and democracy, something that many Hispanics have lost in their home countries. With a little over 50 days until the midterm election, the Democrats are in trouble with Hispanic voters.
The Wall Street Journal: Latino Voters, Once Solidly Democratic, Split Along Economic Lines
LAS VEGAS — A few miles from the Las Vegas Strip, in a working-class neighborhood of one-story homes and scattered palm trees, Vania Oronoz is pushing her husband to give up his habit of voting for Democrats.
Mrs. Oronoz and many of her neighbors are shifting toward the Republican Party, a pattern that’s being replicated across the country. The move has been especially pronounced among working-class Latinos, whose votes have the potential to reshape the political parties in the same way that the movement of white, working-class voters has made them a pillar of the Republican Party.
Mrs. Oronoz, a 44-year-old immigrant from Mexico, runs a taco business with her husband and backed President Joe Biden in 2020 when she cast her first vote as a U.S. citizen. She said she has become disenchanted with Democrats over the state of inflation and school quality, as well as the party’s failure to approve a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Instead she is putting her support behind GOP candidates in this fall’s election, including the Republican trying to defeat Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the only Latina ever elected to the Senate.
Democrats “promise a lot of things that never happen,” Mrs. Oronoz said.
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“If there’s a Republican that has good ideas that benefit me, I’m going to vote for that guy,” said Mr. Oronoz, 39, who delivers groceries for Uber.
Latino voters are among the fastest-growing groups in the electorate, accounting for some 16 million voters in 2020—or more than 10% of the voter pool. Once a solidly Democratic bloc, Latino voters are emerging as a swing group available to both parties, with its voting preferences splitting along economic and class lines.
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The movement away from Mr. Biden’s party was even larger—some 11 points—among Latinos who are working class, commonly defined as those without a four-year college degree.
Voters and analysts say the economic boom during much of Mr. Trump’s presidency, as well as today’s high inflation under Mr. Biden, have continued to lead to a more favorable view of the Republican Party and helped change the perception in many families that it’s socially unacceptable to consider backing GOP candidates.
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“The feeling that the Democratic Party almost by default is going to have the Hispanic vote—it’s not like that anymore,’’ said Ally Magalhaes, a Brazilian immigrant and aesthetician who until recently ran a spa a few miles from the Oronoz family’s home. She backed Mr. Trump in 2020 after previously voting for Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Ms. Magalhaes said faith and family were important to her—areas where she feels more aligned with Republicans. “The Republican Party is the one that represents that strongly, and that’s who we are going to be sticking with, if the Democratic Party continues to impose their progressive agenda,” she said. She moved her two children to a charter school after local leaders considered adopting a sex-education plan that she found too explicit.
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In those neighborhoods where Latino residents account for 70% or more of the population, President Biden carried 75% of the vote, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of election results at the census-tract level. That was 7 percentage points less than Democrats had won in 2016.
Edgar Flores, a Democratic state assemblyman whose district includes many of the heavily Hispanic neighborhoods that shifted toward Mr. Trump, said Democrats haven’t made a succinct economic pitch that resonates with Latino voters. “I sincerely think that we’ve taken the community for granted politically,” Mr. Flores said. “We have a responsibility as a party to do better.”
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If the vote shift proves durable, it could undermine Democrats’ belief that the nation’s growing racial and ethnic diversity, along with the party’s gains among white voters with college degrees, would propel it to dominance in national politics. For Republicans, big gains among Latino voters could help them accomplish a goal that many in the party came to embrace during Mr. Trump’s presidency: becoming a multiracial party of the nation’s working class.
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Republican support among Latino voters reached a high-water mark in recent decades during President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, with 40% or more of the vote. Mr. Bush had won the governor’s office in Texas in part by reaching out to Hispanic voters, and he continued that outreach on the national stage with steps such as arguing for eased immigration rules.
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Rosemary Flores, a 57-year-old community activist and former casino waitress, said she was a lifelong Democrat until 2016, when she decided that her support for stronger border security, opposition to abortion and belief in economic self-reliance meant her values aligned with the Republican Party. “Latinos are always told that they’re Democrats,” she said. “I finally said to myself that I’m a conservative, and so are other Latinos.”
She said that she believes the Republican Party supports immigrants.
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Mr. Laxalt said Democratic leaders hurt workers by shutting down the economy during the pandemic and with policies that he said exacerbated inflation.
“I’ve been consistent from the beginning of the race that we are the campaign that stands for the American dream,” Mr. Laxalt said in an interview. “We stand for secure borders. We stand for law and order. We stand for trying to get kids back into schools and trying to get indoctrination out.” He has said that a higher minimum wage prompts businesses to reduce hiring, and that then-President Obama overstepped his authority by moving to protect Dreamers from deportation.
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Read the full article HERE.
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