Republicans are being told that they can not get the Latino vote or registration. The facts show it is all propaganda—too bad our leadership has bought into this canard.
“Between January and December, more than 28,000 people who qualify as Latino in the eyes of election officials — because they requested Spanish-language materials or were born in a Spanish-speaking country or their surname appears on a list provided by the Department of Justice — registered to vote in San Diego County.
About 1,200 of those folks registered Republicans. Nearly one-fifth enlisted as Democrats. And a whopping 69 percent chose the no-party-preference label.
“We’ve gotten a lot of lip service from the Democratic Party on things like immigration reform,” said Ricardo Favela, communications coordinator for Universidad Popular, a civic engagement program in San Marcos. “And then the Republican Party is going more to the right. We just continue to see both parties leaving us out in the cold.”
We need to remind Hispanics that the terrible schools their children are forced to attend are run by Democrats. Hispanic families need to be reminded that the unsafe streets are in towns controlled by Democrats. Then remind them that President Trump and his economic policies created the lowest Hispanic unemployment rates in history. Why isn’t our leadership speaking out with the truth—instead of pitying themselves?
Photo courtesy of DonkeyHotey, flickr
North County Report: Why Latinos Are Choosing People Over Party
Every city in San Diego County experienced a growth in the Latino voter base this year, but none more so than San Marcos, Vista and Escondido.
Jesse Marx, Vocie of San Diego, 12/19/18
As a voting bloc, San Diego County’s Latino citizens may typically side at the ballot box with Democrats but they overwhelmingly registered to vote in 2018 as independents.
Given the attention around district-based elections and the ousting of Escondido Mayor Sam Abed, a Trump acolyte, I pulled the last year’s data to get a sense of how important the Latino vote really was in November. I was surprised by what I found.
Between January and December, more than 28,000 people who qualify as Latino in the eyes of election officials — because they requested Spanish-language materials or were born in a Spanish-speaking country or their surname appears on a list provided by the Department of Justice — registered to vote in San Diego County.
About 1,200 of those folks registered Republicans. Nearly one-fifth enlisted as Democrats. And a whopping 69 percent chose the no-party-preference label.
“We’ve gotten a lot of lip service from the Democratic Party on things like immigration reform,” said Ricardo Favela, communications coordinator for Universidad Popular, a civic engagement program in San Marcos. “And then the Republican Party is going more to the right. We just continue to see both parties leaving us out in the cold.”
To be clear, there are still more Latino Democrats than Latino independents throughout the region — 176,993 to 135,838. But the gap is closing, and it mirrors a demographic shift across California. No party preference is now the second largest voting group, and the fastest growing.
Every city in San Diego County experienced a growth in the Latino voter base this year, but none more so than San Marcos, Vista and Escondido. Countywide, the Latino voter roll grew by an average of 8 percent, but those inland North County cities saw increases of 10 to 11 percent. The unincorporated areas grew by 9.5 percent.
These communities were motivated in large part by the election of President Donald Trump, and the Democratic victories in traditionally conservative places should be viewed as a repudiation of his policies. Republicans actually lost Latino voters in Coronado and Encinitas in 2018.
Still, a closer look at the voter registration data would suggest that the GOP isn’t necessarily lost to those same communities so long as Trump is the party’s standard bearer. An older generation viewed President Ronald Reagan favorably because of his amnesty work in the 1980s.
Benjamin Martinez, an Escondido activist, registered to vote this year as a Democrat but considers himself an independent. He stays within the party’s structure because he feels that’s the best way to affect change, but he doesn’t fault other Latinos who view the entire system with skepticism. He primarily blames the “corporate Democrats” who help elevate businesses above the working class.
Because there remain some shared ideals across the two-party divide, Martinez said, Latino voters — like any other demographic — will look to the candidates who “speak to them and work for them,” regardless of party affiliation.
Lilian Serrano, a research coordinator at the National Latino Research Center in San Marcos, said people just don’t want to be associated with a group that they don’t totally understand. And that not understanding stems from a lack of outreach in Latino communities, a lack of campaign literature in Spanish and the perception of immigrants as single-issue voters.
“We’re more complex than that,” she said.
She’s noticed an assumption among Democratic Party officials that “if only Latinos come out to vote, we’ll win more seats,” she said. “But you’re not taking the time to get to know them and hear what they’re about.”
Maria Nunez, an attorney, won a seat on the San Marco City Council’s District 1 as an independent. Without party support, she ran a truly grassroots effort. But convincing her neighbors that she had their best interests at heart took some serious work.
She did it by reminding, and in some cases teaching, those neighbors that the City Council seat is non-partisan. When talking to the people concerned that she wasn’t registered as a Democrat, she relied on her experience (and emphasized that she wasn’t a fan of Trump).
“I felt like I was able to connect with those individuals because of our shared history in the city, considering that I’ve been in the district almost 40 years,” she said. “I grew up in the district, and so in that sense I knew what their struggles have been.”
Going forward, she sees the question before her as, “How do I bring this silent majority to the City Council within the context of obviously the biggest issues that are facing the city, like housing, affordability, all of those things that are so prevalent?”
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