Juan Ojeda, attends a grand opening event at the ‘Latino Americans for Trump’ office in Reading, Pa., on June 12, 2024.Joe Lamberti/The Associated Press
Sitting in the Caribbean restaurant she owns on the main street of Reading, Pa., Democratic state legislator Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz recalls how Donald Trump made inroads with Latino voters last year.
There were the promises to lower prices and return to the prepandemic economy, which resonated with people in this working-class, majority-Latino city of 95,000. There was his opposition to abortion and attacks on transgender rights, which played well with culturally conservative Catholics.
Republicans also organized a competent ground game, operating a ‘Latino Americans for Trump’ office down the street from Ms. Cepeda-Freytiz’s eatery and setting up voter registration tents throughout the city. “They were definitely intentional about how they spent their time here,” she said.
Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz said circumstances have gotten worse for Latino voters since Donald Trump was elected.Adrian Morrow/The Globe and Mail
But over the past year, things have gotten worse for Latinos, she said. Not only has Mr. Trump failed to lower prices, he’s pushing some of them up with his sweeping tariffs. His cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and refusal to extend health insurance tax credits will further ramp up the cost of living.
And his immigration raids have people limiting how much time they spend outside the home, afraid they will be grabbed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
“People are in fear,” Ms. Cepeda-Freytiz said. “Our whole downtown, fewer people are going to church, fewer people are going out to hang out, to eat.”
The first signs of a Latino electoral backlash against Mr. Trump’s party were felt earlier this month, when Democratic candidates for governor won by landslides in Virginia and New Jersey. In California, voters overwhelmingly endorsed a plan to gerrymander the state in the Democrats’ favour to fight back against a Texas gerrymander demanded by the President. Exit polling in all three states showed Latinos voting Democratic by margins of about two-to-one, reversing Mr. Trump’s 2024 gains.
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With the ground shifting rapidly among this growing demographic, Latino voters may ultimately determine who controls Congress after next year’s midterms.
Nilza Serrano, chair of the California Democratic Party’s Latino Chicano Caucus, said one of her party’s mistakes in 2024 was on voter outreach: More than 40 per cent of Latino voters were not contacted by anyone from either party that year, according to polling by the media company Entravision. She tried to fix that by hosting phone banks with volunteers across the country this year ahead of the gerrymander.
The Democrats also framed the California referendum as a message to Mr. Trump on his deportation program, which has seen mass raids at farms, restaurants, factories and Home Depot parking lots. “People see the videos of mothers being separated from their children, agents breaking windows and pulling people out of their cars,” Ms. Serrano said.
U.S. federal agents detain a man during an immigration raid in Cicero, Ill., on Nov. 8.Carlos Barria/Reuters
In September, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower-court order that had prevented ICE in the Los Angeles area from using broad criteria such as race and speaking Spanish for detaining people and demanding their immigration papers.
“I have to drive around, I kid you not, with my passport in my glove compartment,” Ms. Serrano said. “That is stuff that you hear about happening in other countries.”
In Passaic, N.J., a majority-Latino town, Mayor Hector Lora said many Latinos understood Mr. Trump’s campaign promises of deportation to apply only to violent gang members. They did not expect him to target everyone in the country without legal status.
Democratic governor-elect Mikie Sherrill’s campaign provided a template for the party to follow by focusing on the same themes of affordability that once worked so well for Mr. Trump. “People need to get back on message about being the party of the working class,” Mr. Lora said.
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Carlos Cruz, a New Jersey Republican strategist, pointed to basic tactical campaign decisions – such as producing Spanish-language advertisements – as the starting point for the Republicans to recapture gains among Latinos. Ms. Sherrill ran targeted advertising and get-out-the-vote operations to win back Latino voters, he said, while the GOP did not.
Latinos remain very much in play, Mr. Cruz said: Even outside of the wide swings of the last two elections, Republicans have made steady gains with them over the past decade. He said this has to do in large part with Democrats prioritizing “woke” issues such as diversity, equity and inclusion programs over bread-and-butter economic messaging.
“Occasionally, a football player will drop the ball before they cross into the end zone. Democrats who say ‘we fixed it’ after these most recent elections are risking that,” said Mr. Cruz, who worked for a campaign group backing Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli.
Attendees gather at the opening of the ‘Latino Americans for Trump’ office in Reading.Joe Lamberti/The Associated Press
Some Latinos are willing to overlook the broad reach of Mr. Trump’s immigration raids in order to stop mass migration across the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We don’t rejoice over families being broken apart, but we also don’t rejoice over the disorder and chaos that ensues when you open the gates and let your house be flooded,” said Frank Dole, 40, a Reading voter who immigrated from Cuba in 2004 after winning a green-card lottery.
“I went to Washington, D.C., a year ago and I couldn’t go to the Abraham Lincoln Memorial without all kinds of immigrants selling products there. Who gives these people the right to take over a space?” he added.
Pastor Tony Pérez, who leads a Hispanic Baptist church in Reading, said if Mr. Trump could create an exception for undocumented people who have been living and working in the U.S. for years without trouble, he could lock down Latino votes for the Republicans. “Those who have been here 20 years or 15 years and are still illegal, if they’re productive, give them some kind of status,” he said.
So far, there is no sign the President is about to moderate his long-promised campaign to round up all undocumented people. And among Latino voters in Reading, Mr. Trump’s repeated assurances that the cost of living is better than people think aren’t getting much traction.
Mikey Cabrera, a 42-year-old Uber driver and immigrant from the Dominican Republic, said Mr. Trump promised to fix the economy “but it’s more expensive than the devil.”
“Things just keep going up and the money isn’t moving, either,” Mr. Cabrera said as he played dominoes with a group of friends on the sidewalk. “Now, he wants to take away Medicaid from people. It’s a disgrace, because poor people will die.”