The GOP is gaining among Texas Hispanics. Women are leading the charge. - POLITICO
By: Wayne Hamilton (POLITICO)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Elections
The GOP is gaining among Texas Hispanics. Women are leading the charge.
In places where Donald Trump made some of his biggest inroads with Hispanic voters, women are playing a key role in the Republican Party's growth.
Monica De La Cruz is the GOP front-runner in one of Texas' most competitive seats in the Rio Grande Valley. | Eric Gay/AP Photo
Democrats were caught off guard by Donald Trump's numbers in South Texas in 2020. The Hispanic Republican women who live there were not.
Many of them have played a leading role in urging their neighbors in majority-Hispanic South Texas to question their traditional loyalty to the Democratic Party.
Hispanic women now serve as party chairs in the state's four southernmost border counties, spanning a distance from Brownsville almost to Laredo — places where Trump made some of his biggest inroads with Latino voters.
A half-dozen of them are running for Congress across the state's four House districts that border Mexico, including Monica De La Cruz, the GOP front-runner in one of Texas' most competitive seats in the Rio Grande Valley.
It's some of the clearest evidence that Trump's 2020 performance there may not have been an anomaly, but rather a sign of significant Republican inroads among Texas Hispanics — perhaps not enough to threaten the Democratic advantage among those voters, but enough to send ripples of fear through a party that is experiencing erosion among Hispanics across the country.
"For so long, people here just never had Republicans knocking on their doors and calling them the way we did in 2020. The majority of us are women that did it then and are doing it now because we feel it's our responsibility to keep the American Dream alive," said Mayra Flores, aleading candidate for the GOP nomination in a South Texas-based congressional seat.
For Flores, the road to becoming a Republican was similar to the path traveled by many Hispanic women in South Texas. She grew up seeing most of her immigrant family vote Democrat and felt that it was standard for Hispanics to only vote for Democrats. Then, she says, came an inflection point where she began to question her loyalty to the party.
A family member asked if she knew what both parties stood for, and after looking into it, Flores felt that her religious, anti-abortion and pro-border security views were more conservative than she'd ever thought and more in line with the GOP. Five years ago, she got involved in her local GOP and now a majority of her family votes Republican, too.
She wasn't surprised at all to see Republicans gain ground in 2020 along the Texas-Mexico border, even as Democrats and Republicans outside the region expressed shock at results in places such as Zapata County — where Trump became the first GOP presidential nominee since 1920 to carry the county.
Neighboring Starr Countysaw the most dramatic shift of any county in the state when thousands more Republicans turned out to vote than in prior elections. While President Joe Biden ultimately won the county with 52 percent of the vote to Trump's 47 percent, that paled in comparison to Hillary Clinton's 2016 performance, when she garnered 79 percent to Trump's 19 percent.
Claudia Alcazar, chairwoman of the Starr County Republican Party, switched parties about two years ago after being a Democrat her entire adult life. She said it hasn't been an easy transition in communitieslike hers that remain majority Democratic, pointing to the strain it has caused in her own family.
Alcazar, 54, said her decision to become a Republican came after discussing politics with a high school friend running for mayor.
"We went down the list of all my beliefs and at the end I was like, 'Oh my God, I am a Republican. I just didn't know it.' I was so used to being told and seeing myself as a Democrat," she said. "It's like being used to drinking Coca Cola and then one day you taste Dr. Pepper and you're like, 'wow, I really like this one.' I truly shocked myself."
After a pause, she said, "And some of my family members. They're not happy with me."
Like Alcazar, Hispanic GOP women in the Rio Grande Valley don't have one specific reason for why they ultimately switched parties, according to interviews with several Hispanic GOP women officials across South Texas and GOP operatives.
They want more border security or are staunchly against abortions. They feel their husbands, family members, neighbors and friends that are Border Patrol agents or are in law enforcement are being unfairly villainized by Democrats. They worry Democrats are hostile to the oil and gas industry, which provides many good-paying jobs in the state. They worry the left is forgetting family values and the value of work.
Broadly, they also argue that Democrats outside of the Valley have miscalculated that Hispanics there are as progressive as Hispanic voters in more liberal strongholds such as California and New York, when in reality, they're far more moderate.
Nationally, some of Trump's largest shifts in approval ratings were among Hispanic women. A report by Democratic research firm Equis in the wake of the election found that Trump's net job approval among Hispanic women, especially young ones, grew dramatically in the year leading up to the election. Conservative Latinas, in particular, also became significantly more motivated to vote leading up to the election, the report found.
And the shift for Hispanic women didn't just happen in Texas. Another analysis by Democratic voter data firm Catalist found that support for Democrats among Latinas in Nevada dropped by 11 points from 2016 to 2020, compared to Latino men, whose support declined by 6 points.
National Republican groups have already begun making investments to build on the work being done by the local Hispanic GOP leaders.
The Republican National Committee, for example, has opened four community centers in Hispanic-heavy areas of Texas, including Laredo, McAllen and San Antonio. An RNC spokesperson described the community centers as "not your traditional political field offices" but rather as places to host workshops, host movie nights and engage with the community for more than just political events.
The spokesperson said this election would represent the RNC's largest-ever presence in South Texas, noting there are already 20 full-time staff based in the area.
"It's unprecedented what we're seeing because prior to 2020 we didn't have this kind of support at all," said Flores. "I can only imagine how much more we're going to be able to do with their support."
One group, Project Red Texas, took notice of the party's gains in South Texas with Hispanic voters in 2020 and jumped in to recruit candidates for local races. The group, run by Wayne Hamilton, a long-time GOP operative and former executive director of the Republican Party of Texas, recruited 135 candidates for local races, such as county judge. Hamilton estimates that about half of those he recruited are Hispanic and a good chunk are women.
"There's no question things are changing down in the Valley," Hamilton said, acknowledging it's a new phenomenon. As recently as 2018, he said, there really wasn't a bench of GOP candidates to run, nor a lot of effort spent to recruit and organize in South Texas.
Alcazar agreed that it's only in the past two to three years that she's seen more coordination across the region — and she credits some of it to more women being involved.
"We're finally united ourselves," Alcazar said. "We're doing this because, as mothers and career women, we're finally coming out and saying we're part of this party and want to make sure our issues are paid attention to and heard."
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Hispanic women doing well. The left should LOVE that.
They're not Democrats? Cue the lefts freak out.
The facts:
In the 2020 Presidential election in Texas:
"Biden connected with Black and Latino voters, survey data indicates that 89% of Black voters and 67% of Latino voters supported the Democratic nominee ."
So perhaps there were some "inroads" made and Republicans might have even doubled their Latino voters from 2016 but Democrats are still crushing Republicans with almost 70% support. The only reason Republicans were able to double their support from 2016 is that it was practically non-existent in 2016.
This seed does indicate that Democrats need to do more to connect with one of their largest group of supporters and should work harder to draw the distinct differences between Democratic intentional policies of inclusion and the Republicans who cheer on a populist who claims Mexicans are rapists or running drugs.
Yeah, in 2020.
Since then there have been catastrophic fuck ups by the Democrats. You dont' think people notice? Just because YOU are willing to overlook them doesn't mean everybody is.
How dare they exercise the freedom.
That's the only metric they're using in the seed above to claim Republicans have made inroads with Hispanics in Texas. They claim the half dozen Latino women GOP candidates for Texas State house seats is evidence that "Trump's 2020 performance there may not have been an anomaly, but rather a sign of significant Republican inroads among Texas Hispanics".
The fact is that seems to be more of an indication that Republicans recognize how far behind they were and now have intentionally nominated a handful of Hispanic women to try and gain support they current don't have. As pointed out:
"National Republican groups have already begun making investments to build on the work being done by the local Hispanic GOP leaders."
"Project Red Texas, took notice of the party's gains in South Texas with Hispanic voters in 2020 and jumped in to recruit candidates for local races."
So yes, Republicans in Texas know how bad they did among Hispanic voters and are desperate to find a way to change that so they can win elections. They likely realize that their platform of just trying to keep Hispanics on the other side of the border isn't going to do anything about the millions of Hispanic Americans who are already here and have been legally voting (almost exclusively for Democrats) for decades.
There is no other evidence in this seed that Republicans have made any gains among Hispanic voters in Texas. The only other metric they try and use is one from Nevada showing a drop in Latino support for Democrats.
So yes, Democrats in Texas should work harder and be clearer about their inclusive diverse agenda of making America a place for all regardless of age, disability, race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, faith or lack thereof. As long as Democrats draw that clear distinction they will never lose the majority support of Hispanic Americans who conservatives have traditionally, effectively, relegated to second class citizenship and have often been told to "only speak English and culturally assimilate if you want to live in OUR 'Merica!".
"So yes, Democrats in Texas should work harder and be clearer about their inclusive diverse agenda of making America a place for all regardless of age, disability, race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, faith or lack thereof. As long as Democrats draw that clear distinction...."
The problem is...is that the Democrats are failing miserably in making that distinction clear.It's that whole "change the definition" the left likes to do. They'll give you the definition they are using in about a week.
You know common sense doesn't work for them. Reality is they don't read the articles but won't hesitate to spout off with "what they know" about the subject. Then when they are proven wrong (and the idiot) they cut and run or double down on stupid by making things up as they go.
It sure does and would have helped you if you had read my statement " There is no other evidence" than the 2020 election results which is what they are talking about when they say " where Trump became the first GOP presidential nominee since 1920 to carry the county" and "While President Joe Biden ultimately won the county with 52 percent of the vote to Trump’s 47 percent, that paled in comparison to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance, when she garnered 79 percent to Trump’s 19 percent."
As I said in reply to the "Yeah, in 2020" comment, " That's the only metric they're using in the seed".
So Republicans saw gains among Hispanic voters in the 2020 Presidential election in Texas and some Republican groups there have been " making investments" recruiting Hispanic "candidates for local races". That's all this seed actually says. If some half wit conservatives want to sit around in a circle jerk patting themselves on the back for going from 12% Hispanic support in 2016 to 24% in 2020 that's their choice.
Here is another politico article that points out the distinction in the Texas Hispanic vote for the GOP in 2020.
"Trump Didn’t Win the Latino Vote in Texas. He Won the Tejano Vote."
" In the end, Trump’s success in peeling off Latino votes in South Texas had everything to do with not talking to them as Latinos. His campaign spoke to them as Tejanos, who may be traditionally Democratic but have a set of specific concerns—among them, the oil and gas industry, gun rights and even abortion —amenable to the Republican Party’s positions, and it resonated. To be sure, it didn’t work with all of Texas’ Latinos; Trump still lost that vote by more than double digits statewide, and Joe Biden won more of the nationwide Latino vote than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. But Trump proved that seeing specific communities as persuadable voters and offering targeted messaging to match—fear of socialism in Miami-Dade’s Venezuelan and Cuban communities, for example—can be more effective than a blanket campaign that treats people as census categories. And in the end, it was enough to keep Florida and Texas in his column."
" Trump’s success in the Rio Grande Valley, says Daniel Arreola, a cultural geographer and author of Tejano South Texas , “peels back the onion on how really conservative that Tejano ranch and small-town rural population is.”