Soon after Gabriela Pineda exited the L.A. Convention Center earlier this month clutching her naturalization papers, the newly minted citizen marched straight over to a table setup by Democratic Party organizers to subscribe voters.
Among the list of registration forms was a pamphlet titled “GOP Clown Car 2016.” It highlighted pictures of all the Republican presidential candidates. A word balloon on the image of Donald Trump, the leader for the Republican nomination, cited his controversial remarks about unlawful immigrants from Mexico: “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime,” it read. “They’re rapists.”
For Democrats and Republicans, convincing un-registered Latino voters — around 12 million, as outlined by some advocacy associations — to vote in the November 2016 election may be the first step to getting the support of a critical bloc of voters. Beyond swearing-in ceremonies, schools, and perhaps grocery stores, both sides are scrambling to opt-in Latino voters.
In populated Latino areas, Democratic party along with progressive activists are making an effort to promoting the inflammatory immigration rhetoric of Trump and a few other Republican candidates as a part of their voter registration campaigns. It has appeared in video and radio advertisements run across voter education websites, and also appeared at last month’s Latin Grammy awards, where Mexican rocker star Maná and long-time norteño band Los Tigres del Norte concluded a stage performance by waving a sign in Spanish that read “Latinos united don’t vote for racists.”
“Our best spokespeople are the Republican candidates,” said Randy Borntrager, the political director for PFAW (People for the American Way), a liberal activist party which released radio ads recently in Spanish and English using Trump asan incentive to encourage Hispanics to vote in local Virginia elections.
In one commercial ad, a mother insists on her daughter to vote “para callarle la bocota a Trump” (“to shut Trump’s big mouth”).Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment, but Fred Doucette, the co-chairman of Trump’s campaign in New Hampshire, stated that most Latinos he had met weren’t offended by Trump’s comments. “The ones that are upset are the ones that are illegal quite frankly,” he said.
It’s true that Latinos, like some other racial and ethnic groups, are not monolithic. Some Latino voters support Trump or some other Republican candidates, including senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, both Cuban-American, and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida who speaks fluent Spanish.
Alfonso Aguilar, director of Latino partnership for the conservative American Principles Project (APP) acknowledges that “Donald Trump is a political gift to the Democratic political machine,” because he identifies the Republican Party as the party of Trump.
And that is an issue, because the party requires Latino voters. The Pew Hispanic Center said Latinos actually made up 10 percent of the electorate in the 2012 election and overwhelmingly picked President Barack Obama (71 percent) over his Republican opposition Mitt Romney (27 percent).
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