“The Opportunity for Democrats to Break Away from the Ethnic Identity Headlock”

Latino voting patterns loom large in the 2024 elections. Here in California, yes, we’re deep blue, but Latinos will likely play a key role in determining whether Democrats will bounce back from underperforming in U.S. House races in 2022.

In Arizona, Ruben Gallego—who I wrote about here almost a year ago—looks like he’s on his way to nabbing the U.S. Senate seat held by Kyrsten Sinema, barring an unforeseen late surge from former TV news person Kari Lake, who still hasn’t conceded her 2022 loss in the governor’s race.

In Texas, U.S. Senate candidate Colin Allred is a long shot to unseat Ted Cruz, especially since the Rio Grande Valley, with its Trump-leaning Mexican-American votes, will offer a bulwark against the former Baylor and NFL player

To get answers about the Hispanic vote, I reached out to Mike Madrid, the former political director of the California Republican Party, a data expert, and a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, with which he is no longer affiliated. Madrid worked on George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign and for Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa, who ran unsuccessfully against Gavin Newsom for California Governor in 2018. Madrid explores Latino voters in his new book, The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy, out this month and has advice for both parties. (Full disclosure: Mike and I are friends, and I did some editorial work on the book down the homestretch.) This interview has been edited for style, clarity, and brevity.

SK: We’ve had some time now since the Trump guilty verdict. What are you seeing in the polls?

MM: Trump consistently lost 18 to 21 percent of Republicans from New Hampshire through New Mexico on June 4. That’s a shockingly high number for any nominee. Remember four years ago, Trump lost reelection as an incumbent with 8 percent of Republicans defecting. He’s consistently polling three times that number. The real question was: What was likely to happen with the differential between 8 percent and 18 percent? Who are these new 10 to 12 percent of Republicans who’ve had it? What do they do after the convictions?

There’s been no change in the number of Republicans who are literally getting off the couch on a Tuesday night and driving down to the high school gymnasium to vote for a candidate who dropped out two months ago. That’s a very, very intense sign of opposition. Even though there seems to be some polling tightening, it’s still not nearly enough to fix the problem.

Trump and Biden have very different problems. Trump has an Election Day problem that is not showing up in the polling. Biden has a polling problem that is not showing up on Election Day. If you have to choose between either, you’d rather be Biden. There’s no question that it remains a very significant problem for Trump that not enough Republicans are coming back to support the nominee. Can it be fixed? Sure. But to be in the middle of June with 20 percent of your base saying they’re not with you is a five-alarm problem.

SK: The Biden administration finally took a dramatic move on border security. What did you think of the move, and how will it play out?

MM: I think it was really good and necessary politics. Biden needed to do it earlier. It’s a rather profound moment in Democratic Party politics. It’s the opportunity for Democrats to break away from the ethnic identity headlock in which they’ve put themselves. For the past ten years, Democrats have been losing measurable numbers of Latino voters, in part because of this hypersensitive focus on immigration as a racial identity issue—when no data is saying that that’s true. Latinos do not prioritize immigration to nearly the extent that the Democratic Party has put a premium on it. That has made Democrats less relatable to this third-generation Latino voter, which is the fastest-growing segment of the Latino vote. At a time when the Democratic Party needs to focus on working-class, economic-core pocketbook issues, they have been focused much more on border issues. This is not only not where the Latino community is at, but it’s where it’s decreasingly at. That voter segment is shrinking as compared to the overall Latino vote.

SK: Do you think Democrats are getting the message on their Latino problem?

MM: Marginally. My worry is they’re running out of time for 2024. They haven’t demonstrated any propensity to understand it. It’s not just because it’s a Latino issue. It’s because it’s a working-class issue. [Hispanics] very much separate those. They resort to the caricature of the Latino community when that is not who we’ve ever been. The Democratic Party has become a white, college-educated party. They just immediately knee-jerk react with Well, if it’s a non-white voter, then talk to them about immigration, speak to them in Spanish, talk about farm worker issues.

SK: How have MAGA Republicans been doing in terms of their approach to Latinos?

MM: That’s a great question because, as I say in the book, the only thing Republicans really need to do to get a larger share of the Latino voters is not to be racist. It’s the most direct and simple advice, but it is also very difficult for them. That’s a big part of their nativist base. A large part of what animates the Republican base is fear of change, and that’s most present in the changing complexion of the country.

Republicans are winning this vote despite their efforts, not because of them. Most other Republicans besides Trump considerably outperform him with Hispanic voters. Whether it’s Ron DeSantis in Florida, Greg Abbott in Texas, Doug Ducey in Arizona, or even (former gubernatorial candidate) Brian Dahle here in California, a no-name sacrificial lamb, they all met or exceeded Trump’s Hispanic number. The vulgarity and the nativism—the racism—of Trump is not a net positive. It’s limiting an extraordinarily strong economic populist wave moving in their direction. Blue-collar workers are shifting away from the Democratic Party. Rather than being able to ride the swelling wave, they’re standing in front of the wave and trying to stop it. Maybe that’s not a good metaphor, but you know what I’m saying.

How are they doing? There have been some goofy ads that Trump has put out with these dancing Latino families with no message, no policy, other than Salsa music and Cumbia and Mexican traditional dance music, dancing around just saying, Latinos for Trump, Latinos for Trump, which looks goofy and elementary on its face. But one thing it is doing is giving a permission structure to other Latinos who are naturally predisposed to feel that way by just saying: I kind of like Trump, too, and I see other Latinos in the party are already there. We talk a lot about permission structures that allow Republicans to vote for Biden. The obverse is true: giving Latinos a permission structure is just as important. Trump’s campaign is doing that.

SK: And you think Democrats could counter that slide by going back to what James Carville said when he was running Bill Clinton’s campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

MM: Yeah, 100 percent. Working-class issues. The party that’s going to win the next generation [of Latinos] is going to be the party that supports and is supported by a multi-ethnic working class. The Republicans have had a problem with the multi-ethnic piece. It’s breaking in their direction now. The Democrats have had a problem with the working-class piece. They can’t figure that out. That’s not what they prioritize. It’s not what their candidates run on. That’s not how they win primaries. They win them on cultural issues now. They win them on abortion. They win them on gun control. They win them on marriage equality. It’s not that Latinos are opposed to those. It’s just that they’re not nearly as prioritized as this other demographic prioritizes them, so they find themselves unrelatable.

SK: We hear more talk about how Latinos are not “monolithic” as a group, which, of course, they’re not, but in your work, what have you found to be the most useful way to break down Hispanic voters?

MM: When you talk about the diversity within the Latino community, the most significant political diversity is generational, not country of origin. Very typically, immigrants vote overwhelmingly with the Democratic Party, more than 70 percent. This was the foundation for the demographics-as-destiny argument that Democrats have pursued. They saw the change in California in the 1980s and early 1990s, and The Emerging Democratic Majority by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira came out in 2002 and made the argument that Latinos will always be ethnically focused voters. There was some reason to believe that. Latinos were behaving that way because they were under attack. But that was a long time ago. Put it this way: 45 percent of Latinos weren’t even alive when Prop. 187 [which banned most state services for non-citizens] was passed. Latino voters of the next 30 years are going to look entirely different than Latino voters of the last thirty years. The fastest growing group is now third-generation Latino voters, and they are much more economically pocketbook-driven than focused on an ethnic lens. Overwhelmingly, they identify as “typical American,” according to Pew Research. They’re emerging as a fast assimilating group, becoming more and more economic and class voters and less racially and ethnically oriented. Fifty percent of all new U.S. voters since 2020 are Latino, and 80 percent of them are U.S.-born.

SK: Are you optimistic about what Latino population growth will mean for the U.S.?

MM: The people that come here are, by definition, hopeful that this is a better place to be. That hope is central to replenishing the American mythology that my kids will have a better life than I had. That optimism is most prevalent today amongst Latinos. Now, you can argue that there’s a demographic explanation for that, and that’s true. We have more recently migrated. Migrants tend to be more optimistic than people who have been here longer. We are also younger, and optimism is a function of youth.

Trust in our institutions has hit historic lows, whether the church, the military, higher education, government, media, or anything. They’re all at historic lows. Latinos are the exception. They have a much higher confidence and trust in those institutions. Latinos are changing the cultural underpinning of what’s required to make the American experiment work—frankly, any society work, but especially democracy. To me, there’s a demographic rationale for the hope and the optimism. Everything we need to work to re-instill in other groups is already there in this younger, poorer browner demographic. There’s something beautiful about that. That’s why I think there’s reason to hope.

SK: Let’s break down some races. How do you think it’s looking for Gallego in Arizona?

MM: I think Ruben wins, in large part because he’s got such a weak opponent. But Ruben is also doing something quite extraordinary. He’s a much more progressive member in the House than he is positioning as a candidate. One of the most fascinating developments is Ruben’s stamp of approval on Biden’s executive actions. If you contrast that with Senator Alex Padilla [of California], they’re diametrically opposed. They both represent border states, but Arizona, as a battleground state, is much more centrist. Padilla’s state, of course, is very blue with a longer history of anti-immigrant sentiment. That’s why Alex got involved in politics in the first place.

Interestingly, California has a much higher rate of foreign-born Latinos than Arizona. We see a different generational perspective amongst these two men than we would have seen 30 years ago with Prop 187. Alex is still very consistent with that. Ruben is showing a much more nuanced, different direction where the Latino community is heading nationally anyway, certainly in Arizona.

SK: How does Nevada look? It was very close last cycle.

MM: Nevada is unique. I highlighted it in my book to demonstrate that external structures are sometimes key to mobilizing the vote. Without it, Latinos tend to have much lower turnout rates than other groups. We highlight the culinary union, where Latinos are more than half the membership. They’re the backbone of the Las Vegas entertainment gaming economy. That’s largely credited to Harry Reid’s machine for turning the state blue. Nevada is the one swing state heading in a more Republican direction, and this has been true for the past two election cycles. Any slippage amongst Latinos from blue to red probably puts the state in Trump’s column. The question is going to be whether or not the culinary union, which redefined Nevada politics a decade or so ago—whether or not the children of these culinary workers hold those same union, immigrant, working-class values. Or whether they will be reflective of this overall third and fourth-generation split that is seeing them move toward more Republican, more populist economics. My guess is that Nevada goes for Trump, but (Senate candidate) Jacky Rosen wins down ticket. I think both will be very close.

SK: And what about Texas?

MM: I was on a panel with [Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary] Julian Castro [on June 6]. Democrats have pinned their hopes on the Hispanic vote to turn Texas blue. That is predicated on the demographic-is-destiny theory, which has been discredited. That was really the theory of the Obama coalition. That no longer exists, in large part because Texas started becoming more Latino, and the Latino votes started moving more Republican.

More than any other Mexican-American community, the Texas Hispanic vote is measurably, decisively becoming more Republican. What’s keeping Texas more competitive is the influx of white, college-educated higher tech workers, many of whom are fleeing California’s home prices. Texas has always had the most conservative Latinos in large part because they have the longest generational history of a Mexican-American community than any other state. (New Mexico’s history is the longest, but it’s not nearly as significant as Texas.) We know that the longer the generation stays, the more conservative its politics tend to become, or at least mirror, their overall community.

SK: Then, finally, North Carolina. What have you been seeing there in recent weeks?

MM: I think North Carolina is a much more Democratic state than it appears. You’ve got this very competitive gubernatorial race, which shouldn’t be that competitive, considering the Republican candidate is like an African-American Nazi sympathizer, I guess. But I still contend that if you can get the Latino share of the electorate up to 3 and a half, maybe 4 percent with registration efforts, North Carolina should be a blue state. It went blue once in the last 20 years, in 2008, and then reverted to Republican. But no polling shows enough of a subsample of Hispanic voters to gauge that community. There are 250,000 Latinos in a state that’s going to be won or lost by 70,000. Those people are not polled and tend to break 65 to 70 percent Democrat. You’ve got to like those odds if you’re a Democrat, even though Democrats haven’t invested nearly enough in voter registration. They still believe they can get more out of African-American voters. They should have been investing much more heavily in Latinos. Just through natural growth, registration, and demographic change, they have a bigger opportunity than conventional wisdom in the polling shows.

SK: What advice do you have for the Biden team these last few months before November?

MM: They need to immediately hold a press conference and announce a Marshall plan for housing. One in five Hispanic men works in the residential construction space or a related field. That’s extraordinary. Interest rates have tripled—not Biden’s fault—on his watch, as has the devaluation of our currency by 20 percent. That has a very significant impact on real people’s lives. If they can get new housing starts going immediately, you start to bring a lot of these Latino workers who put sticks in the ground. Latino realtors and Latino mortgage brokers—you put them back to work. You go a long way toward rectifying the economic concerns of at least 20 percent of Latino households probably a lot more. The beauty of that kind of plan is that it speaks not just to workers in immediate jobs but to their aspirations of middle-class homeownership, which is increasingly out of reach.

SK: OK, last question: How will the presidential election go?

MM: The fundamentals still strongly favor a Biden reelection. But I do not see Democrats making the adjustments to stop the leakage of working-class Latino voters. I’ve been waiting for two years to see that. The second part of that is, the great irony is, if they can’t figure it out, then you will see Donald Trump elected by a historic number of Latino voters. If that happens, it is completely a failure of the Democrats’ messaging and policy strategy with Latinos. It has nothing to do with what Trump and the Republicans are doing. The fault will be on their plate.

SK: So, your best guest?

MM: I think Biden wins – today.

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