Buzzfeed
By Adrian Carrasquillo
September 13, 2015
The
Clinton campaign is looking to capitalize on Donald Trump: specifically
his deep, deep unpopularity with the Latino voters many view as
critical voters in 2016.
The
campaign will soon launch an initiative called “Latinos con Hillary”
during the first week of October (timed to coincide with Hispanic
Heritage Month), according to
sources familiar with the plans. Campaign officials tasked with Latino
media and outreach have already increased their work, taking on new
meetings, and mapping out the regional media strategy.
Campaign
officials also plan to use their bilingual digital presence over the
next month to highlight the contributions of Latinos, and hope to
contrast her record on
issues that matter to Hispanics with Republican candidates. Latino
fundraisers are on tap too.
The
opportunity that the campaign sees: Trump’s cratering popularity with
Latinos. Wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s disparaging remarks about
Mexicans and undocumented
immigrants in both English and Spanish-language media have led to a -51
favorability with Latinos, according to a recent Gallup poll. The same
poll saw Clinton leading all presidential contenders at +40.
“Never
before in an election at this stage in the presidential primary race
have the Spanish-language networks been paying this much attention,”
said Ken Oliver-Mendez,
the director of the conservative watchdog MRC Latino. “Trump, like he
is in English, has become practically a daily staple.”
Which is exactly what the campaign wants to see.
The
candidate has appeared to delighted to speak about Trump in recent
weeks, a bright spot as polling has flagged nationally and in Iowa and
New Hampshire, as stories
about Clinton’s email continue to dominate headlines. In
Spanish-language news, the email issue has been dwarfed by Trump, but
has risen some in recent weeks, Oliver-Mendez said.
It doesn’t appear to be influencing her support from Hispanics, however.
The
+40 favorability in the Gallup poll is similar to the +43 she had in a
Gallup poll during the 2008 cycle. Despite losing to Obama, she actually
beat him 2-to-1 among
Hispanics, and they were credited with helping her extend the race, as
they made up 33% of voters in the Texas primary, which she won handily.
This
time around, Clinton has already done organizing events in states with
large Latino populations like Colorado. Campaign officials said Latino
outreach director Lorella
Praeli, who has met with community leaders while on trips with Clinton,
will start going off on her own more often during Hispanic Heritage
Month — she spoke to the Democratic Hispanic Caucus on Saturday — and
will be meeting elected officials and local advocates
in different cities, in an effort to familiarize the campaign with
their concerns.
Jorge
Silva, the new Hispanic media director, is ramping up the Latino
regional media strategy in key states over the next month, as he did
with Sen. Harry Reid in local
newspapers and radio stations.
There
are also plans to launch a Latino leaders summit series. The first
stop, possibly in Colorado in November, would have community leaders
speak on topics like the
economy, health care, and education, and then bring their investment in
Clinton back to their communities, according to a source familiar with
the plan.
Hispanic
Heritage Month will also see a focus on Latinas, which has also been
baked into the just launched Women for Hillary initiative. On issues
like equal pay and health
care, the campaign says, the reality is even starker for many women of
color.
The
focus makes sense: Women in every ethnic subgroup vote at higher rates
than their male counterparts, including Latinas, according to a paper
written by Maya Harris
last year, who later joined the Clinton camp as a senior advisor.
The
next few months are not just the lead up to the caucuses and primaries
but will also see the beginning of fundraisers for specific coalitions.
As BuzzFeed News reported,
a major Latino fundraiser is in the works for Los Angeles in October,
but may now happen in November.
At
the time sources familiar with the campaign meeting said a spirited
discussion took place over accepting lower dollar donations, framed as a
way of making more people
feel invested in the success of the campaign. Since then the campaign
has held fundraisers where they accepted $500 and $1,000 donations.
And
now, Jose Villarreal, the campaign treasurer who is serving as the
informal lead on Hispanic fundraising, is looking to do a Latino
fundraiser in New York City for
November that would feature community leaders, celebrities, and
artists, and accept lower-dollar donations, a source said. The campaign
did not confirm either fundraiser.
(For
his part, Trump has also mobilized Latino celebrities but in a markedly
different way: Bachata star Romeo Santos yelled “Fuck Trump!” at a
Barclays Center concert
in New York in front of close to 20,000 people. Santos told the crowd
that the developer wants to kick out Mexicans but they help build his
towers. Mexican rock band Maná compared Trump to Hitler and spoke out
against him in six states in front of 150,000
mostly Hispanic fans.)
Latino
Democrats and advocates believe not enough has been said by Hispanic
leaders and presidential candidates to pushback on Trump as vigorously
as they feel he is attacking
Mexicans and immigrants. They said Clinton can emerge as that champion
for the community, pointing to previous instances where it happened.
“It
does become a rallying point because the community feels threatened
right now,” said Jose Parra, a former senior advisor to Reid in Nevada,
pointing to the beating
of a homeless Hispanic U.S. citizen who was beat up by two men
allegedly inspired by Trump. “Words do matter.”
Parra
said Reid was able to defeat Sharron Angle in 2010 fueled by Latino
voters who saw her comments on immigration as offensive and because Reid
leaned into the issue.
He
pointed to work done by polling firm Latino Decisions, whose founders
have since joined the Clinton campaign, showing that instances like in
Nevada and Mitt Romney
calling on undocumented immigrants to self-deport can possibly be a
campaign’s most effective mobilizing tool.
The
campaign isn’t alone in trying to use Trump to get Latinos involved in
the election. The Latino Victory Project, a Democratic fundraising
effort, is running ads in
English and Spanish in Nevada and Colorado and online starting Monday.
The video features actors reading comments made by not just Trump but
also Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal and calls on Hispanics to vote.
While
Latinos are often lumped together, they are geographically and
ethnically diverse and don’t always line up monolithically. But certain
instances can be rallying
points, said Mark Hugo Lopez of Pew Hispanic.
“Research
has shown that many see their own fate tied to the fate of other
Hispanics,” he said. “Some will see [anti-immigrant rhetoric] as an
attack on all Hispanics
so it’s very possible it could be a galvanizing force.”
The
problem for Republicans, he explained, is that the party already has a
very low rating with Hispanic voters, something that “has been true for
10 years now.”
“One
particular survey question we’ve asked for years is who has more
concern for Hispanics, Democrats, Republicans or neither,” he said.
Republicans have only been at
10-15% over the last decade, he said.
Democrats
say Clinton’s contrasts with the GOP will not only be made by the
campaign but will be visible this week during the second Republican
debate.
“The
GOP debate is coming and Republican frontrunners are going to continue
to extol these xenophobic comments while Hispanic Heritage Month is
happening,” said 20-year
Nevada veteran strategist Andres Ramirez. “So the campaign will be
expanding these resources while Republicans are alienating the
community.”
In
Nevada, where the Clinton campaign has stacked operatives with
experience in the state like state director Emmy Ruiz and organizing
director Jorge Neri, along with
the addition of Silva, Ramirez said the campaign isn’t doing anything
revolutionary, but it’s doing the early grunt work necessary to win the
caucus.
No
candidate has the sizable support and investment that the Clinton
campaign has made with Latinos, Ramirez said, noting that the clock is
ticking for a candidate like
Biden to jump in, which would be “for a smaller universe of voters
that’s available because the Clinton campaign is doing its due
diligence.”
The
Nevada caucus could serve as an early test of how Clinton is doing this
go-round in energizing Hispanic voters; supporters need to be educated
on everything from their
caucus location to being invested enough to want to give an hour and a
half of their time for it. The work of the campaign could mean the
difference between Hispanics being 20% of participants to 33%, Democrats
say.
But,
per a Pew Hispanic projection for BuzzFeed News, 11.2% of eligible
voters in the 12 Super Tuesday states would be Latino — so it doesn’t
end there.
“It’s not a Latino story or a Super Tuesday story, it’s part of a grander plan to get to 270,” Ramirez said.
Still,
Democrats caution that the Clinton campaign must seek to be innovative
and push the envelope when it comes to Latino outreach because of the
“dangerous” narrative
that has emerged post-Trump.
“How
are you being brilliant?” an experienced operative said. “There has to
be an urgency. How will it be different from what Obama did to Romney?”
While Trump isn’t yet the nominee, the strategist Parra said he has already succeeded in getting Hispanics to pay attention.
“Trump
is trying to use fear to get the Republican base to vote but
unwittingly he’s also sowing fear in the hearts of Latinos that are
going to turnout as well,” he said.
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