Talking Points Memo
By Tierney Sneed
September 1, 2015
The
havoc Donald Trump is wreaking on the presidential race is just the
beginning of the problems he is poised to cause Republicans in 2016.
Already Trump and his anti-immigrant
rhetoric is becoming a flashpoint in the down-the-ballot campaigns. The
direction he is pulling his fellow Republicans could put in jeopardy
the GOP's majority in the Senate, as some of the cycle's most
competitive races are taking place in states with heavy
Latino populations.
Of
the five states that had the largest share of Hispanic voters in 2012
cycle, Florida, Colorado and Nevada are holding what are expected to be
extremely contentious
Senate races. And already, some of the candidates in those races have
been expected to weigh in on Trump's antics, which involve labeling
Mexicans "rapists" and calling for the end of birth citizenship.
“That’s
a question that comes up all the time,” Darryl Glenn, a Republican
running for Senate in Colorado, told TPM. "What I’m hearing as I travel
across the state is
that he’s hitting the nerve. He’s addressing issues that we need to
talk about.”
GOP
Senate candidates are stuck between placating primary voters without
completely isolating the Latino voters, who are a quickly growing share
of each state's electorate.
"Immigration
does come up, and what we do as a party is we talk about what we
recognize: that we recognize that we have a broken immigration system,"
said Wadi Gaitan,
communications director of the Florida GOP.
That
Trump has earned the scorn of Hispanic voters is clear: Two-thirds of
Hispanics in a recent Gallup poll viewed Trump unfavorably. Whether his
reputation will stick
to the Republican Party at large is still up for debate. A Univision
survey, for instance, showed that only 14 percent of Hispanic voters
believed Trump’s views represented the GOP's.
Nevertheless, Democrats are pouncing.
“There
has been huge negative response from a lot of people in Florida to what
they’re seeing from Donald Trump right now,” said Joshua Karp, a
spokesman for Rep. Patrick
Murphy’s (D-FL) Senate campaign.
Florida
In
Florida, where Trump owns many properties, the Hispanic vote went to
Obama 60 percent to 39 percent in 2012 and is expected to grow 20
percent of the electorate by
2016 from the 17 percent it was then.
Murphy
and Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) are vying for the Democratic nomination
for Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) Senate seat, which he is vacating for his
presidential run. The
Republican Senate primary is splintered among a number of candidates,
including Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Lt. Governor Carlos
Lopez-Cantera.
While
the Grayson-Murphy primary is expected to be a bloody one, both have
jumped on the opportunity to criticize Trump and his rhetoric regarding
immigrants.
Grayson, himself described as the Trump of the left for his brash style, has called Trump’s positions “ subliminal racism.”
“He’s
thrown away the dog whistle,” Grayson said on MSNBC last week. "It used
to be that you had to speak in metaphors in order to exhibit your
racism. now you can just
come out and be racist.”
Murphy,
meanwhile, appeared on Jorge Ramos’s show over the weekend, just days
after Ramos was kicked out of a Trump presser for grilling him on
immigration.
“What
happened to you this week is exactly what's wrong with politics today,”
Murphy told Ramos. “That Donald Trump can do what he did, have this
hateful, racist rhetoric,
this demeanor, and get away with it, and get praised by certain people
and then act seriously about running for the President of the United
States of America is uncalled for. He owes you an apology and the entire
community.”
On the GOP side, the candidates have been all over the map as to where they stand on Trump.
Lopez-Cantera
has ducked questions about the billionaire, saying soon after the July
announcement of his candidacy that he was “happy to talk about any
policy matters"
instead.
Rep.
David Jolly (R-FL), another Senate candidate, has been willing to
criticize Trump, saying last week, “We already has one president who
divides us, I hope we don’t
have another." Jolly also said, “I don’t think that Donald Trump will
be our nominee, so it’s not something that I’m concerned about.”
Meanwhile Todd Wilcox, a Florida businessman running for the GOP Senate nomination, has been more willing to embrace Trump.
“We
need diversity of thought, and a diversity of tone and candor in the
primary process, and he’s providing that,” Wilcox said in July. “And
he’s a masterful entertainer.
He’s getting traction because he’s talking about something that people
want solved, and he’s doing it in a way that’s getting him a lot of
attention.”
Florida
GOP strategist Rick Wilson, who is advising Lopez-Cantera, told The
Hill the race will come down to the candidates' own strengths, but still
had some words of
caution:
"The
worst case scenario is that Trump is running a campaign that is only
about Trump, and [GOP Senate candidates] are constantly under the gun
and trying to answer the
latest policy announcement he makes,” Wilson said.
Colorado
The
challenge to incumbent Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet (D) is expected to
be a competitive one, considering his contentious, come-from behind
victory in 2010.
Hispanic
voters in the the state favored Obama 75 percent to 23 percent in 2012,
and by 2016 the Hispanic share of the electorate is expected to grow to
16 percent from
14 percent in 2012. Bennet, it should be noted, was one of the “Gang of
Eight” senators pushing for bipartisan immigration reform that passed
in the Senate in 2013 but stalled in the House.
"With
Michael’s leadership with comprehensive immigration reform, it will be
very clear who is standing up for the Latino community and that's
definitely not Trump," said
state Sen. Jessie Ulibarri, a Democrat who works on immigration issues
in Colorado
The Republican primary is only just beginning to pick up steam, but Trump is already making a mark.
“You
have people who really are supportive of his positions and how open he
is about that and you have some people who are like, ‘Whoa, where is
this guy coming from?
Is he really going to be elected?'” Glenn told TPM. “But overall I
think the general consensus is, they’re happy we’re talking about it.”
Glenn
said Trump’s rhetoric was “just not my style,” but he has taken up
conservative positions on immigration and said he’s “absolutely opposed
to blanket amnesty” and
“policies that encourage people to violate the rule of law.”
The
state's other GOP Senate candidate Greg Lopez, a former mayor and
director of the Small Business Administration in Parker, Colo., has
sought to create more sunlight
between himself and Trump.
"With
my network and reputation here in Colorado, and people understanding
what I stand for, I know they're not going to connect me to Trump,"
Lopez told NBC News. "My
network will be able to clearly articulate what I represent -- which is
not close to what Donald Trump represents."
Also
getting attention in Colorado is a billboard in Orchard Mesa near Grand
Junction depicting Trump in a suit of armor dueling a dragon labeled as
the “PC Muslim Marxist
Media”
Nevada
As
soon as Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) declared his candidacy for Senate Minority
Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) seat, he was quickly touted as a GOP bridge
builder to the Hispanic
community, which is expected to grow to 19 percent of the electorate
from 16 percent in 2012 and broke for Obama 70 percent to 25 percent
that election cycle. Heck has been successful in winning over Latino
voters in his previous congressional races.
So
far, however, Heck has also been dragged into the Trump mud. At an
appearance at the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce last week, Heck
said ending birthright citizenship “needs to be part of the discussion,” even as he said, “I don’t talk
about Donald.”
Former
state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, the leading Democratic
candidate to replace Reid (who is retiring), is Latina, and has taken to
Facebook to slam
Trump while implicating other Republicans:
“We’ve
all heard Donald Trump’s awful comments about Mexican immigrants –
they’re so offensive that I won’t repeat them here. And as someone who
would be the first Latina
to ever serve in the U.S. Senate, I’m especially disgusted,” she wrote
in July. “But some extremist Republicans are actually defending Trump’s
outrageous remarks! It’s baffling, and it’s flat-out wrong. That kind of
hateful speech has no place in our politics.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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