New York Times
By Nicholas Confessore and Julia Preston
March 10, 2016
The
billionaire George Soros and other liberal donors will bankroll a new
$15 million campaign to mobilize Latinos and other immigrants this fall,
hoping to channel outrage at the political
rhetoric of Donald J. Trump and other Republicans into a surge of votes
for Democratic candidates in November.
Strategists
involved said the new spending would be the largest Democratic
voter-turnout effort ever devoted exclusively to Latino and immigrant
voters. Most of the money will be spent through
organizations in Colorado, Florida and Nevada, states with large or
growing Latino and Asian populations that will be pivotal in the
presidential race and in the battle for control of the Senate.
The
outreach, which will be coordinated through a new “super PAC” called
Immigrant Voters Win PAC, will be more explicitly political and partisan
than past efforts, the strategists said:
The goal was to not only turn out committed Latinos already voting
Democratic but also find and persuade immigrant swing voters.
Ultimately, organizers hope to get at least 400,000 new Democratic
voters to the polls in November.
“This
is really taking the gloves off,” said Cristóbal Alex, the president of
the Latino Victory Project, one of several national pro-immigration or
Hispanic-oriented groups working with
the super PAC. “From the first day he attacked us, he called us rapists
and thieves,” Mr. Alex said of Mr. Trump. “We could have a giant wall
built and millions of families broken apart. The country is on the
precipice.”
The
effort comes amid signs of a Democratic enthusiasm gap that has worried
some of the party’s leading strategists. While Republican voters are
turning out in droves, often to vote for Mr.
Trump, millions of Democratic voters have sat out the party’s primary
between Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Democrats
are confronting lingering dismay among some Latinos regarding President
Obama, who has not delivered a promised immigration overhaul and has
deported more than two million people.
At the same time, conservatives are already investing heavily to woo
and turn out right-leaning Hispanic voters: A group called the Libre
Initiative, financed by the Koch brothers’ political network, is
expected to spend more than $10 million through November
and already has dozens of field organizers in nine states.
Both
campaigns are unfolding against a demographic surge that is reordering
American presidential politics, providing millions of new voters for
Democrats while stirring an angry counterreaction
on the right, where working-class white voters have rallied to Mr.
Trump’s promises to end illegal immigration, to build an enormous wall
along the Mexican border, and to expel undocumented workers who are
already here.
For
Mr. Soros, who will contribute $5 million to the super PAC, the effort
represents a return to the large-scale political spending that made him a
liberal hero — and conservative boogeyman
— in 2004, when he helped organize a failed $200 million advertising
and voter-mobilization campaign to unseat President George W. Bush. His
contributions to super PACs and other explicitly political organizations
this cycle will soon exceed $13 million, his
largest investment since the 2004 election. Mr. Soros has committed
another $5 million to a Democratic-led legal campaign to contest
restrictive voting laws in states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and North
Carolina.
Mr.
Soros, a financier who fled his native Hungary in his teens during the
Nazi occupation, has long funded less overtly political efforts to
educate and organize immigrants. But in an email,
Mr. Soros said he had been particularly struck by the tone of the 2016
race, in which Mr. Trump and other Republican candidates have also
called to block Muslim refugees from entering the country.
“The
intense anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has been fueled by
the Republican primary is deeply offensive,” Mr. Soros said. “It is
harmful to our democracy and to our national
interests. There should be consequences for the outrageous statements
and proposals that we’ve regularly heard.”
Those
involved with the new endeavor said it was also a response to
longstanding complaints among Latino organizers that liberal donors —
including members of the Democracy Alliance, which
Mr. Soros helped start after Mr. Bush’s re-election — had been stingy
with funding. In past elections, some local groups most active in
turning out Democratic-leaning Latino and immigrant voters have not had
enough money to fully participate in so-called “tables”
where labor, abortion rights, and environmental organizations
coordinate strategy in key states.
“One
reason we had lower turnout is because of historical underinvestment in
our community,” Mr. Alex said. “Folks who want a progressive vision of
the country have to match what is happening
on the right. Now we are seeing a recognition by certain donors of the
importance of our vote.”
Rather
than start new organizations, the new effort will mostly provide money
and technical assistance to those already active in Latino and immigrant
communities. The Center for Community
Change Action, a Washington-based liberal organization, will develop a
national field program with groups on the ground and will measure their
performance.
Organizers
said they hoped to start as early as May knocking on doors, calling and
sending mailings to reach 728,000 voters — mainly Latinos and Asians —
in Colorado, Nevada and Florida.
That timing will allow them to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision,
expected this June, on Mr. Obama’s executive actions to shield millions
of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Latinos
are a large enough share of voters in those three states to sway the
outcome of close races. Mr. Obama won all three in 2008 and again in
2012, while Republicans have won Senate and
governor seats in the states during the same period.
Deepak
Bhargava, the center’s executive director, said the organizers would be
provided data to help identify likely voters and recruit local
volunteers to remain in contact with them through
November. America’s Voice, which is active in lobbying for immigration
reform in Washington, will conduct bilingual polling in Spanish and
English.
In
recent years, the Service Employees International Union and other labor
groups have backed an organization called Mi Familia Vota (“My Family
Votes”) Education Fund, which promoted naturalization
and voter registration among Latinos. The group has helped drive up
Latino voter numbers, but some believe its effect was limited because it
could not engage in openly partisan voter turnout.
The
new campaign will be funded directly by individual donors, rather than
by their foundations, allowing the money to be used for more overt
political activity, including expressly advocating
Democratic candidates.
“We
will be naming names,” Mr. Bhargava said. “It seems to us that Trump’s
nativism has infected nearly the whole Republican Party, and we need to
exact an electoral toll.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment