In the age of Trump, reaching Latino voters hits all angles as midterms approach

With more than 30 fellow immigrants lined up to vote, Bruno and Maria Lopez took turns and followed all the steps – they checked in with polling monitors, took a ballot, filled it out.

When they were done, they even got a pair of “I voted” stickers.

It was all a rehearsal for the real thing – once they become citizens.

The couple, long time green card holders and legal residents, had just finished attending a class on the American voting process. In that class, held in mid-September, they got step-by-step instructions on how to fill out a voter registration form and how to vote. And the class on voting was preceded by another class aimed at helping them pass their citizenship exams.

The classes – offered in Spanish by the immigrant rights group TODEC Legal Center – are part of a multi-prong civic engagement program aimed at helping turn legal permanent residents throughout Southern California into American citizens, registering those who are citizens to vote, and then gently nagging them to the polls on Election Day.

Plus, this election may include an extra incentive for many in the Latino community: President Donald Trump.

“That’s an activator,” Luz Gallegos, TODEC community programs director, said of Trump’s rhetoric and his administration’s policies that have affected the Hispanic community.

“Our undocumented community is at risk. Our legal permanent residents are at risk. Our community is being criminalized,” Gallegos said.

“For us, it’s personal,” she added.

“We need to get people out to vote. Voting is a power we have.”

But first, eligible voters need to know what’s up.

Trump factor

“When is the next election?” Gallegos enthusiastically asked the group that filled a room in their downtown Perris building on Sept. 21.

Two people guessed. Both were wrong.

“That’s part of the challenge,” Gallegos said afterwards.

“People need to become educated, learn about the issues and the candidates, and not just follow whatever any one party or organization tells them. They need to do their own research and choose what and who’s best for them.”

Long-time immigrant rights advocates like Gallegos say they have seen fear and concern, not just from people living in the country illegally but legal residents who are not citizens.

People like Alicia Rodriguez, who has been a legal resident for more than 20 years and is now applying for citizenship “in case laws change.”

“I am worried,” said Rodriguez, after attending citizenship and voting workshops at the TODEC office in Perris.  “I want to stay here with my children. My life is here.”

Bruno Lopez, 69, who was at the workshops with his wife, said he’s not fearful that his legal status of decades could change. But, he said, his children want him to become a citizen, and he’s decided he agrees, “so I can vote.”

Mid-term elections can’t compare to a sexy presidential election, and it’s no secret that midterms draw fewer voters.

But there’s a lot at stake in the Nov. 6 election, including which political party will take control of the U.S. House and Senate. In California alone, there are at least seven key GOP-held districts Democrats hope to tip their way and Republicans hope they can hold on to.

Latinos could play a key role, experts say – if they vote.

One out of every four California voters is Hispanic. In Southern California, the percentage dips lower only in Orange County, where Latinos account for about one in five voters. But Latinos make up 34 percent of the registered voters in Los Angeles County, 32.5 percent in Riverside County and 37.6 percent in San Bernardino County.

RELATED STORY: Health provider AltaMed takes on active, innovative role to get voters to the polls

And as the midterm approaches, enthusiasm among Latino voters appears high.

About half of registered voters say they are more enthusiastic about voting this year than in previous congressional elections, the highest level since 2006, according to the Pew Research Center.  Those who plan to pull the lever for the Democrat in their district are a little more enthusiastic: 55 percent compared to 50 percent of registered Latino voters who plan to back Republican candidates, Pew reported, in June, after interviewing 2002 adults.

Meanwhile, Pew found that about two-thirds of Americans, or 65 percent, view the outcome of this year’s congressional elections as very important to the country. Again, Democrats were more inclined than Republicans to see it that way; 70 percent vs. 62 percent.

The reason, advocates say, is President Trump.

“This whole campaign started because we had Latino community members come and say they were tired of being attacked by this administration,” said Karina Martinez, a spokeswoman for a pro-immigrant group called Mi Familia Vota (My Family Votes).

“They are tired of being in this atmosphere, and they wanted to get together to change it. And they knew that to change it, they had to get people to vote,” said Martinez, whose national civic engagement group works in California and five other states.

“People were saying we weren’t inspired to vote before…But, now, we’ve seen the things he’s done,” she said referring to Trump and ticking off a list of community complaints, from the treatment of Puerto Rico after last year’s hurricane to the termination of the DACA program to the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border.

Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development, said that “greater turnout will happen because of the current political climate, which is anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-handicap, anti-everybody. The best way to react is in the voting booth.”

But Latinos aren’t the only group that might feel extra motivated to vote.

“The Trump factor could increase Latino voters, but it’s going to increase everyone else’s turnout as well, including white Republicans,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc.

The difference, if there is one, could be a large subset of the Latino voting block – young people.

“When you’re targeting Latinos, you’re targeting millennials,” Mitchell said.

Latino Millenials

A lot of the get-out-the-vote drives focus on millennials because they make up 44 percent of the Latino eligible voters.

NextGen California, for example, is spending $3.5 million to register and organize young voters across the state.

Mi Famila Vota has launched a digital voter campaign that includes outreach messaging on Instagram, Facebook and Spotify, as well as text services and other platforms. The campaign is called USA Tu Poder (Use Your Power), and the organization is using digital platforms because young Latinos are tapping technology at a higher rate, Martinez said.

“Studies show that as long as you are exposed to messages, you are more likely to register and vote,” Martinez said. “It sounds ridiculous, but a lot of people are just not exposed to this information.”

It doesn’t sound ridiculous to Jennie Carreon, associate vice president of civic engagement for AltaMed Health Services, which has employees reaching out to low-propensity voters near its 52 clinics in Los Angeles and Orange County.

“We spoke to 252,000 people in the last three weeks and 92 percent of them have said, ‘I didn’t even know there is an election’,” Carreon said.

Young Latinos might represent a large ‘get’ for people hoping to mobilize the broader Latino vote – almost 39 percent of Latino voters in California are between 18 to 34 years old. But youth comes with some disadvantages.

“They’re a low turnout population,” said Political Data’s Mitchell of young voters.

“Because they’re younger, they move a lot. The average American age 18 to 28 moves four to five times in a 10 year period. In a 10 year period, we have four to five elections. So, they’re moving once per election. And for Latinos, the number increases by about 30 percent,” Mitchell said.

Prof. Matt Barreto is faculty director of UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Initiative, which analyzed the Latino vote in Los Angeles and Orange counties after the last June election.  Here’s what they found: the Latino vote increased more than any other demographic in Los Angeles County, a growth of about 75 percent when compared to the 2014 election.

In Orange County, the report stated, majority-Latino precincts saw big gains, (big gains, percentage-wise; the number of ballots cast were only in the hundreds.) Those include precincts in the hotly contested CA-39 race, where Democrat Gil Cisneros and Republican Kim Young are vying for the seat that will be vacated by outgoing Congressman Ed Royce.

The Latino vote “was critical in pushing Cisneros through to the top,” according to the report.

Meanwhile, California is seeing an uptick in voter registration thanks to the Department of Motor Vehicles’ new “Motor Voter” program that automatically registers people to vote when they get or renew a license unless they opt out. In the first two and a half months of the California Motor Voter program, the DMV completed almost 793,000 transactions, including more than 259,000 new voter registrations, the Secretary of State office reported in July. (Some 23,000 people, however, were registered in error, the DMV acknowledged earlier this month.)

Putting it altogether, people like Gallegos, the activist with TODEC, believe it could make a difference come Nov. 6. As long as voters get out to vote.

At the end of her recent workshop, Gallegos asked again more than 30 legal permanent residents, new citizens and future citizens for the date of the next election.

An hour earlier, the same group couldn’t answer this question.

This time, they shouted in unison: “November 6.”

RELATED STORIES

Health provider AltaMed takes on active, innovative role to get voters to the polls

Legal non-citizen immigrants will help non-English speaking voters on Election Day

Will Democrats improve on primary’s blue ripple with stronger turnout in November election?

In House battle for CA 39, the immigrant vote and Trump’s hard-line policies loom large