OPINION:
A Republican mayoral win last weekend in McAllen, Texas, proves GOP inroads with Hispanic voters are real – a demographic shift that should worry Democrats.
President Joseph R. Biden won Hidalgo County, home of McAllen, by 17 points in 2020. The border town has 140,000 residents, 85% of them Hispanic. Although it was a narrow victory for Republican Javier Villalobos, it demonstrates a macro-realignment happening within America, where more Hispanics are flocking to the Republican Party.
In 2020, President Donald J. Trump received more votes than he did in 2016 in 78 of the nation’s 100 majority-Hispanic counties. In Texas, Mr. Trump increased his overall vote count in areas where Hispanics comprise at least 80% of the population by 10 points. And for the first time since Reconstruction, Mr. Trump was able to flip and win Zapata County, which is located along the southern border.
In McAllen, the open border policies the Biden administration are undertaking became a central local issue – Vice President Kamala Harris who has been tasked to oversee the crisis, has yet to visit the region.
Still, nationally, Republicans are making inroads with Hispanic voters, as culturally, the GOP is proving to have more in common with them than leftist progressives, who are advocating a socialist agenda.
“The argument from the left is that this country has not been good for people, other than the majority, over much of our history,” Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told RealClearPolitics. “And Hispanics just don’t buy it. And the reason they don’t buy it is very simple: They know what life is like in another country.”
In Florida, Mr. Trump did 23 points better than in 2016 in Miami-Dade, the state’s largest county with the largest Hispanic population and captured 55% of Florida’s overall Cuban-American vote. Fifteen percent of Cuban-Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 switched their vote for Mr. Trump in 2020.
Democratic data-scientist David Shor said 2020’s results should worry Democrats, who traditionally have had a stronghold on the demographic, and that the Hispanic shift from blue to red is because of how far left “white liberals” have gone.
“[W]e’ve ended up in a situation where white liberals are more left wing than Black and Hispanic Democrats on pretty much every issue: taxes, health care, policing, and even on racial issues or various measures of ‘racial resentment,’” he said. “So as white liberals increasingly define the party’s image and messaging, that’s going to turn off nonwhite conservative Democrats and push them against us.”
Democratic strategist James Carville agrees, saying progressive “wokeness” his hurting the Democratic Party.
“You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like ‘Latinx’ that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like ‘communities of color.’ I don’t know anyone who speaks like that,” Mr. Carville told Vox in April. “I don’t know anyone who lives in a ‘community of color.’ I know lots of white and Black and brown people and they all live in … neighborhoods…. This is not how voters talk.”
Sen. Rick Scott wrote Monday in an op-ed in Fox News that Hispanic realignment into the Republican Party is here to stay, and it’s Democratic hubris to believe Mr. Trump’s results in 2020 among the demographic was a fluke.
“Democratic leaders have taken their party in a direction that increasingly reflects the views of wealthy, urban, coastal elites, while failing to truly understand working-class Americans and the values and aspirations of Hispanic voters,” Mr. Scott wrote. “Democrats are out of touch, and assumed that all Hispanic voters just hate Republicans, as they do.”
Indeed, polling from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, proves Mr. Scott’s conclusion. In it 68% of Hispanic voters in battleground states view capitalism as the best form of government. Seventy-two believe more should be done to secure the southern border and stop the surge of illegal immigration; 67% feel America is losing its traditional values of faith, freedom and family; and 58% believe too many people no longer want to work and are happy living off of government assistance.
NRSC’s survey shows a whopping 80% of Hispanics – four-fifths of all Hispanic voters – believe America’s public schools are failing them and that we’re falling behind other nations.
Only one political party is talking about these issues and giving voice to Hispanic Americans’ concerns — the GOP. So as the left continues to push critical-race theory, more government spending and federal welfare, open borders, defunding the police and places an emphasis on climate change over organized religion, they will continue to lose Hispanic voters. That’s great news for Republicans heading into 2022.
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