Alexandra Ferguson
Reading, Pennsylvania (CNN) — Tim Walz, fresh from his vice presidential debate, arrived Wednesday night at a Puerto Rican-owned restaurant here in southeastern Pennsylvania to speak to Latino voters.
“This is going to depend on our ‘blue wall’ states, on Pennsylvania,” the Minnesota governor said at the Mofongo restaurant as diners sipped colorful drinks.
“I could walk straight past this restaurant,” he added.
At the same time, a few blocks away, a Donald Trump campaign office hummed with activity, as Latino supporters of the former president answered the phones in English and Spanish.
Marcia Heras, an Ecuadorian immigrant, drove an hour from Allentown to answer the calls.
“Family, life and the end of war,” Heras told CNN, were the lifelong conservative’s reasons for supporting Trump.
This snapshot of dueling outreach efforts on a rainy weeknight offers a small glimpse of how crucial the Latino vote is to the Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state in which the last two elections presidential elections have been decided by a single point.
A person wears a “Latinos with Harris Walz” sticker in Pennsylvania. Credit: CNN
A growing population
More than one million Hispanics or Latinos live in Pennsylvania, according to recent census data, and the Pew Research Center estimates that 615,000 of them will be able to vote in November. Although the state remains predominantly white, Hispanic or Latino residents now make up about 9% of the population, census figures show, growing more than 40% since 2010.
Much of the growth has occurred in the “222 Corridor,” a group of cities around U.S. Highway 222 that includes Reading, Allentown and Lancaster.
Latino voters talk about what matters to them in the US elections.
In 2020, Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes and won a large majority of the Latino vote, both at the state level and nationally. Four years earlier, Trump had won by a narrow margin, but had lost Latino voters to Hillary Clinton.
Although in a recent NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll, Harris far outperformed Trump among registered Latino voters nationwide, 54% to 40%, her 14-point margin lagged behind previous Democratic presidential candidates in this demographic group. Biden won Latino voters by 33 points in 2020, while Clinton did so by 38 points.
Even at a recent Harris campaign rally in Allentown, there were signs of that loss of support among the vice president’s many enthusiastic supporters.
Héctor Santana, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic, told CNN that he has been voting Democratic for 20 years, but is undecided this year.
“I am not yet decided because the fundamental basis that I have always sought is which candidate takes into account the interests of Hispanics,” Santana said in Spanish. “Today, I have not seen that (from any candidate).”
Belén mortgage lender Carmen Dancsecs said she is concerned that some Latino voters will stay home in November.
“I think there are too many people who are like… in troubled waters. “They don’t know what to expect,” Dancsecs told CNN.
Harris leads the preferences of Latino voters, according to survey
Multiple strategies for Harris
Harris’ campaign is pursuing multiple strategies to boost support among Pennsylvania’s Latino voters in the final weeks leading up to Election Day.
These include deploying campaign surrogates, garnering more endorsements from Latino celebrities and investing in more advertising aimed at Latino voters, according to several Harris advisers and allies.
“The more we are able to effectively spread the vice president’s message about who she is and where she comes from, that she is a fighter, that she has been fighting for the people for a long time and that she has stood up to bad actors, whether it was the big banks during the mortgage crisis, for-profit colleges ripping off their students… this is a message that resonates with Latino men and women,” a senior Harris campaign adviser told CNN.
Last month, the campaign announced it would spend $3 million on new ads on Spanish-language radio from September 15 to October 15.
The campaign is also holding more rallies and events in the battleground state. At a rally last month in Bethlehem, Walz attempted to appeal directly to Puerto Rican voters, who make up more than half of eligible Latino voters in Pennsylvania.
“We recognize the painful anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Maria, which continues to have a devastating impact. In March, Vice President Harris visited San Juan. She pledged to continue supporting reconstruction, and when she and I are in the White House, you can count on our support,” Walz said.
“Hamilton” actor Anthony Ramos, who joined Walz at the rally, had a specific message for Latino voters.
“I feel the passion in the room, and so many of you are of different colors, races. We’re all here together, right? “This is what our country is,” he said. “I want to encourage you all, don’t just go out and vote, vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”
A senior Harris adviser said that as the campaign tries to drum up more endorsements from Latino celebrities, it will use social media influencers with large platforms to help amplify the vice president’s message. For example, in August, Harris appeared alongside content creator Carlos Eduardo Espina, who has more than 10 million followers on TikTok, to talk about why Latinos should support her.
“When you have an election that is going to be won on the margins, everything counts. And, of course, they are going to try to do everything possible to get Bad Bunny’s support,” said María Cardona, Democratic strategist and CNN political commentator. “But at the same time, we know that the most important thing is for the campaign to speak directly to these voters, whether it’s surrogates, whether it’s Kamala, whether it’s Tim Walz.”
Trump also resorts to celebrity support
Trump’s campaign has also relied on celebrities to attract more Latino voters.
Trump has received support from three well-known reggaeton artists: Nicky Jam, Justin Quiles and Anuel AA, and the latter two appeared with him in August at a rally in Johnstown, southwestern Pennsylvania.
“To all my Puerto Ricans, let’s stay united, let’s vote for Trump,” Anuel said during his brief intervention, “I spoke personally with (Trump). “He wants to help Puerto Rico grow.”
A Trump rally in Las Vegas was interrupted by Nicky Jam, who mistakenly referred to the singer as “she” before inviting him on stage to speak. The artist later deleted his Instagram post supporting the former president, although the popular Mexican band Maná later withdrew its collaboration with him, posting that the band “does not work with racists.”
At a rally in August in Wilkes-Barre, northeastern Pennsylvania, Trump brought Daniel Campo, a Venezuelan-born pilot who gained U.S. citizenship in 2022, on stage.
Campo helps the Trump campaign canvass Latino neighborhoods, especially Allentown, talking to voters about the former president’s platform. He often encounters people who believe Trump is biased against Latinos.
“I tell them: ‘I’m Latino. He invited me to speak at his rally,’” Campo said, explaining his response. “And not only that, but he spoke well of me in front of everyone. So if I hated Latinos, first of all, I wouldn’t have been invited. Second, he wouldn’t have said all those nice things he said about me afterwards.”
Other voters Campo speaks to are concerned about Trump’s “attitude.”
“Are you going to invite (Trump) to your wedding? Are you going to invite him to your birthday party or your son’s?” Campo said he asks them. “They laugh. They laugh a little. They say, ‘No, not really.'”
“I tell them, ‘Okay, so you’re hiring him to do a job, right?’ And they say, ‘Yes,’” Campo said. “You saw him do the job four years ago and you saw Harris do it currently, where were you better off?”
