Maria Romero became citizen in 2016 to vote against Donald Trump, offended by the way he accused Mexicans of being criminals and rapists.
Now, the maintenance worker is resisting the growing support that Latinos show for Trump, who now leads the polls in Arizona, the swing state that Biden won in the previous presidential election.
In 104-degree heat, Romero made his way, clipboard in hand, along the empty sidewalks of Maryvale, a working-class neighborhood on Phoenix’s west side. “This is it,” he said, approaching one of the houses that appears on his list of registered voters. Out of nowhere, two large dogs jumped toward her from the dusty yard, stopped only by a rickety iron fence. Without being surprised, Romero took out a small white rock from his pocket and knocked hard on the door with it.
“Hello, I’m here to do the cleaning!” he said, bursting into laughter when he realized his mistake. The 57-year-old is a member of UNITE HERE, the hospitality industry union. She works at a nearby Hilton Hotel and took the day to go door to door to try to keep Arizona as a Democratic state. “I like to step back and wait for them to think I’m gone,” he said. “Then they open the door and here I am.”
Romero is one of the 350 electoral promoters, mostly members of the UNITE HERE union, who are on this Sunday in September around Phoenix and Tucson trying to convince voters, especially Latinos, to vote for Kamala Harris. Expectations are high and margins are tight. In Arizona, Latinos accounted for one in four voters in 2020, while Biden won with just 10,400 votes.
The union rejects any offer from Republicans, but Harris faces a tough challenge. At the national level, Latinos have deviated to the rightwhile, according to a recent survey of the New York Times/Siena College, Trump has a five-point lead over Harris in Arizona as he advances in preference among Latinos.
Promoters receive training a day before knocking on doors in Phoenix. Photo courtesy UNITE HERE Local 11.
This means that the results in Arizona (depending on how other states go, even at the presidential level) could turn the election around, particularly in places like Maryvale with the efforts of workers and promoters like Romero.
Worker Powerthe organization in charge of recruiting canvassers, has strong connections with UNITE HERE and has developed a sophisticated system for voter education and mobilization in Arizona. The group helped defeat well-known anti-immigrant Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio in 2016. The group also knocked on more than 750,000 doors to help elect Biden in 2020, when most groups refrained from door-knocking work. at the door due to the pandemic.
This year, the organization aims to knock on 1.3 million doors in Arizona, in what Worker Power Executive Director Brendan Walsh calls “the largest field effort in state history.” When we spoke in mid-September, recruiters had knocked on about 500,000 doors and spoken to 90,000 voters. “West Phoenix’s Latino neighborhoods are a top priority,” Walsh said. “It’s where we have the most voters, who share our values but don’t vote proportionally to their population, so we invest in more attempts to reach voters (there) than anywhere else.”
Back in Maryvale, at the house with the dogs barking, a middle-aged Latino man finally answered the door. He was glad to hear Romero’s message and pledged to support Harris. Romero confirmed his phone number to receive a reminder to vote. In the coming days and weeks, recruiters could return to the house and even speak to each of the registered voters to encourage them to vote for Harris.
Romero, originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, took time off from her job to spend two months as a recruiter for Biden. She prefers her job at the Hilton, where she doesn’t have to worry about sun rays, dogs, or doors slamming in her face. But she doesn’t mind the challenge. “Sometimes people get angry, but that makes me want to knock on doors even more,” Romero said with a subtle smile on his face.
Like other election promoters, Romero planned to knock on 80 doors a day and speak to at least 17 registered voters; the same goal she had in 2020. By Election Day, she will have knocked on more than 8,000 doors and spoken to nearly 1,700 voters registered in the last two presidential elections. And between each campaign, Romero keeps her lucky white stone with her, the same one she uses to knock on doors wherever she goes.
Romero has heard many voters speak passionately about abortion. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Arizona returned to a Civil War-style abortion ban, which was eventually repealed and replaced with a 15-week abortion restriction. In November, voters will decide whether to pass a proposal that could protect abortion rights. Romero said a man yelled at him to leave, calling Harris a “murderer” for being in favor of taking the lives of babies, echoing Trump’s false accusations during the presidential debate. Despite this, Romero remained there. Upon learning that the man had a daughter, he told him about what the abortion ban had done to places like El Salvador, where women have been imprisoned after giving birth to stillborn babies.
“What would happen if your daughter is pregnant and her life is in danger?” he asked the man. Half an hour later, the man said he would give Harris a chance. The conversation probably affected Romero’s productivity of the day, but it’s those types of interactions that keep her excited.
“One of the reasons workers are so good at knocking on doors is because they are used to having difficult conversations at work,” said Maria Hernandez, a communications worker at UNITE HERE Local 11, the union charged with covering Arizona and the South. from California. Romero, for example, helped lead the caravan to unionize the Hilton, where he worked in 2008. “It’s not easy trying to convince someone to go on strike or take a risk, but they’re used to it,” Hernandez added.
Harris’ campaign has made big investments in Arizona, including a focused effort to reach the state’s Latino voters. The Arizona Campaign has 19 offices across the state with nearly 200 employees. The first office to open was in Maryvale and the campaign has three weekly call banks in Spanish, on par with electoral recruiting.
Promoters pose for a photo before starting work in Phoenix. Photo courtesy UNITE HERE Local 11.
There is no comparable effort on the Republican side in Arizona. During the two days spent training get-out-the-vote promoters in Phoenix and Glendale, the only other two people I detected who also went door-to-door in the heat were Christian evangelists. The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about its campaign in Arizona, although a recent article in the New Yorker reported that Republican field operations had been acquired by Turning Point Action, a right-wing group that is failing to reach undecided voters and is targeting Republicans. However, there is an effort to obtain the Latino vote, particularly seeking those who vote for the first time. Marisol Garcia lives in Phoenix and is the president of the Arizona Education Association Teachers Union, an affiliate of the National Education Association. She said her 18-year-old son, who had recently dropped out of school, had received seven emails from the Trump campaign in the past two weeks.
Arizona is on the cusp of a “boom” in the construction industry, whose workforce is disproportionately Latino, but that group also faces “unique economic challenges,” said Lisa Sanchez, an assistant professor in the School of Government and Policy. Public of the University of Arizona. High housing costs make it difficult for them to buy homes, while “they seem to have to pay very high rents, higher than their non-Latino counterparts.”
The same Times/Siena poll that reported that Trump was reaching out to Latinos in Arizona also revealed that the Latino electorate’s highest concerns were the economy, immigration and abortion, which is consistent with what vote recruiters have heard. in his field work. Manny Cahuantzi, a recruiter and member of UNITE HERE in Los Angeles, said inflation was identified as a common problem. A young Latina told him that she was undecided but that her parents, who worked in real estate, support Trump because they feel that he has a greater ability to manage the economy. Another recruiter, Adriana Rojas, who works at the Phoenix Convention Center, overheard a Latina woman complaining about the Venezuelan gangs that have been taking over the cities, in clear allusion to one of the false facts that Trump spread about Aurora, Colorado. Romero knocked on a door to be greeted by a Latino man who yelled at her that it was time to “seal the border and return everyone.”
But those responses, according to campaign staff, are the minority. So far, most Latino voters contacted by recruiters have said they support Harris, while an even larger number back Ruben Gallego, who is running for the Senate against Trump disciple Kari Lake. The question, however, is whether this impressive electoral battleground, as it enters its final month of campaigning, will be able to deliver a margin large enough to surpass what the polls indicate. latest polls.
The battlefield can be daunting. The heat hits the spirits. Many people are not home or refuse to answer the door, spying on recruiters through their Ring cameras, which are everywhere. Such a recent Sunday did little to discourage Alviany Dominguez, who had a tough special assignment: knocking on doors in Glendale, near State Farm Stadium, home of the Arizona Cardinals, when the team played there.
Dominguez knocked on several doors without success, while he could hear the game broadcast behind them. He is a Venezuelan immigrant who had moved to Long Beach, California, earlier this year after becoming a legal resident through marriage. He got a job cleaning the Conrad Hotel in Los Angeles, but the union persuaded him to move to Arizona. “There are always people who try to take advantage of the most vulnerable,” he said, referring to Trump’s villainization of Venezuelan immigrants.
Dominguez pointed to a house where an American flag was flying. “Sometimes that means they support Trump, but not always,” he said. A white man came to the door and spoke no Spanish, but he patiently listened to Dominguez struggle with his broken English. He was eventually able to ascertain that the man of the house was the registered voter he was looking for and that he would vote for Harris. He then confirmed the man’s phone number so he could remind him to go vote, via text.
“Look, there are a lot of good people out there,” he said, heading to the next house, where a dog was barking vigorously in anticipation of his arrival.
