By Nadia Lathan and Valerie González – The Associated Press
Jorge Bazán’s family has lived on the US-Mexico border for generations and has voted Democratic for as long as he can remember.
This year he broke with family tradition and voted for Donald Trump because he doesn’t trust the Democratic Party’s economic policies.
“I think they forgot about the middle class,” said Bazán, who works for the utility company in Rio Grande City, the seat of the most Hispanic county in the nation. “People are suffering now. “Everything is very expensive”.
The South Texas region, stretching from San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley, has long been a Democratic stronghold. A slide toward Trump in 2020 alarmed Democrats in the predominantly Hispanic region, where for decades Republicans often didn’t even bother to field candidates in local races.
But few Democrats expected the drastic realignment that occurred Tuesday, when Trump won several counties along the border, including Hidalgo and Cameron, the two most populous in the Rio Grande Valley.
In Starr County, where Bazan lives, voters backed a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in a century. The rural, predominantly Hispanic and working-class county, where the median household income is $36,000 — one of the lowest in the nation — gave Trump a 16 percentage point margin of victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Democrats who changed parties
Trump’s victory revealed that working-class voters across the country are shifting toward Republicans, including those on the Texas border, where many Democrats have long argued that Trump’s promises to toughen immigration policies would drive away to the voters.
“I was always a lifelong Democrat, but I decided to switch to Republican with the current political landscape,” said Luis Meza, a 32-year-old voter from Starr County. “I felt like being a Republican was the best option, especially with the immigration issues and everything that’s going on.”
Meza said he was initially against Trump, but noted very few changes in the Biden administration that would justify voting for Harris.
President Biden won Hidalgo County by less than half the margin Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Since then, Republicans have spent millions of dollars to persuade predominantly Hispanic and working-class voters disenchanted with Democratic policies. .
A similar situation played out in the state’s three closest races in nearby counties. Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz won a decisive victory in the 15th Congressional District, and in the other two races Democratic incumbents were barely able to hold on to their seats.
Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar narrowly escaped defeat against a political newcomer in the closest race of his two-decade career. Cuellar, whose district includes Rio Grande City, was charged this year with bribery for allegedly accepting $600,000 from a foreign company. His support for abortion restrictions makes him one of the most conservative Democrats in the House.
Democratic Rep. Vincente González also narrowly escaped defeat against an opponent he had easily defeated two years ago.
Nationally, Black and Latino voters seemed slightly less inclined to back Harris than they were to back Biden four years ago, according to AP VoteCast data. More than half of Hispanic voters supported Harris, but that was slightly lower than the roughly 6 in 10 who backed Biden in 2020. Trump’s support among those groups appeared to increase slightly compared to 2020.
“We had no other option”
In McAllen, Texas, Jose Luis Borrego said inflation and the promise of tighter border restrictions led him to vote for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time.
“I wanted to see change and that’s why I voted for Trump. I voted red. “I wouldn’t consider myself a Republican,” said Borrego, 30. He indicated that, in previous elections, he had voted for Hillary Clinton and independent Senator Bernie Sanders,
Borrego’s entire family voted for Trump.
“We made this choice simply because we had no other option that we felt comfortable with,” he said.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said he had visited the region during his election campaign against Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred. In a victory speech on Election Day, he said immigration is the reason Hispanic voters are leaving the Democratic Party.
“They are returning to the conservative values they never abandoned. “They understand something that liberal elites will never understand: there is nothing progressive about open borders,” Cruz said. “There is nothing Latin about allowing criminals to walk free.”
Michael Mireles, director of civic engagement for the political activist group LUPE Votes, believes Democrats did not engage enough with Hispanic voters on the issues they cared about in this election.
“I think people on the Democratic side have been really slow to have those conversations with Latino households and families,” Mireles said at a news conference in Hidalgo County after Election Day.
“We can’t wait for a big election to have those conversations. By then, it is too late.”
