Power Up: Trump seeks new blue-collar worker in Latino voters

Gutiérrez plans to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and is determined to help Democrats make a dent in President Trump’s support in central Pennsylvania, a part of this swing state that overwhelmingly voted for the president in 2016. “I am committed to fight for this country to be better because this is not the best of the U.S.”

When she lived in Puerto Rico, Gutiérrez was accustomed to coming across Trump supporters at her job at the national teacher’s association and in her hometown of Trujillo Alto. But she says she’s still shocked every time she encounters other Puerto Ricans in her new city supporting the man who casually threw paper towels at a cheering crowd at a San Juan church in Hurricane Maria’s aftermath. 

Tim Ramos, a Puerto Rican truck driver from Allentown, Pa., who is a member of Latinos for Trump in the Lehigh Valley, Pa., calmly spelled out the reason Latinos support Trump is “not a big to-do.”

• “Latinos en masse are blue-collar workers,” the 35-year-old stated last week. “We want to feed our kids, take care of our families and be able to provide. No matter how much people want to play politics, they can’t deny that our economy was doing great before the pandemic and shutdown. ”

Ramos and his brother Steven, an Army veteran who helped launch the local Latinos for Trump chapter, are part of the 30 percent of Hispanic voters supporting Trump nationally, mainly the same non-college educated blue-collar workers and men who also back the president.

Pennsylvania doesn’t usually come to mind as a hub for Latino voters. But in places like York, for example, Latinos make up one-third of the city’s population. In neighboring Harrisburg, Reading and Lancaster — cities around 100 miles outside of Philadelphia — and Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton in the Lehigh Valley, there’s a growing Hispanic population with roots in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Mexico, that the Trump campaign believes it can capture.

• “The question is: can [Trump] narrow the raw vote margins among Latinos?” said Dave Wasserman, House editor of the Cook Political Report. “He might win a higher share of them but there’s far more of them to turnout in 2020 than 2016. Though there’s no doubt that [the Trump campaign] has out-registered Democrats in Pennsylvania and Florida because they have engaged in an on-the-ground effort whereas Democrats have relied almost exclusively on virtual outreach.”
• “The Hispanic voter is a working-class vote and a smaller population of them do their jobs over Zoom than White voters, so the Republican messaging against lockdowns does resonate with the plights of Hispanic voters,” Wasserman added.
• Read our full story here.

Latinos make up 4.4 percent of Pennsylvania voters, according to an analysis conducted by Rodrigo Dominguez Villegas, the research director at the University of California’s Los Angeles’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, and they’re a little over 7 percent of Pennsylvania’s total population. It’s a substantial enough voting bloc to swing a race that could come down to the wire after Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 44,000 votes here in 2016.

Biden is currently ahead in Pennsylvania polls by roughly 6 points but key factors, such as a late-starting direct voter outreach effort — could be problematic for Democrats. As it stands in the Keystone State, early and absentee voting among Hispanic voters are currently lagging behind other demographics — a potentially troubling trend for Democrats who have embraced absentee voting this cycle. The Biden campaign says its betting on robust Election Day turnout among Latinos.

The Trump campaign is relying on what officials call the “Rove strategy” — GOP strategist Karl Rove’s pioneering take on microtargeting certain demographic groups in counterintuitive pockets of the nation. And there are some warning signs for Democrats, according to interviews with organizers, strategists and voters in south central and eastern Pennsylvania, that the president might actually scrape up more support from the Hispanic community than was previously expected.

• “I’m not saying I’m not worried — everyone should be worried about everything because the election was so close in 2016,” said a Democratic strategist who does work in Pennsylvania. “But [Biden] is in a better position with Hispanic voters than Republicans who are having to explain the past four years to them.”

María Teresa Kumar, the CEO of Voto Latino, credits the Trump campaign for the consistent outreach to Latino communities after Trump’s 2016 win. 

• “People say, ‘How can Latinos or anybody so vulnerable side with this person? They’ve never stopped communicating messages to Latinos since 2016,” Kumar told us. “Progressives have a tendency to pack their bags and wait until the next cycle. But that’s a bygone strategy,” she added.

Biden is almost certain to win the majority of Latino voters in the Keystone State — and most likely nationwide. Earlier this month, a Monmouth poll found Biden overwhelmingly leading Trump among voters of color (83 to 16 percent). 

• But in battleground states overall, Biden holds a narrower lead over Trump among registered Latino voters (54 to 37 percent), according to a Pew Research poll released this month.
• And half of Hispanic men across the country who are registered to vote (51 percent) are hopeful about the current state of the country. Hispanic male voters also have a more positive view of the U.S. economy under Trump than female voters (34 to 23 percent). The economy is the top issue for Latino voters, according to another Pew survey released in September, followed by health care and the pandemic.

With gloves, masks and at a social distance, Ramos and his brother, Steven, and other Trump volunteers and organizers in Allentown and around the state, resumed door knocking and voter outreach shortly after the country came to a screeching halt due to the virus. There are more registered Democrats in Pennsylvania than Republicans — but the GOP has narrowed the registration gap over the past few years and through a major summer push while Democrats worked remotely.

The Biden campaign has defended its decision to suspend in-person voter contact during the pandemic. But between the Trump campaign’s voter registration advantage, a robust Spanish language advertising and rapid response campaign, and a steady stream of in-person visits to Pennsylvania by various surrogates, the Trump campaign believes they’re making inroads with Latinos in the Keystone State.

• Trump made her first solo campaign debut on Tuesday outside of Lancaster, and Trump held rallies at the Lancaster airport and in Allentown on Monday. The campaign has opened two “Latinos for Trump” offices in Allentown and Philadelphia, according to a Trump political spokesperson. It’a also running Spanish-language ads in Al Día Philadelphia and La Voz Central PA — the state’s Spanish language newspapers.
• The Latino outreach started early for Trump, according to Mercedes Schlapp, a senior campaign adviser — the campaign opened seventeen community centers in targeted states opened in July and its has dispatched a constant stream of Spanish-speaking surrogates to represent it on television.
• Charlie Gerow, a GOP strategist in Harrisburg of Brazilian descent, believes the ground work by the Trump campaign over the summer with Latino voters will “pay huge dividends” on Election Day. “Some of my friends like to think of Hispanics as a monolith, but you have very wide slices within that community. They all respond to Trump positively on different issues, but overall it’s about the economy and social conservatism,” argued Gerow.
• “They like his no BS style, they like the machismo, and they instinctively respond favorably to Trump personally,” he added.

On a recent call with campaign surrogates, the Republican National Committee boasted of Biden’s poor Latino outreach in Pennsylvania, according to a Trump campaign staffer. Schlapp, who is of Cuban descent, criticized the Biden campaign for treating Hispanic voters “as monolithic single issue voters,” and prioritized reaching out to individual communities on various issues beyond the campaign’s economic messaging.

• “When they are focused on getting the endorsements of celebrities, we were focused on the ground game and relationships with local and religious leaders across the countries,” said Schlapp.

Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), have received support from prominent Latino leaders who are highly critical of the president’s handling of the pandemic that has devastated Latino communities and his botched federal response to Hurricane Maria, which killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico. Nathalie Rayes, the president and CEO of Latino Victory, a progressive organization working to turn out Latinos and increase Latino representation, is optimistic that Puerto Rican and Dominican men and women in particular will prove to be the margin of victory for Biden in states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida.

• “We’re focused very heavily on Election Day turnout … we’re expecting really big numbers in Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley — way higher than 2016,” said a Biden campaign official, who predicted “huge and historic” turnout of Hispanics in the state overall.

Complicated mail-in voting procedures in the state, however, might work against Democrats. The Democratic chairwoman of Philadelphia’s election board warned in a letter last month that the Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court decision requiring mail-in ballots to be in secrecy envelopes to be counted could cause 100,000 mailed ballots to be rejected statewide.

• Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, commended the massive push to educate communities in the Keystone State about “naked ballots.” But she notes the policy could “most likely effect people inexperienced with vote-by-mail.”
• “As a historical matter, that tends to be people of color, because in most states, people of color utilize in person voting more,” said Perez.

The Biden campaign resumed in-person canvassing and literature drops several weeks ago and Democratic organizing groups started pounding the pavement again earlier this fall to make sure that Latinos are voting. Gutiérrez and two other CASA in Action organizers, 41-year-old Varion Broadnax and 27-year-old Jesse Buch of Lancaster, Pa., were out talking to voters at the start of October after a summer spent phone banking. The three of them agreed that in conversations with voters, they’ve seen a backlash against Trump over the course of the pandemic that was accelerated after his first debate performance.

But they’re still concerned about the misinformation that has taken hold — as are Biden campaign officials and Democratic strategists. “Misinformation is rampant in minority communities,” said Rayes.

• “People whose doors I’ve knocked on, they say, ‘I am for Trump because of the checks I have received that he signed,’ and they think he is the one sending the money,” Gutiérrez said of the $1,200 stimulus checks Americans with annual incomes up to $75,000 received as part of economic stimulus legislation.
• “Sometimes we’re at someone’s door and I turn around and say, ‘Oh my god, how are we living in the same world as this person?’” said Buch. “We encounter lots of people who talk about something Trump has done for them.”
• “Lies works with people who do not have the opportunity to receive more information,” said Gutiérrez. “That’s our work. You need to have all of the facts to make your best choice. ”

HURRICANE ZETA SLAMS NOLA: “As the latest overachieving storm in an unforgiving and record-setting season, Zeta roared ashore in southeast Louisiana on Wednesday afternoon. The powerful Category 2 hurricane, which struck near Cocodrie, La., intensified right up until landfall, defying earlier forecasts for a substantially weaker storm,” Andrew Freedman, Matthew Cappucci, Paulina Villegas and Jason Samenow report.

• The storm unleashed wind gusts over 100 mph in both coastal Louisiana and Mississippi: “Shortly after crossing the coast, Zeta slammed into New Orleans, its eye moving directly over the city, cutting power to more than 80 percent of its residents. City officials said that more than 200 trees were down across the city and that one man, electrocuted by downed power lines, died, according to the Associated Press.”

SCOTUS LETS TWO STATES EXTEND MAIL BALLOT DEADLINES: “Democrats won two significant Supreme Court victories involving voting deadlines in key battleground states, as the justices allowed extended periods for receiving mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and North Carolina,” Robert Barnes report.

• What happened: “They declined to disturb decisions that allow Pennsylvania officials to receive ballots cast by Election Day and received within three days, and a ruling by North Carolina’s elections board that set a grace period of nine days. In both of the cases, the Republican Party and GOP legislators had opposed the extensions, and President Trump has railed on the campaign trail about the mail-in vote.”

Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch —  objected in both cases: The trio “signaled that they might want to revisit the case after the election, and even indicated the votes received after Election Day ultimately might not be counted,” our colleague writes.

• Barrett on the sidelines for now: “New Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not participate in either case. Her decision was particularly noteworthy because her vote might or might not have affected the outcome and because a Pennsylvania county had earlier this week filed, and then withdrawn, a formal request for the new justice to recuse herself,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports.

CLOSING ON DIFFERENT CORONAVIRUS MESSAGES: “Trump pushed ahead with a strategy for the closing days of the campaign that minimizes the threat from the coronavirus pandemic, misstates his record in confronting it and mocks Biden’s caution in campaigning amid a disease that has killed more than 225,000 Americans,” Anne Gearan, Amy B Wang and John Wagner report.

• The details: “In a taped interview on April 18, Kushner told legendary journalist Bob Woodward that Trump was ‘getting the country back from the doctors’ in what he called a ‘negotiated settlement.’ Kushner also proclaimed that the U.S. was moving swiftly through the ‘panic phase’ and ‘pain phase’ of the pandemic and that the country was at the ‘beginning of the comeback phase.’ ”

STOCK SELL-OFF IS A BLOW TO TRUMP’S MESSAGE: “The Dow Jones industrial average fell 943 points Wednesday and is down nearly 9 percent since Sept. 2,” Jeff Stein reports. “Trump in recent days has touted the stock market as central to his 2020 reelection bid, frequently pointing to Americans’ 401(k) accounts and investment portfolios. The stock market’s sharp decline clouds this characterization.”

• The dip comes amid broader signs of economic struggle: “Multiple federal relief measures approved by Congress expired months ago, depriving millions of small businesses and jobless Americans of emergency financial lifelines,” our colleague writes. “The spread of the pandemic threatens to wreak further havoc on the economic recovery. ”

The president may get some good news this morning but it’s complicated: “When data from the Commerce Department reveals how much the economy grew between July and September, it is likely to show the sharpest rise in U.S. history. That figure will also take some explaining,” Rachel Siegel and Andrew Van Dam report.

• The context: “Economists expect gross domestic product to rise around 7 percent in the third quarter, a sharp reversal from the historic and devastating second-quarter plunge of 9 percent,” our colleagues write. But that doesn’t mean the economy has entirely healed, or that the pace at which the economy recovered in the third quarter will keep up in the final stretch of 2020 … For the economy to recover all that was lost in the previous quarter, third-quarter GDP would have had to surge and hit 10 percent, and even more to make up for smaller first-quarter losses — all far beyond economists’ expectations.”

MILES TAYLOR IS ‘ANONYMOUS’: “Taylor, the ex-chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security who has spent the past two months building a case against reelecting Trump, revealed himself to be the presidential critic from inside the administration known only as ‘Anonymous,’” Colby Itkowitz and Josh Dawsey report.

• A reminder of how we got here: “Using the nom de plume, Taylor first wrote a scathing New York Times op-ed in 2018 purporting to be among a group of people inside the administration working to protect the country from the president’s worst instincts. The essay sent shock waves through Washington and set off a years-long guessing game of who might be its author. Anonymous reemerged in 2019 with a buzzy tell-all book, ‘A Warning,’ that described a chaotic and reckless president who posed a threat to America.”

Trump and the White House quickly turned his ire on Taylor: “The president, at a campaign rally in Arizona, vilified Taylor, calling him a ‘sleazebag’ and a ‘low-life,’” our colleagues write. Trump also called for Taylor to be “prosecuted,” a frequent and often undefined request for those who cross him. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany issued a statement denigrating him too, calling Taylor a “low-level, disgruntled former staffer.”

• Taylor reiterated  that Americans should vote for Biden: “This election is a two-part referendum: first, on the character of a man, and second, on the character of our nation,” Taylor wrote in a Medium piece revealing his revealing his identity. “I believe Joe Biden’s decency will bring us back together where Donald Trump’s dishonesty has torn us apart.”

DOES THIS TITLE WORK?: “Was it really accurate to describe [Taylor when he wrote the Times op-ed] as a ‘senior’ official? Was the anonymity granted by his book publisher and the Times justified? And given his role in implementing one of the administration’s cruelest policies, was he really the righteous whistleblower he portrayed himself to be?” Paul Farhi and Sarah Ellison report of the multiple media questions arisen from Taylor’s reveal.

• This gets a little inside baseball, so here’s the key: “The phrase ‘senior administration official’ is not a formal job category; it’s often used as shorthand by White House officials and journalists to describe a range of people who have delivered information for publication ‘on background,’ meaning without being identified. (The Times defended the broad title as necessary for Taylor’s security).

This was especially important when the op-ed was written, as Taylor was not a chief of staff at that time: “The phrase was crucial to lending his column and book gravitas. Some guessed that ‘Anonymous’ might be a Cabinet official, a prominent top adviser like Kellyanne Conway or even Vice President Pence,” our colleagues write.

• Some journalists agree that “senior” gave the wrong impression: “Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, acknowledged that the term is a blurry one. But he said he doesn’t think ‘anybody when they read the anonymous op-ed thought it was someone who was an adviser to a Cabinet secretary who had very little contact with the president himself.’ ”

Taylor also previously told CNN and others he was not “Anonymous”:

Trump to strip protections from Tongass National Forest, one of the biggest intact temperate rainforests: “As of [today], it will be legal for logging companies to build roads and cut and remove timber throughout more than 9.3 million acres of forest — featuring old-growth stands of red and yellow cedar, Sitka spruce and Western hemlock. The relatively pristine expanse is also home to plentiful salmon runs and imposing fjord,” Juliet Eilperin reports.

The president’s attacks often lead to threats from others: “The CIA’s most endangered employee for much of the past year was not an operative on a mission abroad, but an analyst who faced a torrent of threats after filing a whistleblower report that led to the impeachment of Trump,” Greg Miller and Isaac Stanley-Becker report.

• The whistleblower is not alone: “Over the past year, public servants across the country have faced similar ordeals. The targets encompass nearly every category of government service: mayors, governors and members of Congress, as well as officials Trump has turned against within his own administration.”

MLB is investigating the Dodgers’s Justin Turner for celebrating with teammates after learning he had covid: “By returning to the field in the aftermath of the clinching win Tuesday — after leaving in the eighth inning following the news of a positive test and being placed under isolation, per MLB’s protocols — Turner and the members of the Dodgers who backed him thrust baseball directly into the larger societal divide over how to deal with a virus that has killed more than 226,000 Americans,” Dave Sheinin and Jesse Dougherty report.

A MILES A MINUTE: Journalists collectively responded to the Anonymous reveal with a meh. But like any development these days, the news did allow for some taylor-made humor.