Throughout Hispanic Heritage Month, politicians have been busy telling Latino voters why they’re the right candidates for them. And despite robust outreach from Latino-focused voter outreach groups—extensive canvassing, campaign events and millions in spending on ads in Nevada—many Latinos might still be on the fence about their chosen candidates, or whether they’ll vote at all.
It’s a concern for campaigns and voter outreach groups in this election battleground state, where polls show tightening midterm races between incumbent Democrat Gov. Steve Sisolak and Republican Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo and between Democrat incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt.
According to a UCLA report on Latino vote choice during the 2020 election, Nevada had the fifth-largest proportion of Latino residents in the U.S. and about 300,000 Latino electors, comprising 20.6% of Nevada’s total voters. Strategists know that winning the Latino electorate is essential to winning the state.
For both parties, every vote counts. Political analysts say the outcome of the Cortez Masto-Laxalt race could determine whether Democrats will maintain control of the Senate. In 2016, Cortez Masto defeated opponent Joe Heck by fewer than 27,000 votes.
“What we’re hearing on the ground is that the race is not between Laxalt and Cortez Masto—the race is between voting for Cortez Masto or not voting at all,” says Emmanuelle Leal-Santillan, national communications director for Somos PAC, which has been sending out 60 canvassers daily in Las Vegas to speak with non-Republicans about their vote.
The comment came after a corroborating NBC report stating that many Democrat-leaning Latino voters are considering not casting a ballot. With the economy a top election issue, many “lifelong supporters” of Democrats could be reluctant to give them their vote in November, the report said, without seeing improvements in gas prices and inflation.
And Republicans have adjusted their messaging accordingly. “Latinos are rejecting the destructive policies of the left and know that I will fight for them in the Senate,” read a post on Laxalt’s Twitter account following October 13 campaign events at a local Mexican restaurant and an immigrant-owned tire shop.
In contrast, literature from Somos paints Cortez Masto—the first Latina U.S. Senator—as a champion of affordable housing, lowering prescription drug costs and holding gas companies responsible for high prices.
Campaign messaging from the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s (NRSC) Operación Vamos connects the economic issues to President Joe Biden’s administration and Democrats. Ana Carbonell, NRSC consultant for Hispanic outreach, says canvassers have reached more than 100,000 contacts, including persuadable Democrats, “no party preference” voters and Republican-leaning Latinos.
“In Nevada, there’s a common thread for Hispanics. … They do believe in American meritocracy,” Carbonell explains. “Democrats have gone away from that message. And Hispanics have sensed that and have said, ‘We do believe in the American dream. … [But] the Biden policy is something that distances us from that possibility.”
She adds that the culinary and service industries have been “significantly impacted by the D.C. policies on gas prices,” creating an opportunity for Republicans to paint a picture of what the economy could look like if they were in charge.
Since June, the NRSC has run English- and Spanish-language TV ads emphasizing Cortez Masto’s support for the Inflation Reduction Act and presenting her as “soft” on crime, Carbonell says. And some of the highest undecided rates are among Spanish-speaking Latinos, according to a September election memo from Equis Research, a national polling group that studies Latino voters.
According to an Equis’ poll of 2,800 eligible Latino voters, 80% say the economy is very important in making their decision on the 2022 congressional elections, followed by health care, education and violent crime. Violent crime was a “top issue” for 76% of surveyed Hispanic Republicans and Republican-leaning voters. Meanwhile, 80% of surveyed Democrats said health care was very important to their vote, followed by the economy ( 75% ).
“The Democratic Party has wanted to go to an extreme with the defund police approach with the government overreach and eliminating energy independence. These are all issues that impact the quality of life of families,” Carbonell says.
Democrats, on the other hand, have zeroed in on Republicans for supporting Donald Trump and spreading “the Big Lie” that led to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. “The Big Lie that [Laxalt] spread incited the January 6 insurrection, with rioters attacking Capitol police,” reads an October 12 post from Cortez Masto’s campaign Twitter account.
Somos PAC Nevada Executive Director Cecia Alvarado says Democrats tend to focus on not just police, but broader infrastructure and resources for the community when it comes to public safety.
“It’s not just about making sure that we have more law enforcement or programs to keep our community safe,” Alvarado says. “[Democrats] are investing in our communities. … They are making it a priority that our communities that tend to be more vulnerable to crime are also getting those resources.”
The PAC focuses on informing the community about “tools and opportunities to build a better future” that Democrats support and would further provide if re-elected, she says.
“When we are having these conversations … we’re putting a name to the face of the person that is working in the community,” Alvarado says. “We talk about the Child Tax Credit, [which] has been very popular, especially with Latinos … getting that additional $250 or $300? And then they know, that was the senator. She did that for us.”
The same “educating” approach is taken when it comes to the economy, where Somos’ messaging centers around “fighting for working people like us, not big corporations who make bigger profits, while we’re paying the price,” she say. “Who’s really behind the rising cost of gas prices? Oil companies are making record profits while our community suffers. So it’s really naming those bad actors.”
According to Leal-Santillan, Somos has knocked on 412,536 doors in Las Vegas. After spending millions on anti-Laxalt ads that ran over the summer, the PAC recently launched $1.4 million in digital ads for Cortez Masto. In one of them, a Latina business owner talks about receiving emergency loans during the pandemic, allowing her to stay open and keep people employed.
Democrats have also seen opportunities to attack Republicans on abortion, which has risen in importance among Latino voters. In a recent national survey of 2,750 Latino eligible voters by UnidosUS/Mi Familia Vota, more than 81% of those in Nevada responded that they believe it should remain legal, regardless of personal beliefs on the issue.
Alvarado says it is “very clear” where Democrats and a majority of Latinos stand on the issue, whereas Republican politicians have not been clear on whether they’d support the national abortion ban proposed by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Exactly how Latinos will influence the November election is very unclear, especially after the 2020 presidential election, in which Latinos in Florida’s Miami-Dade County were credited with delivering the state to Donald Trump, indicating a shift in Latino voting trends, which historically have favored Democrats.
But analyses say the Florida county doesn’t necessarily reflect the Latino electorate across the U.S. In Arizona, for example, the large Latino electorate’s support for Biden flipped the state to blue for the first time since 1996, according to the UCLA study.“It is premature to say that Latinos are further shifting to the GOP without showing gains beyond South Texas and South Florida,” Equis’ September election memo read. “If Republicans want to claim that a realignment is underway, they are going to need to demonstrate it in the high-stakes environments of Nevada and Arizona.”
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