Harris Appeals to Latino Pride, and Anger at Trump, in Final Push

Kamala Harris is hoping that backlash to the bigotry at the Madison Square Garden rally will blunt Donald Trump’s appeal with a critical group of voters.

Walter Mendoza, 30, was exasperated with his mother, Ana, as they walked in to Supremo Foods in Allentown, Pa., last week.

Their shopping list had to be kept to a minimum, said Mr. Mendoza, angrily pointing the blame at President Biden: “Because your president got these prices this high!” he told his mother.

“Because your president messed up big time,” Ms. Mendoza, a 52-year-old warehouse manager, retorted to her Trump-supporting son. “Inflation came after the pandemic that he screwed up, bro.”

Arguments about prices and presidents are taking place across America, but the Mendozas’ dispute comes with extraordinary stakes.

The 2024 campaign has marked an arrival of sorts for the nation’s roughly 36 million eligible Latino voters — a group now so large, geographically dispersed and politically divided that it will be crucial in deciding who wins the White House.

After years of Democratic dominance, Donald J. Trump has made steady inroads with these voters. That strength threatens Vice President Kamala Harris’s route to victory, not only through the Southwest battlegrounds, but also in Georgia and Pennsylvania, where even relatively small Latino communities may prove to be critical in a close race.

In the final days of the campaign, Democrats have landed on a closing message that they hope will stanch the bleeding. After months of focusing on economic issues, they have pounced on a Trump surrogate’s insult calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at a Madison Square Garden rally.

Democrats believe the sharper focus on ethnic identity will rally Latino voters who had been leaning toward Mr. Trump or considering sitting out the election entirely. They have created new advertisements repeating the comments and have brought out a parade of celebrity surrogates to drive home the stakes.

“They are so terrified of your power,” the playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda told a group of young, Latino Harris supporters in Philadelphia last week. “Seize that power for yourself if you do not want to see that future for your country.”

Perhaps nowhere is the effort more urgent than in Pennsylvania, where the race is in a dead heat and Latinos make up more than 5 percent of the electorate. A string of industrial towns with growing Latino majorities — places like Allentown, Hazleton and Reading — have become a hotbed of campaigning. Mr. Trump rallied voters in Allentown, which has a large Puerto Rican community, last week, and Ms. Harris will hold her own rally there on Monday.

Conversations with more than three dozen Latino voters across eastern Pennsylvania found voters who were both highly engaged and deeply divided. While some hear Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric as a direct threat to their community and are turned off, others celebrated him, convinced he would cement their own security in America.

The number of Latino voters in Pennsylvania has nearly tripled in the last two decades. The growth mirrors the national landscape; more than 30 percent of Latinos expected to cast a ballot this year would be first-time voters.

For months, national polls have shown Democrats losing ground — dipping to a low point this summer when President Biden was still the nominee. Support among Latinos rebounded after Ms. Harris entered the race, but not to the levels Mr. Biden had just four years ago, and far below former President Barack Obama’s benchmarks.

In mid-October, a New York Times/Siena College poll found Ms. Harris winning 56 percent of Latino voters, down from Mr. Biden’s roughly 62 percent in 2020. Mr. Trump had 37 percent, holding steady from four years ago.

A dip of support from Hispanic voters may not be devastating for Ms. Harris if she maintains the same level of support from all other demographic groups. But if she also loses support from young voters or Black voters, for example, she is unlikely to win the White House. Both campaigns have acknowledged this year that they can no longer win with white voters alone.

Victor Martinez, who owns several Spanish radio stations in eastern Pennsylvania and hosts El Relajo de la Mañana from Allentown, said his audience had received more attention from Democrats than ever before. Mr. Martinez, who is an active Harris surrogate, said the Trump campaign had rebuffed his requests for interviews and did not advertise on his stations.

This week, Mr. Martinez said, after the Madison Square Garden rally, several people called in to say that they previously “didn’t give a damn” but were now motivated to vote against Mr. Trump.

“There is a sense of pride — you insulted us and we’re going to show you,” he said.

There was plenty of evidence of that anger on social media. Nicky Jam, a Puerto Rican reggaeton star with 44 million followers on Instagram, endorsed Mr. Trump in September. But late last week, he rescinded his support in an Instagram post. He did not endorse Ms. Harris, but Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who has largely stayed out of mainland politics, did.

It was not difficult to find steadfast Trump supporters in the heavily Latino neighborhoods of Allentown, lined with brick row homes and friends chatting on their front stoops. They held “Boricuas for Trump” signs as they stood in line for his rally, using the Spanish term for Puerto Ricans. But his supporters could also be found far from those crowds: at the Dominican barbershop, at the corner chatting over paletas and cigarettes, and at the cramped bodega.

“Everything was cheaper with him and calmer too,” said Maria Bravo, 64, who moved to Allentown after she retired as a New York City bus driver and now runs Bravo Mini Market. “My business was better. My life was better.”

She was totally unbothered by the island of garbage comments and offered a succinct explanation: “I’m Dominican.”

The fault lines dividing Latino voters are no different from those dividing other voters — gender, religion, education levels and age. Like voters overall, Latinos consistently name the economy as their top issue.

The Trump campaign has dismissed what might be considered traditional Hispanic outreach — it has been overwhelmingly outspent on Spanish-language media, for example — but has instead courted support from local Latino evangelical leaders, popular hip-hop musicians and social media stars. The campaign also opened several campaign offices in heavily Latino cities across the country, including Reading.

Although his campaign initially distanced itself from the comedian’s comments, Mr. Trump himself never apologized. Instead, he boasted of his support among Hispanic voters.

“Nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I do — nobody,” he told the crowd in Allentown, three days after the Madison Square Garden rally.

Several polls have shown that Mr. Trump is popular with Latino voters who arrived in the country as immigrants and large numbers of Latino voters say they are not concerned by Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant remarks or hard-line stances on immigration, including his plans for mass deportation.

“If you do things legally, if you obey the rules, you’ll be fine,” said Normando Santos, a Trump supporter who immigrated from Mexico to Hazelton more than 20 years ago. “I am not worried.”

The Times/Siena poll found that roughly four in 10 Hispanic voters said they did not take the former president very seriously when he spoke. Half of Hispanic men said people take his words too seriously.

As he argued with his mother again last week, Mr. Mendoza said he just rolled his eyes when he heard Mr. Trump and other Republicans saying inflammatory things about immigrants, such as accusing Haitian immigrants in Ohio of eating pets.

Sometimes, he thinks they have a point.

“The illegals got more privileges than our veterans in this country,” he said to his mother. “Our veterans are homeless, but the illegals have a roof over their head, food in their fridge and take whatever they want.”

Ms. Mendoza interjected: “Well, your father is an example of somebody who came that way, without papers.”

Her son cut her off: “That was 30 years ago.”

Like many young men he knows, Mr. Mendoza will vote for Mr. Trump on Tuesday. His mother will vote for Ms. Harris.

“I don’t understand how I raised this boy — he can’t see reality for what it is,” she said. It was how these fights between them always ended.