Biden steps up Hispanic outreach as warning signs flash

Joe Biden has largely shied away from lengthy sit downs with national news outlets — but he made an exception for Univision last week.

The interview with the Hispanic media giant wasn’t just a tit-for-tat with Donald Trump, who had appeared on the network months prior. It was an implicit admission from Biden that he has to do more to reach Hispanic voters who have soured on him.

Biden’s campaign is ramping up efforts to reach this highly important group of voters. The campaign has placed ads on ESPN Deportes and LaLiga, to reach Latino voters tuning in to catch soccer games. Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris conducted a slew of Hispanic media interviews during respective swings out West last month. And the campaign has begun using a new app called Reach to connect with Latino voters.

“I think that Latino voters know how much is at stake,” said Michelle Villegas, the Biden campaign’s Latino engagement director. “But there is an information gap. Our job on this campaign is to reach folks and connect the dots.”

Aides note that they launched their Hispanic outreach operation, Latinos Con Biden-Harris, much earlier than past Democratic presidential campaigns — including Biden’s 2020 run. But fellow Democrats also see the early spending and intensifying outreach as the reelection team getting serious about a potentially fatal political problem.

“This to me seems like a campaign who’s saying, ‘Holy shit, we’ve got to get out, and early, and we have to be in front of people,’” said Lorella Praeli, the Latino vote director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the co-president of Community Change Action. “My hope is that they’re really using a surround sound strategy.”

Biden won 63 percent of Hispanic voters in 2020, and though there are few high-quality polls taken of Latino voters, some Democrats have warned that Hispanic voters are moving away from the party, including in key battleground states. The president himself laid out the stakes during a recent trip to Arizona: “I need you badly. I need the help,” Biden said. “You’re the reason why — in large part — I beat Donald Trump.”

There is also the risk that Biden could lose some Latino votes to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. One poll from Democratic group Equis Research showed Kennedy, who benefits from his name recognition, performing surprisingly well among Latino voters in a dozen battleground states. If Kennedy gets on the ballot in these states — particularly Arizona and Nevada — it poses another challenge to the Biden campaign’s Latino voter operation.

“The third party candidate factor plays a really important role here. It’s not just Biden v. Trump for Latino voters,” Praeli said. “And there’s also a very real appeal to Latino voters to stay home. There are very active interests at play in trying to demobilize this space.”

Aides insist that they are on top of the matter. One of the ways they’re doing so is by micro-targeting their approach.

As part of a $30 million spring media buy, the campaign has used a mix of Spanish-language accents as well as Spanglish, which is more resonant with young Latino voters. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is home to a sizable Puerto Rican community, they’ve run ads delivered in a Puerto Rican accent. They’ve released ads targeted to Cuban and Venezuelan populations in Florida, and Mexican voters in Nevada and Arizona.

The campaign also has a mix of Spanish and English-speaking organizers on the ground, and plans to maintain a bilingual presence in battleground states over the next seven months. The Reach app feeds voters a regular stream of pro-Biden content and messages that volunteers can personalize and text directly to their friends.

But the Biden campaign’s efforts haven’t been without hiccups. After the launch of a voter outreach event in Coral Gables, longtime Miami Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago wrote a column — “Three gringos in Coral Gables launch Biden-Harris Latino campaign (Sad trombone.)” — criticizing the rollout. Santiago noted that all the major introductory speakers — Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava — were all white.

Praeli downplayed the criticism, saying that what matters is continuous and sustained engagement, including in states like Florida that present a big reach for Biden. The president has seven months to tell a positive story about his economic record, as Americans continue to feel the weight of inflation, she said. There are also messaging opportunities with Latino voters on gun control and immigration.

“They need to draw greater contrast with Trump on immigration,” Praeli said. “Otherwise, it just becomes hard for voters to understand who stands for what.”

The Latino population has grown at the second-fastest rate of any major racial and ethnic group since the last election, and an estimated 36.2 million Latino voters are eligible this year, up from 32.3 million in 2020, according to data from Pew Research Center. They’re projected to make up 14.7 percent of all eligible voters in November, which marks a new high.

Polls show that Latino voters still lean Democratic. But the party’s longtime advantage with Latino voters has shrunk to its lowest point in decades.

“There’s not a doubt in the world that the Latino vote is now a truly persuadable audience. It’s still majority Democrats. But as the vote matures, it’s become more of a vote that you have to spend more time persuading than just turning out,” said Chuck Rocha, a former Bernie Sanders senior adviser and a Democratic strategist who focuses on Latino voters. “And I think that that’s why the Biden campaign is prioritizing, and starting earlier than they have, because they’ve realized that.”

The Trump campaign sees an opening, highlighting new polls that show the former president making gains with Latino voters. In a statement to POLITICO, Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez took a jab at a viral clip of Biden in 2020 at a campaign stop in Florida, noting that his “idea of Hispanic outreach was playing ‘Despacito.’”

“Now, Hispanics know how despacito Biden has been and when his ‘Latinx outreach’ team finally parachutes into our communities, they will learn why President Trump is making record gains: No Bueno Biden’s policies have made everything more expensive, given us a border bloodbath, and wrecked the American Dream,” she said. “That’s why so many Hispanics will vote for President Trump to get our economy booming, end the chaos at the border, and Make America Great Again.”

Biden campaign officials recognize the challenge ahead. But they also dismiss the idea that Trump is polling even with Latino voters. They believe that the lack of Republican campaign infrastructure (the RNC shuttered community centers meant to reach minority voters) will harm the former president.

They also note that the voting bloc is not a monolith. It is young, and still aligns with Biden on issues such as immigration, gun control and climate change, said Matt Barreto, who’s leading polling on Latinos for the Biden campaign. While it can’t be painted with a broad brush, they believe that Trump’s stance on a number of issues, including his immigration policy plans — family separation, mass deportations — will repel Latino voters broadly.

“There’s a zero percent chance that Trump is ahead with Hispanics. Zero percent. We’re not as far ahead as we should be. And we’re working on it. But we’re not losing any support,” Barreto said.

“What we know about the Latino vote right now is that it is new. It is young. There’s a record number of first- and second-time voters who were not even eligible to vote during the Obama years,” he continued. “So that means when they come into the electorate, and someone calls them or emails them or text them for a poll, they have very low levels of political information.”