Democrats' spending on 2020 Spanish-languge ads was very late, report says
When the Democrat political action committee Nuestro PAC sent election mailers in Florida featuring a photo of Kristin Urquiza — who blamed President Donald Trump for her father's Covid-19 death — some 200 were returned with “communist” or “socialist” scrawled on them.
The response underscores a blaring lesson from the 2020 election: By the time Democrats started paying attention to Latino voters in the state and spending money on them, Republicans had already embedded their message, linking Democrats and Biden to socialism.
“This showed the damage had already been done. Latinos in Florida had made up their mind and the long-term organizing and misinformation campaign by Trump and the Republicans worked,” Nuestro PAC stated in a report on 2020 Democratic Latino outreach that was made available to NBC News.
Although Biden won Latino voters nationally, Trump won Latino voters in Florida and gained ground in overwhelmingly Latino counties in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and South Texas, areas that have been Democratic strongholds.
The missed opportunities for Democrats are most visible in spending on Spanish language media, according to Chuck Rocha, who formed Nuestro PAC and who was Bernie Sanders' senior campaign adviser in the 2020 primary. He wrote the book "Tío Bernie" detailing his strategy for helping Sanders win Latino voters.
Democrats, the Biden campaign and political action committees spent twice as much money on Spanish language television and messaging than Trump and Republicans did.
But the majority of the spending occurred in the final 60 days of the election, the report states.
In Texas, Democrats spent more than $1.6 million in Spanish-language television in the Laredo, Brownsville and McAllen media market during the last 30 to 40 days of the election, compared to almost zero by Republicans.
"You've all heard me cry ... that if you will invest and spend money ... you can win the Latino vote," Rocha said in a press call on Wednesday. "Well this proves me wrong, because it's two things: it's resources into the community early enough for them to make a difference."
When Democrats and their allies finally did spend money, they hired white-owned media firms that used Spanish speaking voice-over actors who narrated over stock photos and video.
According to the PAC’s research, white-led Super PACS spent more than $1 billion by October 2020. Latino-led Super PACS got 2 percent of that money, according to the report.
Nearly all of the messaging, including by national Super PACS, was the same as had been used in English, meaning the messaging was not tailored for Spanish-speaking Latino voters, the report said.
At the congressional race level, few Democratic candidates ran bilingual campaigns. A young congressional campaign manager told Nuestro PAC that with just $5 million to spend, "'the consultants said the Latino vote was not a priority and not a part of the path to victory.' The district was 33 percent Latino," the report states.
Nuestro PAC spent more than $8 million targeting Latino voters for Joe Biden in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and parts of Florida, often in Spanish.
Rocha is the founder of Solidarity Strategies, a Democratic consulting firm that produced campaign advertising and other work for campaigns.
Nuestro PAC, which would have hired consultants and likely Rocha’s firm to create Spanish language advertising, did not get any money for such work in Florida in the last 60 days of the election, the report states.
The report was based on interviews with former congressional campaign staffers, activists, candidates, consultants and state organizations, as well as bilingual post-election polling of Latinos in Miami-Dade County and four counties in Florida and Texas.
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