The Daily Signal - How Conservatives Can Engage Latino Voters

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

In recent elections, conservatives have seen large gains with Latino voters. But what is causing this increase in conservative Latino engagement? FreedomWorks vice president of policy Cesar Ybarra joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to dive into the reasons. "The Democrats label [Donald] Trump as the most racist, anti-Hispanic president in America in history, and what happened?" says Ybarra. "He increased his share of the Latino vote in those four years by nearly 10 points." Issues that drive Hispanic voters, Ybarra says, include supporting law enforcement, increasing parental oversight of schools, and lowering prices. Listen to the full interview on the podcast, or read a lightly edited transcript below: We also cover these stories: Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Latvia Monday, affirming the United States’ support for the Baltic countries. Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, announces the Sunshine State won’t be advising healthy kids get COVID-19 vaccines. Texas is taking steps to ensure cities that defund the police face penalties. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, March 8th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm John Pop. In recent elections, conservatives have seen large games with Latino voters. But what is causing this increase in conservative Latino engagement? Freedom Works Vice President of Policy, Cesar Ibarra, joins Doug Blair to dive into the reasons. But before we get to our interview, let's hit our top stories of the day. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was in Latvia on Monday, affirming the United States support for the Baltic

countries. Blinken also was clear about his concerns about doing a no-fly zone. Here's what he had to say via Bloomberg. The no-fly zone, to be very clear about what that involves, is that means that if Russian planes violate the zone that's declared, we shoot them down. And that runs the considerable risk of creating a direct conflict between our countries and Russia, and thus a wider war. which is in no one's interest, including in the interest of the Ukrainian people. Blinken also said, over the last year, the United States has provided more than a billion dollars in security assistance to Ukraine. Just within the last couple of weeks, President Biden created the authority

to provide an additional $350 million in defense support to Ukraine. And within a week, most of that, about 70 percent, is already in the hands of Ukrainians, being used very effectively against Russian aggression. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Lodapo announced Monday the Sunshine State wouldn't be advising healthy kids to get COVID-19 vaccines. The Sarasota Herald Tribune reported that Lodapo said that Florida is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children. White House Press Secretary Jen Saki made it clear the Biden administration disagreed with Florida's guidance in her press conference Monday via ABC News. So it's deeply disturbing that there are politicians peddling conspiracy theories out there and casting doubt on vaccinations when it is our best tool against the virus

and the best tool to prevent even teenagers from being hospitalized. Lodapo, who also serves as Secretary of Florida's Department of Health, has an MD from Harvard Medical School. Texas is taking steps to ensure its cities don't defund the police. The Lone Star State is implementing rules passed in legislation last year that will ensure that if a Texas state, city defunds the police, certain penalties are put in place. According to a press release from Texas Governor Greg Abbott's office, cities found to have defunded the police would face tax rate limitations,

lose access to certain tax revenues, and be subject to other budgetary requirements and limitations. In a statement, Abbott, who is a Republican, said, Texas remains a law and order state, and we continue to make it abundantly clear that we support our law enforcement office. who put their lives on the line every day to keep community safe. My office's adoption of these new rules will prevent cities for making reckless and downright dangerous decisions to defund the police, ensuring a safer future for Texans all across the Lone Star State. Now stay tuned for Doug's conversation with Cesar Ibaro.

Voting is one of our most important civic duties. Because its impact reaches far and wide, it is important to have trust in our electoral system. That's why the Heritage Foundation created the Election Integrity Scorecard. The scorecard compares each state's voting rules and regulations and gives each state a ranking on their transparency and overall potential for interference and corruption. If you want to understand the nature of the election system in your state, make sure you check out the election integrity scorecard at heritage.org slash election scorecard. My guest today is Cesar Ibarra, vice president of policy at Freedom Works. Cesar, welcome to the show. Hey, it's great to be with you, great to be at Heritage.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming. So today we're going to talk about an issue that doesn't really get a lot of attention, but probably should amongst conservatives. And that is the policy preferences of Latinos. Before we get too far in this interview, I think it might be useful to define our terms. So how are we defining the term Latino here? Latino is, so it's interesting, right?

Because a lot of people identify as Hispanic. A lot of people identify as Latino. Honestly, it's kind of a toss-up. it's kind of preference, you know, mostly people who tend to be from Mexico tend to sort of identify as Hispanic, but the further south you go into Central America, maybe Latin America, that's when people start identifying as Latinos. But it's almost sort of preference. So I wouldn't put too much stock into the Hispanic versus Latino identification.

Just sort of put them like all in one group, you know. Okay, so when we're hearing terms like Hispanic American or Latino American, these are basically the same thing. Yeah, you're kind of splitting hairs at that point. Okay, interesting. So there was this popular phrase that the left like to use during the kind of upcoming wave of immigration where many Latino voters were entering the country that they said demographics was destiny. And that the fact that more Latino voters were entering the country, they would kind of vote for the left and the left would never lose an election again. How was that played out?

You know, well, it's funny. Ronald Reagan said once, you know, Hispanics are conservative. They just don't know it yet. And it's something, you know, the Democrat Party never realized until recently, right, when, you know, sort of like this mass media communication started popping up and, you know, Hispanics, you know, started sort of getting a better outlook into the policy and political world here in America. And I think, you know, one of the biggest mistakes that both parties have made is assuming that just because you're not white, that means you're going to automatically be pulled into the Democrat or center left political spectrum. and boy, has that been proven wrong. Just look at everything that's been happening. And, you know, as far as the demographic change, you know, that's more political in my point of view. But I think that's sort of the case right now. Okay.

Well, we did see gains for the GOP under President Trump with Latino voters. And I guess I'm curious as to what specifically caused that change. Yeah. Well, you look at Idaalgo County, Star County down in Texas, right? It's down in McAllen, Texas, down in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. is, you know, I like to give the Idlego County story, right? So in 2016, Hillary Clinton won that county by 40 points. That's 90-something percent Hispanic.

In 2020, Donald Trump won that county by, or lost that county by 17 points, right? But my point is that's a 90 percent Hispanic county, and he nearly cut his losses by half. So that is huge, right, considering you're in a 90 percent Hispanic district. And in the polling that we've done at Freedom Works, we found that, crime and safety is a big, big issue. And what are those people in Star County and Idle County facing? They're facing drug cartel violence. They're facing, you know, the mass immigration problems, just the criminality that's happening at the border. And we did a trip down to McAllen to talk some of the activists and law enforcement people down there. And yeah, they're not having it,

right? So it speaks to the idea that Hispanics really care about safe communities, law and order, enforcement of not only immigration laws, but also just general crime, right? We see all these DAs across the, you know, all these woke DAs across the cities, you know, not enforcing, you know, simple laws or prosecuting people for their crimes. So that's why you saw that big shift in four years, right? So we're seeing maybe it almost sounds like these are voters that have the same concerns as everybody else. If their communities are unsafe or they feel like they're unsafe, they're going to vote a separate

way. Exactly. And here's the biggest mistake. in my opinion that, that, you know, people in D.C. have made. They've always assumed that Hispanics only cared about immigration. Right. And that could not, that's so patronizing, right? And that could not be more further from the truth. In fact, in our polling, it shows that Hispanics care mostly about the economy, about safe communities, education, or guess where immigration ranks in the issues all the way at the bottom. Wow. That, I mean, that, that is just, and it's not only a one-off poll,

like poll after poll after poll, immigration always ranks at the bottom of the issues that they care about. It does seem like this is an issue that both parties seem to believe is a winning issue to court Latino voters. Obviously, Democrats will do this and Republicans will do it as well. Where did that perception come from? I used to be, when I was in college in Arizona, I used to volunteer for the Libre Initiative. And we were doing canvassing down in Tucson, Arizona for the Martha McSally versus Ron Barber race. And we would go down the list, right, of the 10-ishers. Like, where are you on Social Security Forum and all these things, right?

And seven out of ten questions, they gave the conservative answer. But then when you ask them, who are you going to vote for? They said, well, I'm going to vote for Ron Barber or the Democrat. Well, why is that? And the perception was always that, well, it's Republicans who don't like my family. And they want to, they're bad on immigration, et cetera. Now, that's kind of, you know, that's kind of the flip side of what I was saying about the issue that they care least about. But they generally speaking, traditionally Hispanics have seen the,

Republican Party is a party that wants to, you know, kick my grandma out of the country, so to speak. So, yeah. And we're seeing that perception change, then. We're seeing that perception change, right? Because the policy issues are coming to the forefront. I think that's one of the good things that Donald Trump was able to do is really highlight the important of policy, not politics. I mean, for the Democrats labeled Trump as the most racist, anti-Hispanic president in America, in history.

And what happened? He increased his share of the Latino vote in those four years. by nearly 10 points. That's huge, like 14 to 15 points in Florida. I mean, the gains he made in these Texas border counties is huge. Where we still need to make up more ground is in Arizona. Right? But point taken is that he's still increased his share of the Latino vote,

and that speaks to the importance of talking about policies, not politics. And in the most recent polling that we just did, it showed that Hispanics, you know, they don't tend to favor Republicans. But when you start talking about conservative policies instead of Republican policies, they tend to side more with us because they identify as conservatives. And what we've seen over the last 40 years is that ideological self-identification correlates with political affiliation, party affiliation. So the more we can start talking about conservative policies on parental rights and low tax, like all these good things like Heritage talks about, Freedom Works talks about, like the more we're going to make gains with these communities. And this is just a start, right? Because for my vantage point, Hispanics still favor Democrat politics, but they still favor

conservative policy. So we have a big bridge to build. That's a future project. That's kind of a decade down the line. One of the things that kind of struck me when you were talking is that we are Latinos in Arizona that we need to be, conservatives need to be more focused on. It almost makes me wonder, is there really a distinction between like these groups? So, like, a Hispanic in Florida will vote differently than a Hispanic in New York,

who vote differently than a Hispanic in Texas. Yeah. Is it even useful to use the term Latino as a sort of monolithic block of voters anymore? You know, it just kind of depends also where you come from, right? You know, David Shore, who was an Obama data guy, super smart guy. He did kind of a post-mortem on the 2020 election. He showed that there was a precinct in Doral in Miami-Dade County that, you know, that swung, I think it was 40 points.

Hillary had won that precinct by 40 points, and that's overwhelmingly Venezuelan and Colombian. Trump won that in 2020 by 10 points. Wow. But what does that speak to? It speaks to like, okay, Venezuela, you look at Venezuela, you look at Colombia, big history with socialism and big government, et cetera. So that played a role there.

Versus in Mexico, yeah, you had sort of big government policies, but that's never really been the issue of, like, big tyranny. And the issues in Mexico are different than the ones they face down in Venezuela or Colombia or Nicaragua. etc. So again, I think it's more of the politics of the country that they came from versus sort of Latino versus Hispanic, et cetera. Right. So to that point, it almost seems like it's more useful to look in terms of, okay, Venezuelan Americans are centralized in this part of the country. So our campaign strategy is to do this versus, you know, a different demographic of Latinos is sort of in this part of the country. So we would tailor the message to be there. Is that

what we're saying. Yep, yep. And again, like, what we should be focusing on as conservatives, and we're reaching out to these communities, the economy, inflation, education, and safe communities. I mean, those three issues with the right conservative messaging is, I mean, that's like, that should be like crack for the, just the center right movement in reaching out to those communities.

Because it's, these are winning issues that were right on policy. When you're right on policy, then you're, then you have good politics. Good policy is good politics. So the more we can press and push our policies to these communities, the better outcomes we're going to have on the electoral side of the spectrum. So you did mention that Freedom Works had done some polling recently. You found some of the policy preferences for Latino voters. What were the results of that polling? Yeah.

So, you know, we just recently did a poll on sort of testing whether they agree with the conservative message or not. So 51% of conservatives agree or Hispanics agree with the conservative. position of prioritizing law enforcement. So prosecuting crimes, however big or small they may be, 51% also agree with support and funding for law enforcement officers. That's huge, right? Because we know the narrative with the Democrat Party is defund the police and cops are mean, right? So we've got to continue pushing that.

57% agree that parents should have more involvement in education. Huge. And 58% agree that goods should come. less, gas, food, just day-to-day commodities that have been skyrocketed, thanks to President Biden's inflation. So, yeah, that's what it showed. And again, right, but how did we get, how do we get those numbers by testing, you know, the conservative versus liberal position and asking them, do you agree with the conservative

position or with the liberal position? Now, do you agree with the Republican position or the Democrat position? So you've got to talk about the ideological side of things, not the partisan side of things. Because even if you look at other minority communities, they also, you know, if you look at Black America, right, a lot of them tend to also affiliate self-identify as conservative, Asian Americans as well, Muslim Americans. I was listening to Joe Rogan podcast yesterday. I think it was Majid Nawaz or I think that was the same, Muslim American guy. But he was talking about how the Muslim-American community self-identifies as conservative and they've seen big gains in his community in voting for Republicans. So you're not only seeing this kind of shift in Hispanics, but you're seeing it across

the minority communities that self-identify as conservative. Interesting. Does language play a role at all in outreach to the local community? Yeah, I mean, look, my mom rests in peace, but she was as American as they come, couldn't speak a thing of English. I mean, she could speak a little bit, right? But there are thousands of examples like her, right, where their first language is Spanish, but they're still American and they still vote. So yeah, language can be a thing. And that's

why it's important to have people who speak Spanish, you know, and the center right movement, kind of reaching out to those communities because, yeah, the language barrier exists. It's there. So yeah. So it's a twofold thing, right? We have to do everything we can to ensure that they have the resources to speak English and all that, right, self-improvement, but also have the resources to reach out to them when they're not there yet. Right. So, you know, I would say it's an opportunity for the Spanish-speaking, you know, folks in the conservative world to use their Spanish and, you know, make some gains. Sure. So, Cesar, I have one final question for you.

If we want to continue making inroads as conservatives with Latinos, what specifically should we be doing? My motto is ABC, always be campaigning. And, like, we can't, you know, we're not there yet. We're not fully there yet. Again, our polling still shows that Hispanics favor Democrat politics, but they're, you know, we're not. favor conservative policies. So it's going to take a village, right? We have folks in the Libra Initiative doing it,

Freedom Works is doing it, like, you know, everyone else that has the resources, you know, politicians, think tanks, advocacy groups, everyone that believes in the freedom message should be doing everything they can to spread their message to the Hispanic community. Because if we get this right,

that's going to change electoral politics like the 21st century, 100%. And the Democrats are going to be scrambled, Because if we're able to make a dent in the Hispanic community, I mean, I'm getting goosebumps of just how fun it's going to be in getting good policy passed in Congress or in the state legislature, school boards, right? So, yeah, keep pushing your message. Do we be creative in how to message to those communities.

And we can do it. You know, President Biden, what the President Biden doing the election? I mean, he got a bad bunny, right, to do a nat for him. He's one of the most famous Hispanic. He played Despacito one. I mean, those things don't work, right? He got on a press conference, got his iPhone and played Despacito. Like, okay, who cares?

That's not Hispanic outreach. He got his wife to say C-Sé Poetéé. And he couldn't even say Cepuella right. Like all these things, right, just as a young kid say, right, cringe. Yeah. Cringe outreach. We should not be doing that. We should be focusing on policies.

Okay. Education, economy, safe communities. We get those three, right? We're going to win. Excellent. That was Cesar Ibarra, Vice President of Policy at FreedomWorks. Cesar, I very much appreciate your time. Thank you.

And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, and please encourage others to subscribe. And a big thank you to John Pop, who's usually our silent producer, but jumped in to fill in today. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Virginia Allen and Kate Trinko, sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visitdailysignal.com.