Johnathan Walker:Univision cozies up to Trump, proving the Latino vote is very much in play in 2024

Are Latinos the new Italians?Johnathan Walker 

Has the Latino American vote become as imperceptible as the Italian American, the German American or the French American vote?

Tomorrow, would we sound as foolish tracking Latin American voting trends as we would tracking British American voting trends?

“There’s no such thing as the Latino vote,” declared a March 2022 headline in Atlantic Monthly. “Why can’t America see that?” 

Well, America is starting to see it with each election cycle.

More Latino voters are going MAGA

More and more Latinos are going MAGA, and unabashedly so. 

An October New York Times/Siena poll shows that if the election were held today, 50% of Latinos in battleground states would vote for Joe Biden and 42% would vote for Donald Trump. 

That’s not a dependable voting bloc. 

That’s an electorate in play.

That’s Italian and British and French and Polish and Catholic and middle-class and working-class America. 

“How, I am often asked, can so many Latinos be willing to vote for Trump or his acolytes after he spent four years in office maligning them?” wrote the author of that Atlantic article, Northwestern University history professor and Tucson native Geraldo L. Cadava.

“In some ways, it’s an insulting question, because it presumes that non-Latinos know our interests better than we do. I didn’t support Trump, but my grandfather did.”

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Univision is cozying up to Trump

This week, jaws are dropping among those accustomed to Latinos voting reliably Democratic.

America’s most influential Spanish-language network, Univision, has cozied up to Donald Trump in a large way, reports the Washington Post.

Not only did the network do an hour-long interview with Trump at Mar-a-Lago that was “notable for its gracious tone,” but two days later, Univision ad representatives informed the Biden campaign that pro-Biden ads already purchased to air with that Trump interview in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida had been canceled, The Post reported.

Network officials explained they have a policy, formerly undisclosed, against running opposition ads in single-candidate interviews.

Sources told the newspaper Univision also canceled a booking with Biden’s Hispanic Media Director Maca Casado to respond to the Trump interview.

Democrats fear losing a key outlet

“What the hell is going on with Univision?” tweeted Ana Navarro-Cárdenas, a left-wing co-host of ABC TV’s “The View.”

Maria Cardona, a political consultant and member of the Democratic National Committee, answered that question to The Post:  

“The new (Univision) ownership is essentially co-opting and kidnapping the soul and mission of what Univision has been up to now, and they are serving it up on a silver platter to Donald Trump. It is going to mask the pernicious and dangerous politics that Donald Trump is going to implement if he becomes president again.”

Democrats are stunned, reported The Post.

“Not since 2004, when former president George W. Bush outperformed expectations among Latino voters, has the Spanish-speaking population been so up for grabs in a presidential contest, according to early polling. 

“Democrats now fear they are losing their access to a network that has been instrumental in past elections in aggressively reporting on Trump’s immigration policies and their effect on Latino viewers.”

Latinos like the Trump years better

This month CNN interviewed some half-dozen Latino voters who told the network they now believe the Trump years were better for them economically. 

“Latinos can really say when Trump was the president we didn’t have high gas, inflation,” Georgia voter Juan Manuel Ferreira Zamora said. 

Another House speaker,another stopgap bill. All the while our national debt explodes.

Latinos are “up for grabs for both parties,” said another Georgia voter, Andres Parra. “There’s a lot of broken promises and frustration.” 

Trump has talked in sinister tones about undocumented migrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” as he used to talk about building a wall and making Mexico pay for it.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, responded, “When anyone has a large platform, they need to be careful with their voice.” 

Asking Trump to tone down his stupid and dangerous rhetoric is like asking Fred Astaire to cool it with his feet.

Plenty of Latinos know Trump is vulgar in both speech and thought. They also know he never built that wall or made Mexicans pay for it. 

They feel as threatened by Trump as the typical Italian American feels threatened by Trump.

And like that Italian American, they want to pay less at the pump.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic, where this column first published. Email him at [email protected].