Fidel Martinez and Cerys Davies | (TNS) Los Angeles Times
For three decades, Mike Madrid has been tracking the seismic shifts in the Latino electorate.
In that time, the Republican political consultant has noticed a population becoming predominantly U.S.-born and increasingly English-speaking. It’s a change in the electorate the Democratic Party is ignoring, he says.
Democrats’ “whole strategy for most of my career was to run against Pete Wilson and Prop. 187, and I get that,” Madrid said, referring to the former GOP governor’s successful initiative to make it California law to deny social services to undocumented immigrants.
“But you know, you can run on that maybe two or four years afterward. They were running on it 20, 25 years afterwards. And it’s just so particularly ingrained in their inside baseball mentality.”
Meanwhile, “Latinos have been screaming at us through polling data for 30 years,” he said. “Jobs, the economy, upward mobility, housing, education and health care — middle-class, basic getting-through-life stuff — this is what the data tells us they care about.”
This alleged disconnect between the Democratic Party and Latino voters is a key theme in Madrid’s “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy,” released last week by Simon & Schuster. Part memoir and part explainer, the book provides a comprehensive breakdown of how and why the Latino electorate is so misunderstood.
Madrid, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a “Never Trump” political action committee, says that he hopes “The Latino Century” serves as a wake-up call for the Democratic Party to stop taking Latino voters for granted ahead of such a consequential election.
The red, white and blue cover for “The Latino Century” depicts a woman, a man and two children standing in front of a house
I spoke with Madrid on the heels of his book release. The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q. What was the impetus for your writing this book?
A. I’ve been researching and looking at the data and doing campaigns all over the country with Latinos for over 30 years. I realized the time to put what I’ve learned in writing was right after the 2020 election — we saw a historic slide of Latinos away from [Democrat Joe] Biden.
The Democrats were either dismissing it or saying it wasn’t happening. And it occurred to me that they probably needed some help in understanding the Latino vote. I realized I needed to write a book and explain what was going on — before the 2024 election — otherwise we risk sliding into a really, really dark place.
Ironically, if Trump is reelected, he will do it with a historically high number of Latino voters, and that doesn’t sit right with me.
Q. De Los recently quoted you in a story about how 1 in 5 Latino voters were considering casting a ballot for a third-party candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Can you tell me more about why this trend in the electorate didn’t surprise you?
A. The whole thesis of the book is that neither party understands our …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
