Do You Really Know Why Texas Didn’t Turn Blue?
![Jolt's presidential candidate forum in Pasadena, Texas, February 2020 [Jolt]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f21dbb91adde3260d4ba1ef/1605642780482-1GEGW8XWM6T3NAN7D9FZ/jolt)
Jolt's presidential candidate forum in Pasadena, Texas, February 2020 [Jolt]
In the lead up to the election, it looked like Texas was going to turn blue, but that didn’t happen.
In the days following, Democratic strategists and the media have been scratching their heads to figure out why – and many have focused on the fact that more Texas Latinos voted for Trump this year than in 2016.
But for Antonio Arellano, the interim executive director of Jolt, a grassroots organization focused on building Latinos’ political power in Texas, the way the whole discussion is being framed is wrong. In an interview last week, we discussed the election, the backward media narratives about Texas Latinos, and how Democrats could have done better. Here’s what he had to say:
Latinos didn’t give Texas to Trump — white, rural voters did
While it’s true that more Latino voters voted for Trump this year than in 2016, Latinos overwhelmingly voted for Biden in the five major cities in the state, where a majority of Latino voters live (only 15% of Latino voters live in the Rio Grande Valley, the southernmost region along the Texas-Mexico border).
Ultimately, Trump won Texas with white voters in rural counties and Arellano said he’s fed up with people blaming Latinos.
“People kept coming to me like, ‘Oh my God, Antonio, why did Latinos vote Republican?” But it’s offensive to assume that Latinos should have voted one way or the other, since neither party “owns” the Latino vote, Arellano said. “Why is it that Latinos had become such a target for their voting preferences when they were overlooked by [Democrats]?” he added.
“You couldn’t throw a rock and hit a Democratic sign in the Valley to save your life.”
One reason more Latinos voted Republican this year than in 2016 is that Democrats failed to invest in messaging, Arellano said.
Specifically in the Valley, where Hillary Clinton won by 39 percentage points in 2016 and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders won a majority of South Texas counties during the primary, Biden led by only 15 points. Looking around the Valley, it was clear from signs and billboards that the Republican Party and the Trump campaign had made that investment in the region to close that gap, Arellano said. He questioned why Biden, who will be the second Catholic president in office, didn’t visit the region (which is 90% Catholic) to talk about his religious views. Kamala Harris did come to Texas, but one trip just a few weeks ahead of the general election isn’t enough to win a constituency, he said. “Latinos are not just going to get in line because you're not the racist white guy.”
A failure to see Latinos as culturally, ideologically and linguistically diverse
“Historically, candidates in Texas, whether it be statewide or locally, have had this preconceived opinion that they could just [put out] one generic Latino message, and that's their outreach. What they fail to see when they do that is that Latinos are culturally, ideologically and linguistically diverse. We need a variety of different campaigns to reach them,” Arellano said.
For this election cycle, Arellano’s organization, Jolt, launched the largest Latino progressive voter mobilization effort in Texas. It targeted nearly 80,000 households in Dallas, San Antonio and Houston.
The group didn’t mobilize its efforts around candidates, but ideas and topics that mattered to voters. For example, Arellano said, the messaging to Latinos in Houston and Dallas, which reminded people they were close to being the majority of voters in the area and claiming that power, would not resonate with Latinos in the Valley, who have been the majority in the region for decades. Instead, there, organizers focused on economic messaging about income and putting food on the table.
“When you actually, genuinely care, you see turnout. … We saw in Texas 500,000 first-time Latino voters during early voting alone,” he said. “Latinos are not a given entity. They are a constituency that demands recruitment, that demands investment. Stop f***ing ignoring the Latino community, and you will not just win them for one election cycle, but you have the opportunity to earn their vote for generations to come because it's one of the youngest electoral blocks in the state.”
For Arellano, it ultimately comes down to one thing: “Latinos have got to stop being an afterthought.”