‘End of an Era’: Hispanic Republicans Line Up to Run for Office

Republicans continue to expand the party’s gains made with Hispanic voters under former President Donald Trump, paving the way for over 100 Hispanic conservatives running for Congress in 2022.

Since 2016, there have been “Republican uprisings” happening across the country, according to the Washington Post. Everyday voters, especially Hispanic voters, have turned to the Republican Party after becoming frustrated with one-party, Democrat rule in Washington, DC.

As the New York Times wrote, voters and candidates in South Texas claimed that “Democrats are destroying a Latino culture built around God, family, and patriotism” and noted that Republican candidates have been building on the party’s history of economic, religious, and cultural sentiment over the last decade.

Support from Hispanic voters has diminished over the years. Despite this, Republican figures such as Trump have made inroads with minority communities after showing support across the county.

As Breitbart News reported in December, there has been a 42-point swing in favor of Republicans since the 2018 midterm elections — when Hispanic voters overwhelmingly supported the Democrats, and the party won a net 41 seats, taking control of the House.

In 2020, Hispanic voters were projected to account for 13.3 percent of all eligible voters. Nationally, 62 percent of Hispanic registered voters leaned toward the Democrat Party while 34 percent said they leaned toward the Republican Party, according to Pew Research Center.

As Breitbart News has chronicled, establishment media outlets have started to acknowledge that the “long-argued” gains Republicans made with Hispanic voters under Trump proved to be not a “one-time deal” but “the beginning of a larger trend” following Texas’s first-in-the-nation primary election:

“The GOP saw continued strong turnout in the state’s southernmost border counties in the latest display that Trump’s gains among Hispanic voters were no anomaly,” Politico confessed.

However, the outlet also noted that after the run-offs on May 24, there could be up to eight Hispanic Republican nominees — emphasizing that six of them could be women — and two of them could be out of what used to be a Democrat stronghold, the Rio Grande Valley.

This could be a result of the Republican Party dumping money into South Texas and more Hispanic Republicans — especially women — seeking, before and during the campaign season, to weaken Democrat strength in that “longtime Democratic stronghold,” as Politico noted.

“For those of us looking for hopeful signs that 2020 was an isolated incident in terms of the drop-off in Latino support for Democrats, we just didn’t get that hopeful sign in these primary results,” Tom Bonier, CEO of TargetSmart, a Democrat data firm, told Politico. “This is evidence that there’s more of a challenge there.”

Over 100 Hispanic Republicans throughout the country are running for Congress in the current 2022 midterm election cycle — a record for the party in a single cycle — as they try to win back the House. This also comes after the party made inroads with the elected House members in 2020, which left the Democrats with the slimmest majority in modern history and gave themselves the upper hand in the midterms.

To win the majority now only requires a net gain of only five Republican seats in November, and a lot is on the line in both the House and the Senate. Losing either one could mean the Democrats and Biden will have a more challenging time passing their partisan agenda items before the next presidential election.

Over the last several months, multiple polls have shown Democrats, and their policies, are unpopular with Hispanics.

A recent poll from Gallup showed that Biden’s approval rating among Hispanic Americans has also decreased by 21 points from the beginning of his presidency to April. At the beginning of his presidency, Biden saw a 73 percent approval rating with Hispanic adults, which fell slightly to 69 percent by the summer of 2021. As of April, his approval with Hispanic adults dropped to 52 percent — a drop of 21 total points.

The latest Quinnipiac poll from April showed Biden only had a 26 percent approval rating among Hispanics — lower than his rating among white persons, which hit a new low at 33 percent in the same poll. Another April poll from NPR/Marist poll found that only 40 percent approved of the president while 55 percent disapproved, and when asked about the congressional ballot, 52 percent said they would likely vote for the Republican while only 33 percent said Democrat.

Additionally, a Wall Street Journal poll from March found that the generic Republican candidate for Congress had a nine-point advantage over a generic Democrat candidate with Hispanic voters. That comes as the two parties were tied among Hispanic voters in the WSJ poll in November.

Republican gains are showing ahead of the midterms. The increased turnout among Texas Republicans led by a surge of Hispanic voters across South Texas in the 2022 primary elections is indicative of the GOP’s growing strength ahead of November.

In seemingly every part of the country and among every demographic, Republicans made huge gains in November 2021:

• Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin received more votes than any Virginian in history and won 55 percent to 43 percent of the Hispanic vote.
• Virginia’s Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares became the first Hispanic to win a statewide race.
• In McAllen, TX, a Republican was elected mayor for the first time in 24 years. The city is roughly 85 percent Hispanic, and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the city with nearly a 40 percent margin in 2016.

In the 2022 Texas primaries, Republicans gained ground with Hispanics as compared to 2018:

• Republican turnout exceeded the 2018 and 2020 primaries along every Texas border congressional district.
• Republican candidates Monica De La Cruz and Mayra Flores set a pace for record voter turnout in the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas, with more voters than in 2018.

Flores is also participating in a special election to fill the seat left by former Rep. Filemon Vela (D-TX), who left office early. In a recent poll, Flores was shown to be leading her Democrat opponent Dan Sanchez, meaning she would flip a deep blue border district to Republican.

In the special election, Flores has also received help from the Republican National Committee (RNC), which has partnered with the campaign to create one of the most significant voter contact efforts the district has seen. The RNC told Breitbart News that in their combined effect, they reached one million voter contacts in Texas during a Mayra Flores campaign kickoff event.

At the time of her kickoff event, Flores said, “Our campaign’s official Special Election kickoff this past weekend marked the beginning of the fight to flip TX-34 after years of Democrat control.”

“Democrats have made it clear that they no longer represent the values and ideas of South Texans,” Flores added. “I would be proud to represent the constituents of TX-34 as the first U.S. Congresswoman born in Mexico, fighting for secure borders, family values, and American energy independence.”

The RNC noted that this could be an “end of an era” for the Democrats, who have long taken the minority vote for granted. 

In fact, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel recently took out an op-ed in the Hill discussing how minority groups are finding a new political home with the Republican Party. She contributed part of the reason for the Hispanic voters moving to the Republican party is due to the “Democrats push[ing] socialism, radical abortion policies and refer to them as ‘Latinx,’” McDaniel added:

While Democrats push socialism, radical abortion policies and refer to them as “Latinx,” Hispanic Americans are concerned about preserving freedoms, raising strong families and putting food on the table. It’s no wonder a recent Quinnipiac poll found that Biden’s approval rating with Hispanic voters was lower than any other racial or ethnic group: just 12 percent say they “approve strongly” of his time in office.

In fact, polls consistently show Hispanics are moving away from the Democratic Party. A Wall Street Journal poll from December found that Hispanic voters were equally divided over who they would vote for in the next election. The momentum certainly seems to be with the GOP: A record 103 Republican Hispanic candidates are seeking congressional seats this year. It’s an early sign that our efforts to take our message to new voters and investment in Hispanic community centers in states like Texas, Wisconsin and Florida are making an impact.

…

These trends are part of a broader story. For generations, Democrats thought they had a monopoly on minority voters. But now, Democrats’ failed promises, polarizing agenda and rising prices are catching up with them. We’re building relationships and making significant investments in these communities. We’re winning over new voters by taking our message of freedom and opportunity to their doorstep.

Additionally, McDaniel noted that Democrats have not stopped and are “simply doubling down on their failed policies and overplaying their divisive rhetoric — without offering solutions or plans to keep families safe, empower entrepreneurs and create opportunities for advancement.”

However, the Republicans are working to build relationships and making significant investments in minority areas by opening community centers all over America, which is why McDaniel claims there will be a “rude awakening” for the Democrats in November.

To continue to make inroads with minority voters and to make further advancements with the communities, the RNC has opened up community centers across the county to help the party achieve its goal of taking back the House and Senate in 2020, as the Democrats have some of the slimmest majorities in recent history. 

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.