Two very different candidates for the House of Representatives, in different races, personify the increasing ideological divisions emerging within the once heavily Democratic constituency of Latino voters, whose numbers are growing.
Should he win his race, Democrat Rudy Salas would be the first Latino elected to Congress from a district in California’s Central Valley. Rep. Mike Garcia is hoping for another term representing a suburban district in north Los Angeles.
Their highly competitive races, along with a few other congressional races in California, have pushed Latino voters to the front lines of the bitter battle for control of the House of Representatives.
Republicans have the majority in the House of Representatives, and Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take power, which is possible regardless of who wins the White House.
Five California House races have been rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report, meaning Democrats have the best chances there to flip seats. They include District 22, where Salas, a former member of the state Assembly, is challenging Republican Rep. David Valadao, and District 27, where Garcia is trying to fend off a challenge from Democrat George Whitesides, a businessman, nonprofit leader and former NASA chief. of staff.
According to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, one in four California voters in this election, more than 4.8 million, will be Latino. It would be slightly higher than in 2020 and a 22.4% increase in voter share over 2016, the nonprofit, nonpartisan group estimates.
“This election will be an important indicator of the Latino vote nationally, but also here in California,” said Arturo Vargas, CEO of NAEO.
District 22 in California’s Central Valley
In his race, Salas is reminding many Central Valley voters of his roots in agriculture — “I managed to wake up before the rooster” — as part of his father’s crew, for which he was paid based on the amount he picked or the box he packed. , because he was not officially on the payroll as a minor employee.
“It comes up when I go door to door,” he said. “People say, ‘You understand what we’re going through.’” He said many are initially confused that he would be the first Latino elected because they mistakenly believe Valadao, who is of Portuguese descent, is Latino.
But then they get “super excited,” Salas said.
Salas said he reminds them that the race is about making the American dream attainable, making housing and health care costs affordable, tackling immigration and boosting education. He said he also tells voters that the district is the most Latino in the state, but Latinos have a reputation for not showing up and need to change that this year.
Salas is seen as a moderate who broke with his party over a state gas tax increase that cost him his committee chairmanship.
“The support is there. It’s just a matter of getting people to vote,” Salas said. “I am doing everything I can to reach people, in Spanish or English, to help them understand that this is the commitment to controlling the House of Representatives.”
Valadao’s parents emigrated from the Azores; Portuguese Americans do not fall under the federal government’s definition of Latin American. Valadao’s parents went into dairy farming and he has held leadership positions in the dairy industry; he praises his focus on water issues affecting the area.
Valadao is one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Valadao said he does not support Trump’s mass deportation proposals, although he does support stricter asylum laws and border enforcement.
“Obviously I didn’t support it [mass deportation]But that being said, is there a place where potentially millions of people are coming to this country that we don’t know about? “We need to know who some of these people are, and those who are here to harm us, we need to export them back… and we need to do that quickly,” he said.
Valadao was first elected to Congress in 2013, but lost in 2018 when Democrats regained a large number of Republican seats in the state.
Valadao returned to Congress when he won the 2022 midterm race against Salas by 51.5% to 48.5% in an election in which Latino turnout was “anemicly low,” said Luis Alvarado, a Republican strategist from California.
The number of registered Democrats in the district far outnumbers Republicans, up from 129,793 to 86,112 as of September 6. But the district had the third-lowest voter turnout in the country in the 2022 midterm elections, according to the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“That’s the Democrats’ concern,” Alvarado said, underscoring the importance of turnout this year.
District 27 in North Los Angeles
In California’s District 27, Garcia, a Naval Academy graduate and former Navy fighter pilot whose mother and grandfather emigrated from Mexico, said he approaches Latinos like anyone else. “I don’t treat them differently. At the end of the day, we are all Americans. When I hear from my constituents, I hear that they are proud to be American first.”
Garcia said he is campaigning on spending control and safety and security, including border and neighborhood security. He touted drug busts from marijuana growers, which he said were led by his office, in black and Latino communities where, he said, cartels were emerging.
Garcia has a conservative record in Congress and is supported by Trump. His district backed Joe Biden in 2020, the year he won a special election and then the general election for Congress.
Whitesides, a NASA engineer and former CEO of Virgin Galactic who leads a nonprofit focused on modernizing wildfire response, has taken a different approach in his Latino outreach as he campaigns to dethrone Garcia.
“We focused our campaign on Latino voters,” said Whitesides, whose wife is of Cuban and Salvadoran descent. “Every weekend we are knocking on doors with bilingual volunteers. Our literature and our advertising are all bilingual or Spanish.”
Whitesides said the issues he focuses on are issues that cut across populations, such as affordable health care, safe streets, homeownership and small business support. He criticized Garcia’s vote against the Inflation Reduction Act, which expanded health care subsidies and allowed Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices.
Nationally, Democrats’ lead among Latinos has narrowed. Polls show Vice President Kamala Harris has galvanized Latinos back to her party after a poor performance for Biden before he left the race. In a September NBC News poll, Harris had a 14-point lead over Trump among Latino voters, but her 54%-40% lead was smaller than that of previous Democratic presidential candidates.
In an Oct. 3-10 poll by the Latino Community Foundation, a philanthropic nonprofit led by former Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro, 51% of Latino voters in District 22 said they would vote for Salas, and 21% at Valadao. These totals also included people who said they were undecided but leaning toward one of the candidates. Another 28% said they were “completely undecided.”
In the same poll, 52% of Latino voters in District 27 said they support Whitesides, compared to 24% for Garcia and 24% completely undecided. The poll from BSP Research, a Democratic firm, surveyed 200 voters in each district and had a margin of error of plus or minus 6.9% for each district.
In the last presidential election, Latino turnout was very high, and now “it’s actually approaching non-Latino turnout,” Vargas said.
Although mid-term turnout in 2022 was very low in both California districts, the question is whether the increased neck-and-neck race between Trump and Harris – and the attention on those races in Congress – will encourage Democrats who are there unsure of their votes or not planning to come at all.
California allows voters to choose “no party preference” when registering, and nearly a fifth of voters in Districts 22 and 27 fall into that category. How they cast their ballots — and whether they vote — will be another closely watched variable in these congressional races.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
