Latino voters in Pennsylvania: Harris and Trump campaigns fight for crucial group

Reading, Pa
CNN
—

Immediately after his vice presidential debate, Tim Walz arrived at a Puerto Rican-owned restaurant here in southeastern Pennsylvania on Wednesday evening to speak to Latino voters.

“This thing is going to come all the way to our 'Blue Wall' states, all the way to Pennsylvania,” the Minnesota governor said at Mofongo Restaurant as guests sipped colorful drinks.

“Could come right through this restaurant,” he added.

At the same time, just a few blocks away, a Donald Trump campaign office was abuzz with activity as Latino supporters of the former president manned the phones in English and Spanish.

Marcia Heras, an immigrant from Ecuador, drove hours from Allentown to make calls.

“Familia, la vida y fin de la guerra,” Heras told CNN, were the reasons the longtime conservative supported Trump: family, life and the end of the war.

This snapshot of dueling outreach efforts on a rainy weeknight provides a glimpse into the importance of the Latino vote to the Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state that has seen the last two presidential elections by a single vote point were decided.

More than a million Hispanic or Latino people live in Pennsylvania, according to recent census data. The Pew Research Center estimates that 615,000 of them will be eligible to vote in November. While the state remains predominantly white, Hispanic or Latino residents now make up about 9% of the population, census figures show, and have grown by more than 40% since 2010.

Much of the growth occurred in the “222 Corridor,” a group of cities surrounding U.S. Route 222, including Reading, Allentown and Lancaster.

In 2020, Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by around 80,000 votes, well ahead of Latinos both in the commonwealth and nationally. Four years earlier, Trump narrowly won the Keystone State while losing Latino voters to Hillary Clinton.

Although Harris was well ahead of Trump among registered Latino voters nationally, 54% to 40%, in a recent NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll, her 14-point lead fell short of previous Democratic presidential candidates in that demographic. Biden won the majority of Latino voters in 2020 by 33 points, Clinton by 38 points.

Even at a recent Harris campaign rally in Allentown, there were signs that support was waning among the vice president's many enthusiastic supporters.

Hector Santana, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic, told CNN he has voted Democratic for 20 years but is undecided this year

“I'm undecided yet because the basic foundation I've always looked for is which candidate has the interests of the Hispanic population in mind,” Santana said in Spanish. “Today, so far, I haven’t seen that (from any candidate).”

Carmen Dancsecs, a mortgage lender in Bethlehem, said she is concerned that some Latino voters may stay home in November.

“I think there are too many people who are kind of… in uncertain waters. They don’t know where they stand,” Dancsecs told CNN.

The Harris campaign is pursuing several strategies to shore up support among Latino voters in Pennsylvania in the final weeks before Election Day.

That includes using surrogates to campaign, attracting more support from Latino celebrities and investing in more advertising aimed at Latino voters, according to several Harris aides and allies.

“The more effectively we are able to spread the Vice President’s message about who the Vice President is and where she comes from, that she is like a fighter, that she has been standing up for the people for a long time and taking on bad actors.”, whether that it was the big banks during the mortgage crisis, the for-profit universities that defrauded their students… that's a message that certainly resonates with Latino men and Latinos,” a senior Harris campaign adviser told CNN.

Last month, the campaign announced it would commit $3 million to new ads on Spanish-language radio from September 15 to October 15.

The campaign is also holding other rallies and events in the embattled state. At a rally last month in Bethlehem, Walz tried to appeal directly to Puerto Rican voters, who make up more than half of eligible Latino voters in Pennsylvania.

“We recognize the painful anniversary of Hurricane Maria’s landfall, which continues to have devastating impacts. In March, Vice President Harrison visited San Juan. She pledged to continue to support recovery, and when she and I are in the White House, you can count on our support,” Walz said.

“Hamilton” actor Anthony Ramos, who accompanied Walz at the rally, had a specific message for Latino voters.

“I feel the passion in the room and so many of you have different skin colors and races. …We’re all here together, right? This is what our country is about,” he said. “I want to encourage all of you to not just go out and vote, but to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”

A senior Harris adviser said that as the campaign aims to garner more support from Latino celebrities, it will use social media influencers with big platforms to amplify the vice president's message. In August, for example, Harris appeared alongside content creator Carlos Eduardo Espina, who has more than 10 million followers on TikTok, to talk about why Latinos should support her.

“When an election is won on the margins, everything counts. And of course they will do everything they can to get Bad Bunny’s support,” said Democratic strategist and CNN political commentator Maria Cardona. “At the same time, we know that the most important thing is to address these voters directly in the election campaign, whether it is surrogates, whether it is Kamala, whether it is Tim Walz.”

Trump's campaign has also attracted high-profile supporters to attract more Latino voters.

Trump has received the support of three well-known reggaeton artists – Nicky Jam, Justin Quiles and Anuel AA – and the latter two appeared with him at a rally in Johnstown, southwestern Pennsylvania, in August.

“To all my Puerto Ricans, let’s stay united, let’s vote for Trump,” Anuel said during his brief remarks. “I have spoken to (Trump) personally. “He wants to help Puerto Rico grow.”

Nicky Jam spoke at a rally in Las Vegas for Trump, who incorrectly referred to the singer as “she” before inviting him on stage to speak. The artist later deleted his Instagram post supporting the former president, although popular Mexican band Maná later ended their collaboration with him, posting in Spanish that the band “does not work with racists.”

At an August rally in Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania, Trump brought on stage Daniel Campo, a Venezuelan-born pilot who became a U.S. citizen in 2022.

Campo is helping the Trump campaign canvass Latino neighborhoods, particularly in Allentown, and speaking to voters about the former president's agenda. He often encounters people who feel that Trump is prejudiced against Latinos.

“I say, ‘I’m Latino. “He invited me to speak at his rally,” Campo explained his answer. “And not only that, he gave me good feedback in front of everyone. So if he hated Latinos, he wouldn't have had me there. Secondly, he wouldn’t have said all the good things he said about me afterwards.”

Other voters Campo speaks to are concerned about Trump's “attitude.”

“Are you going to invite (Trump) to your wedding? “Are you going to invite him to your birthday party or your child’s birthday party?” Campo said he asked her. “They laugh. They laugh a little. They say, 'No, not really.'”

“I'm like, okay, so you're hiring him to do a job, right? And they say, 'Yes,'” Campo said. “You saw him do the job four years ago and you saw Harris do the job now – where were you better?”