This piece debunks assumptions and stereotypes about the Latina and Latino position on abortion.  This concurs with another internal poll by The Hill that I had earlier read titled, Poll: Latinos overwhelmingly oppose abortion bans.

This piece identities an important nuance with Latina/o voters:  “...they draw a line on having the government intervene.”

Now doesn't that make abundant sense?

I am in full agreement that dems should not shy away from this and take this issue of abortion rights and health care head on. We should all get out and vote our values lest we devolve into a wretched, dehumanizing world not unlike Gilead in the Handmaid's Tale (see on Hulu), that depicts an authoritarian, patriarchal government with supreme control over women's bodies and reproduction. You can and should view it on Hulu to view in vivid detail exactly what the dystopian vision is of the white, Christian fundamentalist patriarch. 

This is not at all what Jesus would want. Diametrically opposite and the polls themselves indicate as much.

So folks, if you've not yet voted, be sure to get out this next Tuesday, Nov. 8th and vote your values. When we vote, we win.

-Angela Valenzuela 

Democrats are trying out a new pitch with Latino voters, one centered on abortion rights

Gabe Vasquez, the Democratic candidate in New Mexico’s 2nd District, listens to residents at the recent Mimbres Valley Harvest Festival. 

(Melanie Mason / Los Angeles Times)

BY MELANIE MASON, 

NOAH BIERMAN | 

OCT. 17, 2022 5 AM PT

MIMBRES, New Mexico —  

Gabe Vasquez’s latest campaign ad is simple to the point of austere: Black-and-white portraits of women, a melancholic piano score, and a recitation of his opponent’s stance on abortion.

“I will always protect a woman’s right to choose,” Vasquez, a Democrat, vows, drawing a contrast with his Republican opponent, Rep. Yvette Herrell.

Such a commercial could be running in any number of contested congressional seats, where Democrats nationwide are leaning hard into abortion rights as the November election approaches. Most notable in Vasquez’s pitch, however, is that it is airing, in both English and Spanish, in New Mexico’s 2nd District — the most Latino seat in the state with the highest percentage — 47.7% — of Latinos in the nation.

Just as the reversal of Roe vs. Wade has scrambled Democrats’ overall midterm playbook, it has also prompted the party to rethink its long-standing approach with Latino voters. The party is putting the abortion issue at the center, discarding decades of conventional wisdom that it would be a political loser with a group of voters that is overwhelmingly Catholic and seen as socially conservative.

“These incorrect assumptions have lasted for a long time, and they have been incorrect for a long time,” said Gary Segura, dean of UCLA’s public affairs school and a pollster specializing in Latino voters.

The shift comes amid Democratic anxiety and Republican optimism over a small but significant rightward shift among Latino voters as a whole. November will test the two parties’ competing theories — whether abortion will give Democrats a reprieve or the GOP will build on its gains by emphasizing inflation and crime.

“Abortion is not the top issue. The economy is the top issue for voters across America,” said Danielle Alvarez, communications director for the Republican National Committee. “Democrats are talking about this because they don’t have anything else to talk about.”

The specter of the Roe reversal looms large in southern New Mexico from the moment drivers cross the state’s eastern boundary with Texas, which has three variations of abortion bans on the books. Two Planned Parenthood billboards, one in English and another in Spanish, declare “You are entering New Mexico, which supports abortion rights.” With Arizona, its western neighbor, reinstating a near-total ban last month, New Mexico solidified its status as a rare haven for abortion access in the Southwest.

The decision has reshaped politics in the area too, said Ruth Rodriguez, as she took in the wares for sale at the Mimbres Valley Harvest Festival on a recent Saturday. Featuring a pie contest and a petting zoo, it was a festive occasion for this community two hours northwest of Las Cruces; the fair was paused for two years because of COVID-19. But Rodriguez, leaning on her walking stick amid a row of ceramics vendors and voter registration booths, said politics in the area had become more divisive, and without the abortion debate, Democrats “would probably have a big, big problem.”

Rodriguez, a registered Democrat, is Catholic and personally sees abortion as “against God’s will.” But, the 80-year-old retired office worker said, it was not her business to decide if someone else should have the procedure.

“You never know people’s circumstances,” she said. “You say to yourself, ‘OK, I’m not the church. I’m not the judge.’”

Before the high court’s decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned national abortion protections in June, Democratic candidates were more likely to tiptoe around the issue. The assumption, held by strategists in both parties, was that Latinos skewed socially conservative and their religious faith shaped their antiabortion views.

That view misses some key nuances among Latinos like Rodriguez, said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster based in Miami who specializes in the Latino vote.

“Hispanics are conservative on this topic personally, yes,” he said. “But they draw a line on having the government intervene.”

The Dobbs ruling pushed Latino Catholics more firmly in that direction, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. The poll, taken after the decision was released, found 75% of Latino Catholics said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 51% who held that view in 2010.

Many Latino opponents of abortion rights now identify as evangelical, the group of Americans most opposed to legalized abortion regardless of race or ethnicity, said Melissa Deckman, chief executive officer of the nonpartisan polling group.

The Dobbs effect has been most pronounced among Latinas, particularly those born in the United States, said Mike Madrid, a California-based GOP strategist and expert on the Latino vote.

“U.S.-born Hispanic women basically feel toward abortion the way that every other woman in the country does,” Madrid said.

Their mobilization had appreciable impact this August in the Kansas referendum on abortion rights. An analysis by TargetSmart, a Democratic analytics group, found Latinos showed up in near record numbers in the state, behind only their turnout for the 2020 presidential election; of that group, 62% were women.

While polling shows support for abortion rights, it is less clear whether the issue will outweigh Republican advantages on the economy and crime.

Sometimes the mixed signals can come from the same survey. An NBC News poll of Hispanic voters found that just 4% ranked it as a top issue this election, far behind matters such as the cost of living. But nearly a quarter of respondents said that a candidate’s stance on abortion could single-handedly determine their support.

Cristina Uribe, director of advocacy and political strategy at the Gender Equity Action Fund, said it is up to abortion rights proponents — and Democratic candidates — to make sure Latinos consider the Dobbs ruling in the voting booth.

“Polling is a thermometer; we need to be a thermostat,” actively pushing the temperature up, Uribe said.

Republicans believe they can capitalize on gains they made in the 2020 election, where President Biden’s lead among Latinos (59%-38%) was smaller than Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margin (66%-28%), according to a detailed study by Pew. In June, Rep. Mayra Flores, a Republican, won a special election for a historically Democratic House seat in south Texas, becoming the first woman born in Mexico to serve in the House.

More Latino GOP candidates filed to run this cycle than ever before, according to the national party’s accounting. The RNC has spent millions opening more than 30 community centers in Texas, Florida, Wisconsin and other key states and congressional districts.

Two of those centers are in Albuquerque and Las Cruces, opposite ends of New Mexico’s sprawling 2nd District. The district used to be a GOP stronghold, covering the rural southern half of the state. Through redistricting, the Democrat-led state legislature excised the conservative-tilting oil and gas producing region in the east and stretched the seat’s boundaries from the U.S.-Mexico border into parts of Albuquerque. It is now one of the most competitive seats in the country.

At the RNC’s center in Albuquerque, located in a strip mall next to a paleteria selling Mexican ice cream pops, street snacks and aguas frescas, Herrell, the district’s first-term congresswoman, acknowledged the challenging political lean of the new district, which backed Biden by 6 points in 2020.

“Many Hispanics in New Mexico are Democrat — not all,” she said. “But they also are concerned, feeling as if their party may have left them.”

Herrell said the abortion debate was less relevant in her race, given that New Mexico state law protects access to the procedure. (Last year, the state repealed abortion restrictions that were on the books before Roe, in anticipation of the Dobbs ruling.)

“What I’m seeing and hearing in New Mexico when I’m traveling the district is it is converging more to the economy side of things, more about the open border, crime, education,” said Herrell, a 58-year-old former state legislator.

Herrell’s GOP backers have flooded the airwaves with ads hammering her opponent, Vasquez, a former Las Cruces city councilor, as too liberal on taxes and public safety. Recent commercials focus on comments he made in a local TV interview at a 2020 Black Lives Matter rally, where he called for “police reform,” adding “it’s not just about defunding police, it’s about defunding a system.”

The attacks have stung; Vasquez released his own ad featuring a sheriff vouching for his support for law enforcement.

On air, Vasquez and his allies have emphasized Herrell’s support for the Life at Conception Act, legislation introduced in the U.S. House before the Dobbs ruling that would impose a national abortion ban, with no exceptions for rape, incest or protecting the mother’s health. On the ground, Vasquez’s pitch is more varied. In a recent visit to Silver City he told a roomful of Democratic faithful that a win for his party in November is essential for enshrining Roe vs. Wade into law.

“People say, ‘Oh, well, aren’t you a Latino? Aren’t you Catholic?... Aren’t you male?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, but I was raised right!’” he said to a burst of applause and laughs.

Canvassing for votes in a heavily Latino neighborhood in Deming earlier that day, however, Vasquez, 38, spoke about the economy instead of abortion. Conversing largely in Spanish, he spoke about how his family came from Zacatecas, Mexico, and built their lives in New Mexico. His congressional campaign, he said, was about ensuring opportunity for the next generation.

The approach aligns with recommendations from Equis, a political research firm specializing in Latinos that said in a recent memo that Democrats “run the risk of seeming out of touch” if they emphasize abortion ahead of economic concerns.

In Mimbres, Vasquez circulated among the harvest festival crowd before stopping at the cafeteria to introduce himself to some residents and sample the enchiladas. At the end of his table sat Gloria Jaime, who credited Vasquez for showing up to the event, even though the registered Democrat said she’s undecided on her vote.

She had a long list of issues that weighed on her: drugs, the need for more police, the economic prospects for her children. Jaime said abortion was unlikely to sway her.

“That’s a touchy issue,” said the 70-year-old retired school worker from Silver City. She didn’t like hearing politicians talk about it too much.

Still, considering the surge of energy Vasquez has seen from core supporters, he said, abortion is likely to remain central in the campaign’s final weeks.

“We still would have had a shot at this even if Dobbs didn’t happen,” he said in an interview. But, he added, since the June ruling, “I can say that there’s a palpable change on the ground.”

Melanie Mason Melanie Mason is a national political correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, based in Los Angeles. She started with The Times in Washington, D.C., in 2011, covering money and politics, and she also covered state politics and government in Sacramento.

Essential Politics: The recall isn’t just about California. It’s a preview of where 2022 might be heading

I'm sure that along with the vast majority of you, I'm so glad and relieved about the failure of Gov. Gavin Newsom's recall election that took place yesterday. Many of us feared low turnout, but the voters showed up and a Latino and multiracial electorate propelled the successful result. Of continuing concern with respect to the polarization in our society is the Republican Party's extremist stance and tactics. According to this piece:

"In January, a Times investigation by Anita Chabria and Paige St. John found that recall campaign leaders sought to capitalize on Republican disappointment and allied with radical and extreme elements to help collect signatures. Some early recall backers were linked to QAnon, the Proud Boys, far-right militias and other extremist groups that share support for Trump, online organizing tactics and distrust of elections."

Our democracy is much too precious to leave in the hands of those who would destroy it simply because they do not like the outcomes of elections. They want a gerrymandered system where politicians pick their voters instead of the other way around with voters deciding who will represent them. At least for now, I think we can all take a breather that democracy won last night.

-Angela Valenzuela

Essential Politics: The recall isn’t just about California. It’s a preview of where 2022 might be heading

The shadow of former President Trump and far-right groups hangs over California’s recall election. Above, challenger Larry Elder, left, and Gov. Gavin Newsom. (Irfan Khan; Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) BY LAURA BLASEY  MULTIPLATFORM EDITOR, NEWSLETTERS  SEP. 8, 2021 6:30 AM PT

In less than a week, the final ballots will be cast in the recall election to unseat California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The results of the Republican-led effort — which culminates on Tuesday — has implications that reach across the country and into the 2022 midterm election. For months, Times staffers have closely covered the recall election, and their reporting reveals four themes that explain how we got here and what might be coming next year. The leading GOP candidate seems familiar The recall’s leading Republican candidate is popular in conservative media and hosts his own radio show. He has eschewed the establishment and is relying on a grass-roots support system. He’s made dismissive comments about women, may not have properly disclosed his finances and fueled skepticism about climate change and vaccines. Larry Elder certainly seems to be utilizing the Donald Trump playbook. The result is a broad coalition of support that includes new converts, evangelicals and former Trump supporters, Marisa Gerber writes. He’s not the only candidate doing so: California has a slew of pro-Trump recall candidates, Julia Wick reports. Across the country, Republican hopefuls are angling for Trump’s support base and seeking endorsements from Trump himself. As for how Elder feels about Trump? In 2019, he called Trump’s election “divine intervention,” but has since scaled back his praise, trying to appeal to both Trump supporters and more moderate Republicans, James Rainey writes. There could be danger in being seen as too moderate. Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, the most experienced Republican heading into the election, has an establishment past and what he admits are “vanilla” views, and he is struggling to break out of the pack, writes Laura J. Nelson. The recall is being fueled, in part, by Trump’s lies The epicenter of recall mania is Amador County in the Sierra foothills. About 1 in 5 registered voters signed recall petitions — the highest concentration in California. The Times’ Hailey Branson-Potts spoke to voters there, reporting that conservatives deeply believe Trump’s falsehood-filled campaign that he won the 2020 election. By and large, she writes, these voters refuse to cast their ballots by mail, believing Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations that mail-in voting leads to rampant voter fraud. If Newsom prevails, many said they won’t believe the results. Far-right groups and internet rhetoric played a role In January, a Times investigation by Anita Chabria and Paige St. John found that recall campaign leaders sought to capitalize on Republican disappointment and allied with radical and extreme elements to help collect signatures. Some early recall backers were linked to QAnon, the Proud Boys, far-right militias and other extremist groups that share support for Trump, online organizing tactics and distrust of elections. The recall effort soon picked up support from dissatisfied Republicans unaware that it was being driven by extremists, with organizers insisting the far-right groups don’t represent the values of the recall movement. But inflammatory rhetoric has continued to show up, especially in social media campaign ads. As Maura Dolan wrote last week, internet advertising has pushed falsehoods and capitalized on emotions in less extreme ways, heightening recall tensions. The recall has national implications As my colleague Evan Halper writes, California has served for decades as an incubator for ideas that go on to influence the rest of the country, from climate change to housing. Experience in California politics can also propel elected leaders onto the national stage — think Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Reagan. As Melanie Mason wrote last week, surviving a recall could offer Newsom a spotlight, as it did former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — who parlayed his survival into a presidential run. And, if you’ve been closely following our coverage, you know that many of the issues and talking points that colored 2020 have crept into the recall race — and they may very well shape the midterm elections next year. It’s no wonder then that national Democratic figures are voicing support for Newsom ahead of next week’s election day. As Noah Bierman wrote in this newsletter last week, Democrats are desperately working to maintain their slim leads in the House and Senate through the midterms. Maintaining the California governor’s seat is part of that strategy: the governor will have the power to fill the seat of Sen. Dianne Feinstein if she retires or falls ill. So far, polls show a growing majority of Californians oppose recalling Newsom, and the state is heavily Democratic, giving the governor an edge. Early returns on mail ballots show more than twice as many Democrats have voted than Republicans and that liberal areas have the highest rates of return, Mason and Seema Mehta report. But Democrats fear a low-turnout election could bolster Republican chances of taking control of the state. They are so nervous that Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning with Newsom in the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday. Next week, President Biden is expected travel to California to stump for Newsom. More on the recall election — On Google and YouTube, Newsom and Elder are aiming for two different Californias, write Rahul Mukherjee and Vanessa Martínez. — Vaccines, unemployment, housing, drought: Here’s where the top recall candidates stand on the issues. —From Mehta and Mason: As the recall charges into its final days, Democrats’ midsummer panic has given way to cautious confidence that Newsom’s outlook has brightened, aided by healthy turnout so far, a towering advantage in money and the emergence of an ideal foil: Elder. — The national cavalry has come to help Newsom. But the anti-recall effort is mostly a California fight, writes columnist Mark Z. Barabak. — As candidates crisscross California, faith communities have become a central place for proselytizing to potential voters, Faith E. Pinho writes. The role of religion on the campaign trail has been amplified in recent weeks by lingering anger over California’s COVID-19 restrictions. — A shaman, a rapper and a surgeon: Julia Wick has a rundown of the lesser-known names on your recall ballot. The view from Washington — When Joe Biden was running for president, he promised to close a squalid border camp in Mexico where thousands of migrants had been left to await the outcome of their immigration cases by the Trump administration. He followed through — and a worse one emerged under his watch, reports Molly Hennessy-Fiske. — From Tracy Wilkinson: As the Taliban prepares to announce a government in Afghanistan, the Biden administration is being forced to abruptly recalibrate its approach to a group long viewed in the U.S. as terrorists. — Also from Wilkinson: Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Tuesday that charter flights carrying U.S. citizens and Afghans to safety from northern Afghanistan were being held up by concerns over security and knowing who’s on board, not because of Taliban extortion. — The board of directors of Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights organization, has fired its president, saying he assisted former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration in responding to sexual harassment allegations that led to the governor’s resignation. The view from California — From Evan Halper: California is leading the world in confronting climate change. Yet the opaque carbon trading scheme that is a linchpin of the state’s climate efforts — California is leaning on it to meet as much as half of its greenhouse gas reductions — is under serious strain at home even as it is getting copied far beyond California. — California is preparing for a first-in-the-nation experiment to move California’s health insurance program for low-income and disabled people beyond traditional doctor visits and hospital stays into the realm of social services. Over the next five years, the state will plow nearly $6 billion in state and federal money into the plan. — Ten months after California voters rejected a state law eliminating cash bail for many offenses, Patrick McGreevy reports on a new fight brewing in the Legislature over an alternative plan that would slash the amount arrestees must pay to get out of jail. — Also from McGreevy: California law enforcement officers could be stripped of their license to carry a badge if they engage in serious misconduct, including excessive force, racial bias and dishonesty, under legislation approved Friday by the state Assembly. Sign up early for our California Politics newsletter, coming in August, to get the best of The Times’ state politics reporting, including full coverage of the recall election and the latest action in Sacramento. https://www.latimes.com/politics/newsletter/2021-09-08/essential-politics-recall-california-preview-where-elections-are-going-essential-politics

On August 11, 2010, Texas became a "majority minority" state, meaning that people of color outnumbered Anglos. The shift right now is that Texas' Latino population is the largest demographic, growing by 2 million in the last decade. 

Go to the actual Texas Tribune website and roll over the map of Texas so that you can see the percent change in total demographic growth between 2010 and 2020 by county.

Redrawing district lines ahead of the 2022 election promises to be a bruising battle. 

-Angela Valenzuela

People of color make up 95% of Texas’ population growth, and cities and suburbs are booming, 2020 census shows

The state’s Hispanic population is now nearly as large as the non-Hispanic white population, with Texas gaining nearly 11 Hispanic residents for every additional white resident since 2010. Those trends set up a pitched battle for political control when state lawmakers redraw legislative districts.

BY ALEXA URA, JASON KAO, CARLA ASTUDILLO AND CHRIS ESSIG AUG. 12, 2021

Texas’ cities and suburbs are booming. The state is home to three of the country’s 10 largest cities and four of the fastest-growing. Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune

Setting the stage for what is expected to be a bruising battle over political representation, the results of the 2020 census released Thursday showed that Texas’ explosive growth over the past decade was again powered by people of color.

And it is the state’s cities and suburbs that are booming, with Texas home to three of the country’s 10 largest cities and four of the fastest-growing.

Texas gained the most residents of any state since 2010, and its Hispanic population is now nearly as large as the non-Hispanic white population, with just half a percentage point separating them. Texas gained nearly 11 Hispanic residents for every additional white resident since 2010.

Texans of color accounted for 95% of the state’s population growth. The 2020 census puts the state’s population at 29,145,505 — a 16% jump from 25.1 million in 2010. Hispanic Texans were responsible for half of that increase.

Non-Hispanic white Texans now make up just 39.8% of the state’s population — down from 45% in 2010. Meanwhile, the share of Hispanic Texans has grown to 39.3%.

The Hispanic population’s approach to becoming Texas’ largest demographic group marks a significant milestone ahead of this year’s redistricting, during which state lawmakers will draw new political maps divvying up seats in Congress and the state House and Senate in what will no doubt be an intense and protracted fight over political control of the state for the next decade.

Texas Republicans hold every lever of power to try to lock in or even expand their majorities at the state Capitol and in Congress. But they will be working to redraw the state’s political maps while confronting the demographic reality that the state is growing in ways that put the party’s stranglehold in question.

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Hispanic leaders will surely point to the growth to lobby for increased political control and representation, particularly as lawmakers consider how to draw the two additional congressional seats — the most gained by any state — Texas earned because of its fast growth.

The sluggish growth among white Texans could also complicate Republican efforts to cement their power, which relies on a political base much more likely to be white and rural.

The state’s Hispanic, Black and Asian populations all significantly outgrew the white population since 2010. The white population growth — an increase of just 187,252 — was swamped by the total growth among Asian Texans, who make up a tiny share of the total population but have seen their numbers grow at the fastest pace in the state. The state’s Asian population grew by 613,092 since 2010.

The Hispanic population saw the biggest growth, with nearly 2 million additional Hispanic people now calling Texas home.

The state’s growth has been concentrated in diverse urban centers that serve as Democratic strongholds and suburban communities, several of which have either already turned blue or are trending in that direction. Since 2010, 44% of the state’s growth took place in its five largest counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis. All 10 of the state’s fastest-growing counties in the last decade were suburban.

Hays County — between Austin and San Antonio — experienced the most growth, doubling its population in the last decade.

Over the last two decades, the GOP has maintained its power by drawing political maps at the expense of voters of color. During the last round of redistricting, federal courts found that Texas lawmakers discriminated against Hispanic and Black voters in particular. The Legislature’s Republican majority was reprimanded by federal judges for intentionally diluting the power of their votes; their maps after the 2010 census flunked both the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act.

The growth driven by people of color easily surpassed the growth captured in the 2010 census, which showed people of color accounted for 89% of the total increase in population that decade.

This time, though, the GOP will be working in a more favorable legal landscape.

The 2021 round of political mapmaking will be the first in nearly half a century without federal oversight that previously helped shield voters of color living in states with a long history of discrimination, like Texas, from being robbed of political clout through gerrymandering.

Congress has worked slowly in its bid to revive some of those protections by restoring preclearance, which required the state to submit any changes to its elections and maps for federal review to ensure they would not harm voters of color. The U.S. Supreme Court knocked down that requirement, a lynchpin of the Voting Rights Act, in 2013. This year, the court also continued to whittle away at other portions of the act used to challenge discriminatory districts.

Congressional and state House and Senate districts must be reconfigured ahead of the 2022 elections to account for the state’s population growth and to even out residents across districts that were drawn to be close to equal in population a decade ago but are now significantly out of balance.

But that work is running well behind schedule, largely because of pandemic-induced delays of the census. With Thursday’s release, the Legislature’s number-crunchers will begin processing the massive set of data released by the Census Bureau — down to the block level — to upload it into the system lawmakers will use.

But the actual work of drafting maps, wrangling the numbers that represent communities and neighborhoods, might not begin until next month.

On Thursday, state Rep. Todd Hunter, the Corpus Christi Republican who chairs the House Redistricting Committee, told his colleagues to expect the data to be ready for them by Sept. 1.

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