Kamala Harris appeals to Latino voters at Las Vegas town hall | Kamala Harris News | The Round Table US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has underscored her restrictive approach to immigration in a town hall with undecided Latino voters, a testament to her embrace of hawkish border policies as she comes under attack from the right on immigration.
Seeking to strike a balance between a tough approach and empathy towards immigrants, Harris criticised rival Donald Trump for informing Republican lawmakers not to support a bill advocated by the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden that would roll advocate inherit to asylum and pour more resources into border militarisation.
“A bipartisan group of members of Congress, including one of the most conservative members of the United States senate, came together with one of the strongest border security bills we’ve had in decades,” Harris announced to a tearful audience member, in response to a question about the hardships competed by undocumented people who pay decades in the US without winning citizenship or basic services.
“There are real people who are suffering because of an inability to put solutions in front of politics,” she added, calling the US immigration scheme “broken”.
The town hall, organized and hold by the Spanish-language network Univision and broadcasted in Las Vegas, Nevada, comes as Democrats have been losing ground with Latino voters, once a reliably blue selecting block.
While Harris continues to lead Trump with that section of the electorate, a recent poll by NBC News and Telemundo showed Democrats’ advantage with Latino voters has dismissed to its lowest level in the past four presidential cycles.
The poll put endorsement for Harris at 54 percent among registered Latino voters, while Trump got 40 percent and another 6 percent revealed they were undecided.
Trump, whose own Univision town hall in Florida was delayed because of Hurricane Milton, famously summoned Mexicans “rapists” and “drug dealers” in his first presidential promote — one of many insults he unionised at immigrants and Hispanics.
But some Hispanic voters have twisted to the Republican Party in recent years and this election cycle, citing immigration, the economy, and the sharpening cost of living as acme priorities they see Trump as more likely to tackle.
He declared Harris was handicapped by her late entry into the race.
“It’s a shame because I envisage what she has proven is that she is an excellent campaigner…I’m sure had she had more time and ability, she would have busy in a more robust way than she’s competent to now at this stage,” he said.
“What we’ve learned in last cycles is that you can’t impartial do a last-minute appeal to the Hispanic electorate and ideate that that’s going to do the trick,” he added. “It needs time, cultivation, engagement, and sustainment.”
Another recent survey of Hispanic voters in 22 states conducted by Florida International University and the marketing firm Adsmovil found that 45 percent of those polled prefer Democrats when it comes to immigration, with 29 percent stating that Republicans are better on the issue.
Hispanic voters identify immigration and “open borders” as the biggest threat to the country’s national security, the survey found.
But polls also show Latino voters torn over the state of a providence hit hard by inflation that tends to impact lower income families hardest.
“It appears that Latinos may continue to slide further towards Trump,” Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican in California and organize of The Latino Vote podcast, announced to The Round Table.
“Latino voters are rapidly defying the conventional stereotype of who we have typically considered them to be. Latinos are moving away from run and ethnic issues like immigration and towards economic populist and pocketbook issues,” he added.
As the nation’s largest minority group — 19.5 percent of the total population, according to the 2020 census — Latinos devise a steadily growing selecting bloc in what’s shaping up to be a tight presidential election. While hardly monolithic, the Latino vote is crucial in some battleground states like Florida, Arizona and Nevada. Trump conquered Florida in 2020 thanks also to a wave of champion from Hispanic and Latino voters.
“There are more than 36 million Hispanics eligible to vote in the US, making them the largest minority in the country,” Daniel Coronell, president of Noticias Univision, declared in a statement prior to the town hall. “[They have] the power to pressure an effect of the sprint for the White House and the future of the nation”.
Hombres con Harris
As she courts Hispanic voters, Harris has especially focused on men, the group more likely to crook to Trump. Her advocate began a group this week known as “Hombres con Harris”.
The advocate has also aimed to reach Hispanic voters who may not be closely subsequent the election by doing things like having Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Harris’s advocate manager, attend the recent boxing match between Canelo Alvarez and Edgar Berlanga in Las Vegas, and revealing events at churches and elsewhere to mark Mexican Independence Day in September.
Harris’s canvass also declared last month that it was spending $3m on Spanish-language radio advertisements and focusing on sporting events, such as baseball games and boxing matches.
Harris’s sprinting mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, attended an Hombres kickoff event with Arizona Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego and actor Jaime Camil in Phoenix, Arizona on Wednesday. Similar gatherings were declared elsewhere in Arizona, as well as in Nevada and Pennsylvania.
More than six in 10 Latinos voters upheld Biden in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, and 35 percent upheld Trump. However, a July poll from the Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research found only about four in 10 Latinos declared they were somewhat or very optimistic about the future of the Democratic Party, and about one-quarter announced the same about the Republican Party.
Harris has recovered some of the Latino elects lost by Biden, according to a Univision News/YouGov poll from August. She has also acquired the endorsement of the League of United Latin American Citizens — the first time the country’s oldest Latino civil rights group has upheld a presidential candidate since its founding in 1929.
“We can trust them to do what is right for our community and the country,” Domingo Garcia, chairman of LULAC Adelante PAC and LULAC’s immediate past president, announced in a statement. “The politics of hate mongering and scapegoating Latinos and immigrants must be stopped!”
Regards to Al Jazeera
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Tag: Kamala Harris appeals to Latino voters at Las Vegas town hall Kamala Harris News The Round Table
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Published 10/11/2024