The Hand That Pulls the Lever
It’s once again time for my annual rant about Hispanic Heritage Month, or rather the month spanning event that we call Hispanic Heritage month. There is no single specialized name for such an event like biweekly or bimonthly. The best we do is to call it a 4-week bridging event. So, welcome to the Hispanic Heritage 4-week bridging event. Sure, there are more important issues that I could be advocating for in Latino culture, but this has always bothered me because it is a little disingenuous. Everybody else gets a full month. Only Latinos must make do with a couple of weeks here and there. I tell you, any political party that promised to make Hispanic Heritage Month a single month would get every single Latino vote. Trust me on this.
Last time out, the battle for Latino vote was over the border. The Democrats wanted to tear it down and hand out benefits to everyone, the Republicans wanted to close it up tight. Surprise! Chicanos wanted the border to be as much as anyone. Let me let you in on a little secret. Latinos from other countries all want to come here, but they all want to close the gate behind them because they don’t like competition for jobs or citizenship anymore than the average American.
This go round, to attract Latino voters, the democrats have abandoned that strategy (except for the “ICE bad” discussion) and have gone back to their “orange man bad” strategy and harping on gas prices, which is a winning hand. The republicans, for their part are touting the booming stock market which most Americans don’t have a stake in.
Let’s do a little history lesson.
In 1870, non-white men were given the right to vote via the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Women would not be given the right to vote until 1920 with the 19th amendment. Of course, states would put into place all kinds of tests and taxes to keep minorities from voting and it wasn’t until the voting act of 1965 was passed (by the democrats) that made these practices illegal and the feds enforced it by putting people in jail and withholding federal dollars. Ever since then, minorities have been courted by both parties.
At first, Latinos were largely ignored, but then, convinced that they could be a formidable voting block, both parties began courting us, but not in a smart way. They used the same arguments that they used with everyone else. Republicans argued economics and “stagflation.” Democrats argued that things like Reganomics would cut social programs like food stamps and job training and that the poor would be adversely affected, but that didn’t resonate with Latinos.
In the 1970s and 80s, both parties decided to micro-target Latinos with Spanish language ads, touting not just their promises to make things better, but their candidates as well. They began to hire mariachi bands to sing corridos introducing their candidates, hire Latino ad agencies, talk about traditional Latino family values and include Latinos in the discussion about civil rights along with African Americans and Asian Americans. Ads targeting Latinos were not your typical attack ads but instead were celebratory, focusing on Latino culture. Jimmy Carter won a yet to be equaled 81% of the Latino vote during the 1976 election. Suddenly, it became apparent that Latinos were a winning ticket.
The Latino population grew from about 14% in the 80s to 22% in 1990. The 80s were dubbed the “Decade of the Hispanic”, partly because the Immigration Reform and Control act gave 2.5 million undocumented workers the opportunity to become naturalized citizens and as a consequence, the vote. The population was growing five times faster than any other demographic. California became the crown jewel of voters with one third of the state Latino followed by Texas and then Florida.
By 2000 the Latino population was 35 million. By 2010, it was 50 million. We are now 70 million and a very popular voting block. Trump credits Latinos with electing him in 2024, winning 45% of the vote and 90% of the Latinos voting because of economic concerns. That puts him in deep caca for the mid-terms. There are other concerns also. Representative Maria Elvira Salazar dropped a campaign ad last week telling Trump he’s, quote, “gone too far” on immigration enforcement and the press is all over it, but it’s not on the top of the list for Latinos this year. The GOP has rolled out the “Create Your American Dream” Campaign, launching targeted ad campaigns on minority-focused networks like Telemundo and Hulu. These spots ignore high gas prices and inflation with traditional values like school choice, parental involvement in education, religious freedom, and safe neighborhoods.
GOP PACs are out in the communities in swing states are touting the value of working-class Latino voters and going door to door to register get people out to vote. They are talking about crime in their communities and talking about the Trump administration’s successes like lower crime, tax breaks, no tax on tips and a closed border. Here’s a clue. Most of the immigrants in this country are Mexican and they don’t care for Venezuelans, Guatemalans or any other non-Mexicans coming here. In fact, I’ve seen Mexicans bully and shut Latino men from other countries out of available jobs. The GOP is waving the Mexican flag like it was Washington crossing the Delaware.
Democrats this time around are moving away from culture and family values and pointing out the difficult economic times. They have generously decided that Latinos are not a monolithic group, but rather individual cultures. Of course, their ads are produced primarily in Mexican Spanish and not in individual dialects like Caribbean Spanish, (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic), Andean (Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador) or Central American Spanish. (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.) They too are creating street teams and grassroots ads and showing up at church fiestas and soccer games. They have created votelatino.org to promote Democrat culture, not Latino culture, trying to make the two synonymous. They are going after younger Latino voters by hiring influencers and content creators.
One thing neither political party does is the simplest thing. For all of their surveys and pandering and digital harassment, they never ask Latinos what they think. More so, they never let us think for ourselves. I pay attention. I know what causes economic hardship, what open borders and closed borders result in. I know what my values are. When I was eighteen, I registered to vote. I also registered for the draft. Neither party gave a crap about who I was.
I have voted in every election; municipal, county, state and national since then. I made mistakes in voting for candidates that I thought would be good for this country and were not and I’ve voted for candidates that I was very proud of, who did the right things for all Americans. I’ve even voted for candidates that I knew had no chance of winning because I was so disgusted with the republican and democrat choices. I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for them. I’ve even voted for the Communist party a time or two, but I have never wasted my vote. The point is that I have always made up my own mind.
My advice to the two, or I guess now three major parties is you want to pander, give us our own month to celebrate Latino culture. Other than that, leave us alone and let us make up our own minds. Don’t try to tell us what we should think, what values we should have and how we should vote. We’re perfectly capable of making a decision on our own.
September 2026
Copyright 2026 by Jose Antonio Ponce