Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Trump walks difficult line on Latino voters in Nevada

Donald Trump at T.I.

L.E. Baskow

Myriam Witcher cheers for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during his campaign stop Thursday, Oct. 8, 2015, at Treasure Island.

Donald Trump at T.I.

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump looks to the sky while speaking in Mystere at Treasure Island during another campaign stop in Las Vegas on Thursday, October 08, 2015. Launch slideshow »

Clutching a People magazine with Donald Trump’s mug on the cover, Myriam Witcher found an up-close seat to watch her political hero speak.

Witcher, a Colombian immigrant, was at Mystere Theater at Treasure Island on Thursday to support Trump and his policies on immigration, saying he “needs to send illegals out of the country.”

Trump — the GOP presidential front-runner and loud critic of undocumented immigrants and foreign countries — stormed the stage to speak for more than 30 minutes about establishment politicians, the media and himself.

Then, in an unplanned move, he rocked Witcher’s world in front of 1,500 people by inviting her onstage. “I love Latinos,” Trump said to a storm of applause after hugging Witcher and autographing the magazine.

That message ostensibly veers from the brand that Trump established when he entered the presidential race, soaring to popularity with Republican voters this summer by calling undocumented Mexican immigrants rapists and drug-peddlers and vowing to build a wall on the border between the two countries.

“What you saw was natural and human,” said Charles Munoz, Trump’s Nevada campaign director said. “That’s something you don’t see in politics. That’s why people love Mr. Trump.”

In one small moment, Trump confronted a chasm with voters that will confront him in Nevada — the growing power of the Latino electorate.

More than 50 percent of the state’s 215,000 Latino voters identify with Democrats. Nevada’s popular governor, Brian Sandoval, is of Latino descent. Over the last 19 years, the number of Latino elected officials in Nevada has soared by 500 percent. The Culinary Union Workers Local 226, which draws heavy support from Latino workers, is trying to organize at Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas while GOP-backed groups like Libre make inroads with voters.

In other words: If the road to the White House runs through Nevada, the road through Nevada runs through Latino voters.

While the Latino vote in the February Republican nominating caucus won’t be a deal breaker for Trump, it would be if he were to make it to the general election, said David Damore, an associate political science professor at UNLV.

“There isn’t one poll that shows he has any support of Latino voters,” he said.

Republicans in the state think differently. Trump may be incendiary, “but at least you know where he stands,” said Leo Blundo, chairman of the Nye County Republican Committee and delegate to the state GOP.

“You’re hearing a roar,” he said. “That’s what the people want. Give it to them.”

The attendees at the Trump speech were overwhelmingly white. Some wore T-shirts that said “Mr. Trump Build That Wall.” Others had towels bearing the Trump campaign mantra: Make America Great Again.

That group is largely made of GOP voters disaffected with the nation’s changing demographics, according to Damore: Nativists, in other words. “These are the same folks that successfully managed to force House Republican leadership to not take up the Senate’s bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2013.”

For Witcher, who said she had to wait five years to earn legal status in the U.S., Trump’s immigration platform is about fairness. “Viva Las Vegas. Viva Trump,” she said after the speech.

But that multicultural sentiment didn’t echo around the whole event.

Six pro-immigration reform activists from the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada and the Alliance for Citizenship made a papier-mache replica of Trump and attempted to enter his speech. (Casino security kicked them out.)

Laura Martin, an associate director with PLAN, said her colleagues wanted to remind Trump of one important point in Nevada: “There’s no hope without the Latino vote.”

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