Voter Engagement Event for the Latino Community in Greensboro, North CarolinaChuck Burton/AP

Claudia Garcia had never watched a televised presidential debate. On September 10, she went online ABC News‘ showdown between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris and was stunned to hear the Republican candidate repeat lies about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. “I was like, what?” Garcia remembers. “What does he say? We are not that kind of people. We don’t eat dogs. We don’t eat cats.

Rarely voting, Garcia will go to the polls for only the third time in his life next November. Born in Riverside, California, but spending most of her childhood in Mexico, she felt disconnected from politics. His father told him that voting made no difference. “If it doesn’t affect me directly“, she thought, “It doesn’t affect me.” But her husband, Salvador, a newly naturalized U.S. citizen born in Mexico, thought otherwise. This year, he will vote for the first time since he was took the oath of allegiance in February. Their two adult children will also vote.

“I think a lot of these migrant and Hispanic households,” Garcia says, “don’t just want their kids to vote or they don’t want to vote themselves. I think we’re not informed… There’s still a lot of education to be done in many of our communities.

The Garcias live in Tulare, in California’s Central Valley. Latinos make up 60 percent of eligible voters in the 22nd Congressional District. As my colleague Noah Lanard recently reported in the region, the Decmocrat party decreasing support in the region could determine the balance of power in Congress. In one of the tightest House races this election, Rudy Salas is facing a rematch against incumbent Republican Rep. David Valadao to become the first elected Latino congressman from the Central Valley. In 2022, Valadao, of Portuguese descent, beat Salas by three percentage points.

For Democrats to have any chance of winning this seat, they must not only retain Latino voters, but also hope to end – as one political strategist put it NBC News—”anemicly low » turn out. In the midterms, the 22nd Congressional District got the third the lowest voter turnout rates in House districts across the country. To do this, they could use the help of people like the Garcias: Latino voters who have not voted traditionally, or even first-time voters. In California and beyond, the path forward to controlling Congress and securing the White House could depend on it.

The main questions that concern them? Cost of living and immigration. “I was an immigrant myself,” says Salvador, who gained legal status through Ronald Reagan’s amnesty for undocumented immigrants in the 1980s, “and I want more for the immigrant workers of this country “. He and his wife oppose Trump’s plans to mass deport millions of people from the United States and fear that more family separations are on the horizon if he returns to the Oval Office.

They also hope that comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s racist remarks toward Latinos at a recent Trump rally, during which he called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” can persuade voters to opt for the Democrats. “In his mind,” Garcia said of Trump, “we don’t matter.” If you don’t look like him, then you’re not worth it to him… Why would we support someone who considers us trash?

Immigration is not the only one, nor even the most striking issue for Latino voters nationwide. But it intersects with the broader concerns of Latino communities about the economy, jobs and housing. In the battleground state of North Carolina, pre-election polling by civil rights organization UnidosUS find that portfolio issues are a high priority for the state’s Latino voters. (Many also support access to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.) There are approximately 300,000 registered Latino voters in North Carolina.

The daughter of two Mexican immigrants, Irene Godinez launched Poder NC Action in 2020 to foster civic participation among the state’s growing population of young U.S.-born Latinos. That year, the organization sent thousands of political mailers featuring the face of iconic Puerto Rican astrologer Walter Mercado as part of a strategy to harness culture to mobilize young people. In that election – which Trump won by fewer than 75,000 votes – new Latino voters cast ballots for the first time. Understood a significant portion of total voter turnout in North Carolina.

This year, Poder NC Action released a multi-part telenovela called “Alexia the Voter”, inspired by the Netflix series Joan the Virginto encourage young North Carolinians to vote. They’ve also hosted voter engagement events where people can find out who’s on the ballot while getting their hair or nails done. “Our ultimate goal is to build independent political power,” says Godinez, who served as director of Latino outreach in North Carolina for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “But while we do that, we are building a political home for progressive Latinos in the state.”

Before Election Day, she said, figures showed that 19 percent of those over 100,000 Latinos who had previously voted in North Carolina were voting for the first time and 39 percent were infrequent voters. “These are exactly the people we have targeted and activated, because this is where we see the opportunity to expand the electorate.”

Among the issues that animate the state’s electorate are the economy, reproductive rights and climate justice, particularly in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Young Latino voters Poder NC Action courts also tend to mention the war in Gaza, a subject of concern. (The organization has not endorsed President Joe Biden, but has issued “defensive support” for Kamala Harris because her victory would block a right-wing opponent.)

“What I’ve heard from the voters we’ve talked to is that they haven’t felt seen by the parties, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans,” Godinez says. with them and I try to talk to them. She thinks the Democratic Party could have done more to appeal to Latinos in North Carolina, including sending larger surrogate names to the state and creating political mailers with original messages that weren’t just translated from English from Spanish to Spanish.

“Even though we are currently 300,000 voters in the state,” Godinez adds, “we are going to continue to grow at a faster rate than any other demographic, as 50,000 Latinos will age into the electorate each year. This could have been a really good year for them because they could have laid the foundation for what it could look like to do Latino outreach in a very intentional way.

In California, Garcia credits her political awakening to her work, first as a canvasser and then as an organizer, with the group Poder Latinx to get people registered and voting. “I can’t preach without doing anything,” she said. “I need to be a voice for those who don’t have one.”

She says she would like to see immigration reform that would benefit her neighbors and family members who “work on the ground, picking the food that we have on our table.” She also thinks of her nephews who are DACA recipients and whose legal presence and ability to work and study in the country are in danger. “This touches me,” Garcia said, adding, “Immigration is what motivates me and scares me, and that’s why I’m going to make sure my ballot is mailed today.”