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Democratic leaders debuted a specialized WhatsApp channel during their national convention in Chicago to communicate with Latino and Spanish-speaking voters during the rest of the presidential campaign, culminating with the general election on Nov. 5.
It is part of the Democratic Party's strategy to maximize the enthusiasm generated by the official nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris to occupy the White House in 2025. Harris personally thanked the more than 3,100 subscribers who signed up as of Thursday for the WhatsApp channel titled "Latinos con Harris-Walz" on Thursday morning.
"We need everyone to talk to your friends, your family and your neighbors about what's at stake in this election," Harris said in her message. "You are part of the fabric that makes this country great and you will help us win in November."
Since it was created on Monday, the "Latinos con Harris-Walz" channel has published personalized messages from prominent Latino figures in politics and entertainment. They include actress and activist Eva Longoria, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of Arizona farmworker leader Cesar Chavez and campaign manager for the vice presidential election.
"It's the first ever for a presidential campaign, and where you can go to get behind the scenes info, learn about what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are doing to deliver for our Latino families, and so much more," Chavez Rodriguez said.
Despite the enthusiasm generated by Harris' candidacy, the race against former Republican President Donald Trump remains very close. The campaign is focused on winning seven key states where the 2020 presidential election was decided by very small margins.
Two of the states, Arizona and Nevada, have a very influential Latino voter population since one in four people eligible to vote in both states are of Latino origin. Meanwhile, two other key states in this election, Georgia and North Carolina, have had the largest growth in the Latino population in the entire country over the past few years.
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, who sits on Harris-Walz's national advisory board, helped debut this channel and stressed the importance of candidates being able to communicate with Latino voters in their preferred language.
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"Intuitively, they understand the electorate. And so they understand that, especially in Arizona, we have 30 plus percent Latinos. That we need to talk to Latinos in our language," Romero said. "That even though some of us are bilingual and usually do our work in English, that we absolutely appreciate the campaign speaking to us in our language."
Former President Trump has had success attracting more Latino voters, a fact that his campaign seeks to repeat this year.
During the 2020 election against President Joe Biden, Trump increased his support margin among Latinos by 10 percentage points compared to 2016, according to the Pew Center.
But the race in this election has tightened considerably in recent weeks since Harris became the Democratic nominee.
A poll by Equis Research group released last week found that Harris leads Trump by 19 percentage points among Latino voters in the seven key states of this election that also include the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
However, the margin of support in favor of Harris in this poll continues to be smaller than Biden's margin of victory among all Latino voters in the country in 2020.
La Voz editor Joanna Jacobo Rivera contributed to this article.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Harris' campaign launches WhatsApp group to inform Latino voters
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