‘Can I Just Vote for Her Instead of Biden?’: Inside Kamala’s Scramble to Win the Latino Vote

By the turn of the year, it was getting harder and harder to deny the Biden campaign had a Latino problem. A softball Univision interview with Donald Trump in the fall appeared to reset the former president’s stormy relations with the Spanish-language cable giant. Respected polls showed Trump actually winning the Latino vote — a dramatic departure from his roughly 30-point loss in 2020. A survey from one of the oldest Hispanic civil rights groups, UnidosUS, showed Latinos’ number one concern remained the economy and inflation.

So Kamala Harris called a high-level meeting on February 24 at her residence, the Naval Observatory, for a multi-hour polling and communications briefing on the Biden campaign’s Latino engagement. As the group of top Biden campaign and Harris aides passed around a tray of cookies and brownies, Harris got down to business. She was “very concerned” about the Latino vote and the state of Spanish-language media in the race, an attendee said. She wanted to know how she could be of more help to the campaign with Latinos.

She also had questions. Was it true, Harris asked, that every 30 seconds a Latino turns 18 years old? How should she frame the abortion issue to Latino voters, knowing that it was a top priority for Latinos in the midterms? Matt Barreto, a Biden campaign pollster at the time, pitched Harris on how, thanks to being the daughter of immigrants, she could be the Democratic Party’s answer to George W. Bush, a figure who had grown up in a high-density Latino state and was totally at ease campaigning for and winning the Latino vote.

There was an agreement that more data and research were needed on her strengths and weaknesses with Hispanics, leading to separate Las Vegas focus groups with Latinas and Latino men on April 18.

In attendance were Julie Chavez Rodriguez and Quentin Fulks, the campaign manager and deputy campaign manager, White House political director Emmy Ruiz and Barreto. They were joined by Harris staffers, including her chief of staff Sheila Nix, spokesperson Brian Fallon and senior adviser Sergio Gonzales who helped organize the meeting. At one point, Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff popped his head in and said hello.

The unreported meeting, described to POLITICO Magazine by three attendees, showed how seriously Harris took the erosion among Hispanic voters at the time. It also revealed the challenge confronting Harris now that she has replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. With roughly 100 days to go until the election, the vice president had inherited a campaign that was in danger of falling off a cliff with Latino voters, not just in the Southwestern swing states, but in battlegrounds like Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, which are home to fast-growing Latino populations.

Part of the problem was a generational disconnect with the oldest president in history. The Latino vote has transformed over the last 15 years — and it’s now disproportionately younger than other groups, explains Mark Hugo Lopez from the Pew Research Center. Nationwide, 21 percent of young eligible voters in the U.S. are Latino. But in critical Southwest states, the numbers are even greater: Latinos comprise 39 percent of all 18 to 29 year old eligible voters in Arizona and 36 percent of those young voters in Nevada, according to Pew data from 2022.

Today, of the roughly 4 million new Latino voters since 2020, about 3 million are U.S.-born Latinos who have come of age and are eligible to vote in 2024.

“Our mental frameworks for Latinos seem to be set during the [Barack] Obama era,” Carlos Odio of Equis Research said, noting that only 30 percent of Latinos registered today voted in the 2008 election, when the bloc was older, more Spanish-speaking, and more immigrant. “A lot of what we thought we believed and knew about Latinos was set in those elections — 2008 and 2012.”

Harris must now take a Hispanic voter engagement plan built for an 81-year-old white man and retrofit it on the fly for a lesser known, 59-year-old woman of color. Control of the White House could depend on that rebuild.

“They have to put on the doors, some flaps, but the core of the airplane is there,” said Maria Cardona, a CNN commentator and longtime Democrat who helped lead the first Latinas for Harris Zoom call. “There’s no question they have to make some adjustments for a much more aerodynamic operation.”

Those adjustments include better defining the vice president. That much was made clear in the two previously unreported April focus groups, described by campaign officials and in a campaign memo obtained by POLITICO magazine. Participants knew Harris’ name. They knew she had run for president against Biden and that Maya Rudolph played her on Saturday Night Live. But that was about it. When they were given more information about her, however, participants appreciated her record on fighting for reproductive rights and loved her 2015 crackdown as California attorney general on employer wage theft of immigrant workers.

The general positivity around Harris contrasted with the sentiment surrounding the president she served. “Can I just vote for her instead of Biden?” one participant joked, leading to laughter from the group.

“Biden had gotten himself into this position where no matter what he said or did, his unfavorables went up every week,” a member of the Harris campaign said. “He was net negative with Latinos and especially negative with young Latinos.”

As much as the campaign tried to focus on policy and the existential threat posed by Trump, Cardona said, younger Latinos were unmoved.

“Their response was pero es que es muy viejo” — he's too old.

“For a lot of younger Latinos, that was a bridge too far,” she said.

In the days following Biden’s withdrawal from the race in July, polling presented at an invitation-only DNC meeting suggested Latinas and young Latinos would be energized by seeing something new — a younger woman of color on the ballot, strongly advocating on issues like reproductive rights. In swing states like Nevada, where close to a third of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, these voters were seen as a gateway to bringing the Latino vote back in line with where it was for Democrats in 2020, and possibly beyond.

The party officials who attended the briefing were presented with early data showing Harris far ahead of Biden with those voters. Barreto showed internal polling that had Harris’ net favorability advantage over Biden at 24 points with 18 to 24 year old Latinas, plus 17 with Latino men of the same age, plus 18 with Latinas aged 25 to 29, and plus 12 with Hispanic men 25 to 29.

“This is extremely important,” Barreto later explained. “Younger Hispanic men looked problematic for Biden. They don’t look problematic for Harris. They start out pretty open-minded about her.”

Within just a few weeks, Equis was referring to a “ Latino reset .” In an expansive August 14 survey of 2,183 Hispanics, the polling firm found Harris leading Trump 56 percent to 37 percent across seven battleground states. Harris' support among Latinos under 40 was especially robust — 17 points higher than Biden.

The first Latino U.S. senator from California sees young Latino voters as a key to the race in November. Sen. Alex Padilla , who succeeded Harris in the U.S. Senate, told POLITICO Magazine he has a relationship with Harris dating back to his time as president of the Los Angeles city council when she was district attorney and as secretary of state when she was senator.

“Knowing her and knowing the swing states, young Latinos will play an important role in Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, where there are more than a million Latinos,” he said. “In every battleground state you can imagine, Latinos will be a critical segment of the electorate and part of her coalition.”

Recognizing that, Harris hosted Latino leaders at her residence for a July 25 backyard barbecue where Mexican papel picado banners hung above a large in-ground pool with the vice president’s logo emblazoned on the pool floor. While the event was planned before Biden dropped out — there was unmistakable excitement both from the official Washington Hispanic infrastructure that got a much-sought-after invite just days after the vice president’s elevation — and from Harris Latino staffers who got to mingle among them. Sipping on cool agua frescas between bites of carne asada tacos, campaign staff were repeatedly told by national Hispanic leaders that they were seeing high levels of grassroots energy from their members and strong enthusiasm from young Latinos.

“This is an Obama moment, not a Covid do-this-by-our-computers moment,” said Alida Garcia, on a recent call with organizers, of the in-person, turbo levels of grassroots outreach needed that recalls Obama’s candidacy, and not the virtual pandemic organizing of four years ago. Garcia, a political strategist who has been organizing Latinos on and off for Harris since her first statewide race in 2009, said Harris' ascent has created an organic moment where people are self-mobilizing outside the campaign structure to take democracy into their own hands to help her win. “I’ve been chasing that feeling since 2008,” she said.

Mike Madrid, a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, wrote in his new book The Latino Century that Latinos vote for women at a higher rate than any other race or ethnicity. He also sees Harris as shrewd, for in his view, shelving the longtime Democratic orthodoxy of her party on immigration with a tough border security ad out of the gate.

“Yes, there is a cultural phenomenon happening,” he said. “There’s absolutely an Obama comparison to be made. I would call it Obama plus. Kamala has consolidated the Democratic base, that’s what’s happening. There’s energy, excitement, and a generational shift.”

The campaign views Nevada, which has tumbled from a relatively reliable blue state to a state that could go red for the first time since George W. Bush’s reelection two decades ago, as indicative of the Harris effect with Hispanic voters.

Leo Murrieta, the Nevada director for Make the Road Action, who has helped turn out Latino voters in Las Vegas for 16 years, says he saw the first signs of Harris’ potential appeal during the last week of July. His group dispatched its members to speak to 300 Latinos in the community, finding that Harris had newly energized the race among Vegas Latinos.

“The majority of what you heard at the doors was that folks felt a new sense of hope that they could actually beat Trump,” he said.

Part of the vibe shift, he said, is based on abortion access. “Freedom of choice is a big deal for our gente ,” he said. “The suspicion is brown folks are very Catholic and don't want to talk about abortion, but that's not the truth anymore. Roe v. Wade being overturned moved so many of our conservative folks over to the left on this issue.”

The next phase for the campaign will be committing the financial resources needed to activate harder-to-reach younger Latino voters — much as the Biden campaign did in 2020. Back then, after a $364 million August windfall, the campaign ramped up its Latino voter spending on polling and outreach after Labor Day.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, the president of NextGen America, one of the largest youth groups in the nation, said the Harris campaign must follow suit from four years ago.

“People ask are Latinos Republicans or Democrats and I say we’re neither, we’re poor,” she said. “Whoever spends money and time and energy on them is going to win.”

The first Latinas for Harris call, which raised $110,000 from more than 930 new donors and resulted in more than 400 new volunteer sign ups, offered a glimpse at the promise of the new outreach efforts. Rep. Nydia Velázquez, a New York congressmember and a leading Puerto Rican voice who has campaigned among Pennsylvania’s politically important Puerto Rican communities, jumped in amid the rapturous excitement with a serious plea for the campaign staff on the call.

"Kamala can not win without Philadelphia and Allentown,” she said. “I have not been approached. We are here to help, you just have to reach out."

Michelle Villegas, the Harris campaign’s national Latino engagement director who was on the call, took note.

“We will go to Allentown together,” she said.