Trump’s rally in eastern Coachella Valley comes as he gains more Latino voters

Donald Trump ’s plan to hold a campaign rally in the eastern Coachella Valley on Saturday was predictably met with big doses of both praise and condemnation.

But perhaps the most common reaction, across ideological lines, was surprise and uncertainty about why Trump was choosing to visit this corner of the California desert with just over 3½ weeks to go until Election Day .

After all, California is among the bluest of states, having not voted for a Republican candidate for president since the late 1980s.

But the rally’s location was striking for other reasons.

Most residents of the eastern Coachella Valley are Latino, a fact that helps shape much of the area’s culture and character. Latinos are generally considered a core Democratic constituency in contemporary politics, and Trump has heavily criticized illegal immigration during his campaigns and presidency, using racist stereotypes along the way. Launching his first campaign in 2015, he said Mexico was sending to the United States mostly “rapists” and people who bring drugs and crime . (He added that “some, I assume, are good people.”)

Immigrants and their children make up a huge percentage of the east valley. U.S. Census Bureau figures show 41% of Coachella residents and 25% of Indio residents were born outside the United States. And registered Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans in those cities and everywhere else in the Coachella Valley, except in La Quinta, where they are almost dead even, and in Indian Wells, where the GOP has an edge.

Trump’s history of criticizing illegal immigrants was referenced by Democratic Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez in a statement he released shortly after the rally was announced, in which he quipped that Trump “ain’t like us.”

“Trump’s attacks on immigrants, women, the (LGBTQ) community and the most vulnerable among us don’t align with the values of our community,” the statement read. “He has consistently expressed disdain for the type of diversity that helps define Coachella.”

Yet Trump’s relationship with Latino voters is more complex than history might suggest. Polls, including one released this week by USA TODAY , have found him gaining support among Latino men especially, including in swing states expected to be key to determining whether Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the 47th president.

While almost no one expects Trump to win California, some believe his rally Saturday is aimed at winning support elsewhere, including among Latino voters.

Are Latinos’ waking up’ about Trump?

He’s already gotten support from at least one Latino elected official in the Coachella Valley: Cathedral City Councilmember Ernesto Gutierrez.

Gutierrez said he plans to attend the rally, which he views as an opportunity for his Latino neighbors to learn about a candidate who better represents their values.

“I’m very excited about him coming to the desert because we have a lot of Hispanics that do not reflect the ideals of the Democratic Party if they were to only get educated a little bit more about what one party stands in comparison to the other party,” he said. “Their morals and their hard work and the type of culture that they have aligns more with a different party.”

He also said that he is noticing that friends of his who voted Democrat in the past are starting to lean toward Trump and have told him they are considering going to the rally.

“So there is a lot of Hispanics that are finally, you can say, waking up and aligning more with what they feel will help them in the future,” he said.

Gains for Trump and Republicans

The Trump campaign did not respond to a series of questions submitted by The Desert Sun about the reasons for holding the rally and whether it was intended as outreach to Latino voters. A press release announcing the rally did not mention the Latino community and instead hit at Harris, who served as California’s attorney general and one of its U.S. senators, over the high cost of living in the state.

“Under Kamala Harris and her dangerous Democrat allies like Tim Walz , the notorious ‘California Dream’ has turned into a nightmare for everyday Americans,” it said.

Mike Madrid, a Latino GOP political consultant who has written a recent book about the demographic’s political significance, has suggested on social media that the rally is also likely about showcasing support for Trump from Latinos, who make up a large percentage of voters in neighboring swing states like Arizona and Nevada, even if California will almost surely remain out of play.

“This is in the region of California experiencing some of the biggest rightward shifts of Latinos,” he wrote in a post on X , formerly Twitter. “Sure, it’s in California, but dismiss the message it sends at your own peril.”

Political reporter David Weigel also wrote on X that media coverage of the rally would likely include lots of sound bites of Trump-supporting Latinos and commentary about the degree of Trump support “even here in liberal California.”

“So much of the campaign is about creating a permission structure for people to re-reconsider Trump,” Weigel wrote.

State voter registration figures show that the number of Latinos registered as Republicans has increased by 2% while the number registered as Democrats has decreased by about 1% since the 2022 election, according to an analysis conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Some similar trends are being observed in national polls for the November election.

Newsweek reported on Sunday that it had looked at national polls conducted since Sept. 16 that break down voting intention by race and ethnicity and found that, on average, Harris is polling at 56% among Hispanic voters, down from Joe Biden’s 59% four years ago.

Trump, meanwhile, was polling at 38%, just as he did in 2020. A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that Hillary Clinton beat Trump among Hispanics by 38 points in that year’s election.

(“Hispanic” and “Latino” are often used as if they’re interchangeable, and much of the populations overlap. But they do have different meanings: Originally, “Hispanic” refers to people with ancestry from a primarily Spanish-speaking country, while Latino refers to people with ancestry from a Latin American country, including countries such as Brazil where the main language is not Spanish. )

The outlet reported that Democrats have been warning about signs of Hispanic voters turning toward the GOP for years. In 2020, Biden won among Hispanics by a smaller margin than in 2016, when Hillary Clinton beat Trump among Latinos by 38 points, with 66 percent to his 28 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

Concerns from some Latino residents

Despite those gains, Trump’s campaign and his visit to the valley have roused and inflamed a number of Latino officials and activists, who say the former president’s words and actions have been harmful to immigrants and Latinos in general and are antithetical to the values of their communities.

U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz, a Democrat whose district includes the east valley, said in a statement, “Literally no place in America that would be harmed more under a second Trump administration than the Coachella Valley.”

“His proposed tariffs would cause another trade war, costing farmers and farmworkers hundreds of millions of dollars in exports and jeopardizing thousands of jobs,” the statement read. “His hate-driven immigration policy would decimate the local workforce in agriculture, construction, and hospitality, severely harming families and businesses alike — including some of the businesses that support him.”

Luz Gallegos is the executive director of TODEC Legal Center, an organization with an office in Coachella that advocates for and provides resources to farmworkers and immigrants throughout the Inland Empire.

She said her organization is hearing from the people it serves that Trump’s visit is inspiring fear about what the rally and those who attend it could bring, given Trump’s rhetoric around immigrants.

However, she also said immigrant voters in the area would be paying attention to the event just as they have been to the campaign in general and the candidate’s statements about immigrants as they think about who to vote for.

She said many of the farmworkers her organization works with are citizens who vote. TODEC has been hosting first-time voter information sessions to teach immigrants how voting works and where to find information about candidates. And Gallegos expected the one Friday in Coachella, a day ahead of Trump’s rally, to be packed. (The timing is a coincidence: TODEC’s session had been scheduled before Trump’s rally was announced.)

She said the organization does not tell people how to vote, but instead aims to empower them to “exercise their power at the polls, whichever way they want to go.”

While her organization does not push specific candidates, she said it continues to be troubling to see a candidate demonizing immigrants and that the choice to do so could be an electorally hurtful one.

“So we’re not just talking about the workers himself or herself, we’re talking about, you know, the generations that are paying attention, that maybe their parents might not be able to vote, but they’re able to vote,” she said. “So we’re talking about a very significant pool of residents that do have the power to decide and they have the power to exercise their priorities and vote for whoever they want.”

Paul Albani-Burgio covers growth, development and business in the Coachella Valley. Follow him on Twitter at @albaniburgiop and email him at paul.albani-burgio@desertsun.com .

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Trump’s rally in eastern Coachella Valley comes as he gains more Latino voters