Asked why he had robbed a bank, William Sutton, one of the FBI’s most wanted postwar criminals, replied, “because that’s where the money is”. If Sutton had been running for president in 2024 he would have plotted a raid on Pennsylvania’s Hispanic vote.
The path to the White House runs through Pennsylvania — America’s largest must-win swing state. Yet Donald Trump’s campaign is so far making no discernible effort to woo its fastest-growing demographic. Numbering roughly 600,000 adults in a state that was settled by margins of less than 100,000 votes in the past two elections, Pennsylvania’s Hispanics are where the votes are.
“We seem to be committing an unforced error,” said Albert Eisenberg, a Philadelphia-based Republican consultant. “Hispanics could be the deciding factor.” Joe Biden’s campaign started early and in earnest, running Spanish-language commercials in Pennsylvania in March, eight months before November’s presidential election.
Kamala Harris, who replaced him in July, this week booked a new round of ads. “I have never seen a campaign start as early as Biden — usually it would be in September,” said Victor Martinez, owner of Pennsylvania’s largest Spanish-language radio network and the anchor of his own morning show from Allentown, the state’s third-largest city.
“What confuses me is why the Trump campaign is not even trying to reach Spanish speakers. As a businessman, I would go bankrupt if I ignored my fastest-growing audience.” Harris has also done a phone-in interview with Martinez in English.
A registered independent, Borick lives in Nazareth, a few miles from Allentown, and one of the most hotly contested townships in America. A reminder of the region’s bible-suffused early days, Nazareth is 10 miles down the road from Bethlehem, a former steel hub. In 2020, Biden won Borick’s ward, with its population of 1,000, by just three votes. This time he and his neighbours have been bombarded by Democratic door-knocking and campaign mail
. “The Trump campaign is so far missing in action,” said Borick. By the conventional calendar, Trump has 80 days to make up for lost ground in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. But in practice, early voting starts in mid-September. Roughly a third of Pennsylvanians are expected to vote by mail. If the 2022 midterm elections are any guide, these will veer strongly Democratic.
Here again, Trump is trampling on his campaign’s priorities. Republicans are trying to educate their voters about the benefits of the mail-in ballot. On the stump, however, Trump often repeats his claim that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election via mail-in fraud.
In the next 30 days Republicans must somehow enthuse their foot soldiers to vote early without contradicting their leader’s stolen election theory — and his warning that 2024 will also be rigged. For true believers, this requires semantic acrobatics.
Traditional Republicans can put it more bluntly. “That’s malarkey,” Montero, the lawyer based in Allentown, tells conservative voters when they express suspicion of postal votes. “We can only win by voting.”
