As population grows, so does debate on how to reach Latino voters in ’22 midterms – By Stephanie Akin and Suzanne Monyak (Roll Call) / Aug 18 2021
Both parties reassess strategies after 2020 surprises
CARROLLTON, Texas — As a Democrat running in a minority-majority suburban House district in Texas that Democrats saw as a pickup opportunity last year, Candace Valenzuela thought she knew what voters wanted to hear.
A school board member who beat a retired Air Force colonel in a runoff for the Democratic nomination with the support of liberal groups, Valenzuela is the daughter of a Black man and a Mexican American woman who met in the military. She faced homelessness at age 3.
Like other Democrats running in 2020, her pitch to voters in the 24th District around Dallas-Fort Worth focused on jobs, economics and health care. But after winning the primary and the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — support that the Congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses had urged the DCCC to give her earlier in the campaign — she faced pressure from national consultants.
Rather than talk about how struggling families would recover from the pandemic-driven economic decline, she said in a recent interview over lunch in a strip mall where all the signs were in Spanish, Valenzuela was urged to go after hypothetical moderate voters and talk about preexisting conditions in health insurance she worried many in the community couldn’t afford. She wanted to rebut “defund the police” charges because she knew her relatives wanted police protection even if they supported more transparency but was told to ignore it as the polls said the charges weren’t hurting her.
