Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton isn’t doing enough to engage Latino voters, activists said in a Sunday report by The Washington Post.
“We’re not seeing the Democratic Party take advantage of this moment in time, really looking to leverage more engagement in a more strategic way with our community,” President of the National Council of La Raza Janet Murguia told The Post.
Critics say the Clinton campaign only recently launched ads in Spanish, a strategy that Latino leaders believe led to President Barack Obama winning in 2008 and 2012.
“This approach may end up being vindicated on Election Day,” Fernand Amandi, a Democratic strategist under Obama, told WaPo. “I just find it to be more risky than replicating what we know worked, which is the sustained approach that the Obama campaign put in place.”
Clinton staffers report the campaign is reaching out to Hispanic voters, just not in the traditional way. Online ad outreach in both English and Spanish targets young Latino voters in a way that a simple TV ad campaign can’t, they claim.
“A lot of it has evolved to include outreach that isn’t obvious to people who are used to doing it old school,” Democratic strategist Maria Cardona said, according to The Washington Post. “The Clinton campaign and the DNC are very strategically focused on Latino millennials.”
Democratic senators and representatives don’t have a plan to defeat Republicans with Hispanic voters either, former Democratic outreach coordinator Albert Morales said.
“The DSCC has never really had a robust or a Hispanic engagement effort that I ever coordinated with, and that’s saying a lot being at the DNC under three different chairmen,” Morales said, according to the report.
“I couldn’t name one. If you were to ask me, name a Hispanic staffer who’s been at the DSCC, I couldn’t name it. That’s pretty sad.” The DSCC refers to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a committee dedicated to electing Democratic senators.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio leads challenger Patrick Murphy seven points with Latino voters, and several other Republican senatorial candidates aren’t far behind.
A Fox News poll published in August showed Clinton carried a 46 percent lead over Republican nominee Donald Trump, but the chief concern for Clinton staffers is voter turnout.
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