Beto O’Rourke will fire up the Latino base.
Via NBC News:
Donald Trump stares at Mary Morales every day from across her office at the Texas Organizing Project, a group working to turn out black and Latino voters in a state ranked almost dead last in voter participation.
Morales was looking forward to smashing the child-sized Trump pinata at the end of the 2016 campaign — but then Trump won and spoiled her plans. So there he stands, fully intact, a silent reminder to her and the dozens of paid canvassers who are dispatched from here every day to do the sweaty, grinding work of going door-to-door to cajole people to get out and vote on Nov. 6.
Even with phenom Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke at the top of the Texas ticket, it hasn’t been easy, as Democratic officials, party operatives and tied-in organizations in this state and across the country are seeing signs — surprising to some — that many Hispanics may sit out the midterms. The lack of enthusiasm among Latinos has party leaders concerned that a key part of the coalition needed to take back the House and Senate may stay home.
“People are angry, but it doesn’t necessarily make them want to vote,” said Morales. “They’re like, Why even bother voting if people like Trump are going to win?”
“There’s a mountain of evidence showing Latino voters are a weak point for Democrats this cycle,” said David Wasserman, House editor for The Cook Political Report and an NBC News contributor/senior analyst with the NBC Election Unit.[…]
n Miami, Democrats risk blowing what was once seen as a sure-thing after they nominated former Bill Clinton Cabinet secretary Donna Shalala, who doesn’t speak Spanish. Next door, GOP Rep. Carlos Curbelo is neck-and-neck with a Democratic challenger in a 70 percent Latino district that Clinton won by 16 percentage points.
In Nevada, incumbent Republican Sen. Dean Heller has been able to cling to a narrow lead by keeping a healthy 38 percent of Latino voters in his camp, according to a recent NBC News/Marist poll. And in the Las Vegas suburbs, handicappers just downgraded Democrats’ prospects of holding onto the majority non-white 4th Congressional District.
Not far away in California, where Democrats are well-positioned to overcome 80 years of Republican dominance in the wealthy suburbs of Orange County, two GOP incumbents, Reps. Jeff Denham and David Valadao, look relatively strong in heavily Hispanic parts of the Central Valley.
And in Arizona, Democrat David Garcia’s campaign to become the state’s first Latino governor has struggled to gain traction, even though Clinton came closer to winning that state in 2016 than any Democrat in years.