The Crucial Fight for Latino Voters in Arizona Between Ruben Gallego and Kari Lake is Just Getting Started
Lake, with her decades in the Arizona public eye, could again be competitive with Hispanic support as she was in 2022
In Arizona, where Hispanic voters make up 25% of eligible voters, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego's campaign has already expressed an intense interest in activating Latinos to historic levels in his bid to win the seat held by independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
The importance of the Arizona Senate race is unquestioned, as it will be one of the closest in the nation and could decide partisan control of the country.
But with Sinema's run for re-election uncertain, where does Republican candidate Kari Lake fall when it comes to Hispanic voters who could serve as kingmakers in the tight contest?
The former local broadcast TV mainstay who fiercely aligned with former president Donald Trump in her losing bid for governor in 2022, while embracing the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election, did well with Latinos that year compared to Republican Blake Masters who lost his Senate race to Sen. Mark Kelly.
While Masters lost with Hispanics 58% to 40% according to exit polls, Lake only trailed now-Governor Katie Hobbs 51% to 47%.
While Arizona politicos stress that Kelly is the most popular elected official in the state, it is clear that Lake has an opportunity with Latino voters, one her campaign embraced when asked by The Messenger.
"Kari Lake is married to a Hispanic, her kids are Hispanic, there's no question she knows and values the contributions of the Hispanic community to our state and country," a campaign aide said, arguing that Latinos are a growing force in Arizona politics that believe deeply in hard work, safe communities, family, and faith — values it says align far more with Republicans than with an "extreme" Democrat like Gallego.
"Arizona Hispanics don't want an open border. Arizona Hispanics don't want their businesses taxed to death. They don't like attacks from the Biden DOJ on Catholics. And they don't want their little boys turned into little girls," the Lake campaign continued. "Hispanics are smart, they see what radical leftists like Ruben are doing, and a lot of them are waking up to the damage those policies are doing to their country and their families."
A Gallego spokesperson similarly sought to paint Lake as the extreme candidate in the race.
"Ruben Gallego is the son of immigrants who was raised by a single mom alongside his three sisters, went on to serve his country in the Marines, and has spent the last decade delivering for Arizonans, including our immigrant and border communities," the campaign said. "Kari Lake, meanwhile, wants to ban abortion, sow doubt in our elections, and endanger our Dreamers. The choice for who will best represent the values and priorities of Latino voters — and all voters — could not be more clear."
Still, Tomas Robles, an organizer and Democratic operative for 14 years in Arizona who has worked to mobilize Latino voters said a lane for Lake with Hispanics "absolutely" exists.
"I think it all comes down to visibility and name recognition, people tend to forget that despite her Trump-like persona, she was a fixture on local network news for 30 years," he said. While Lake holds extreme positions, Robles said it is a mistake to believe "that because she sounds like Trump, people will dismiss her like Trump."
He argued that a controversy from last week where Lake forced the resignation of the Arizona Republican Party chair Jeff DeWit by revealing a leaked recording showed him floating a job if she would skip the Senate race altogether, was horrible in terms of political loyalty, but might appeal to some.
"It could also be seen as standing up to the system, non-Latinos, and rich people in the state," he said. "Her bravado is a thing that could appeal to some Latino voters."
As the contest unfolds, established Latino and immigrant rights leaders on the left plan to let Hispanic voters know about Lake's most incendiary comments, however, to inform the community beyond any initial interest in hearing what she has to say.
Lake, who will take part in a Wednesday town hall on the "Biden border crisis" hosted by CPAC in Green Valley, Arizona, along with Mercedes Schlapp, who worked on Latinos for Trump outreach for the Trump campaign, shared her views on the current state of immigration on CNN on Saturday.
"[Biden] and his corrupt administration is aiding and abetting this invasion at our border," she said, stressing the need to finish the border wall and get National Guard troops on the border to stop illegal entry into the country. "Then we need to sort out the 12 million people who are here and in order to save our homeland, we need to send them back to their homeland, and start repatriating these people back to their homeland."
That call for deportations, including young immigrants brought to the country as children known as Dreamers, was swiftly slammed by Democratic Latino leaders, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which called her comments "xenophobic," with "no place in American politics."
Ray Collazo, the executive director of UnidosUS Action Fund, the political arm of the one of the oldest Hispanic civil rights groups in the country, responded on Twitter saying Lake "wants to implement a mass deportation program that would cause family separation and economic chaos," declaring her entire campaign "based on anti-Latino fear mongering."
Rhetoric of a border invasion, often favored by Republicans, has previously come under fire after the terminology was used by Texas Republicans like Gov. Greg Abbott before the hate crime mass shooting of 23 mostly Mexican-Americans and Mexican nationals at a Walmart in 2019 by a shooter who said the "attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."
For its part, the Gallego campaign is working on plans to mobilize Hispanic voters at a "historic" level, advisors say, through a combination of tried and true, but also new strategies.
"When it comes to Latinos we're going to do more than anyone has ever done," a source close to the campaign said. "That means more digital, more mail, and targeting infrequent Latino voters."
Already the campaign has held an October Spanish-language townhall in west Phoenix, plans of which were first reported by The Messenger, and in December Gallego was a guest judge at the 16th annual Tamale Fest in Yuma County — which is two-thirds Latino, and the 8th largest majority-Latino country in the nation by population.
He said growing up in Chihuahua, Mexico, made him feel at home at Tamale Fest in the city of Somerton.
"I think we're here now [for the] fourth time in less than two months," Gallego told local news station KYMA then. "The kind of culture you see here is the culture I grew up in, so it feels very familiar to me."
Keeping the food theme going, Gallego will soon be taken on a culinary tour by Bryan Soto, known as Señor Foodie, who has nearly 150,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, of his favorite local Latino-owned restaurants in South Phoenix.
To reach these lofty goals, Robles said Gallego's campaign along with his supporters will need to have more understanding in their conversations with Latinos, especially those who don't follow politics closely, to explain the differences between his campaign and Lake's.
He pinpointed housing, water issues, lack of funding for education, and the effects of former governor Doug Ducey's tax cuts reflected in this year's budget deficit and cuts to social services as areas where Gallego can target the most urgent needs in the state from an immediate action perspective.
Gallego hosted a roundtable discussion with local Phoenix leaders like Eva Olivas last week, who said her group often fields calls on the lack of housing affordability, to share his plans to help first-time home buyers, seniors, and veterans with things like reallocating housing vouchers other states don't use when more are needed in Arizona.
"Until we address unifying issues, it's hard to get people excited," Robles added. "Making those conversations accessible to Latinos will help create the kind of outreach strategy to put Ruben on top."
Sinema — the incumbent — hasn't said whether she plans to run for reelection. Meanwhile, Gallego has consolidated Democratic support while Lake is the clear frontrunner in the GOP primary. The looming question is whether or not the Sinema will seek reelection. She has not made that decision yet.
However, Lake keeps cropping up on vice presidential shortlists for former President Donald Trump's third GOP ticket, and she has campaigned for her political idol in both Iowa and New Hampshire. A devoted Trump acolyte, Lake has said she is not focused on VP speculation and wants to help Trump in the Senate if they are both elected.
Mike Noble, the founder of polling firm Noble Predictive Insights, said Lake's performance with Hispanics is "very reminiscent" of how Trump did with Latino voters, doing better than an average Republican based on how Hispanics usually vote.
But polling data and her reception at the recent Arizona State Republican convention, where she was booed days after DeWit's forced resignation, has caught notice and underscored the challenge of being too closely associated with Trump.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee blasted the video of Lake attempting to speak over the boos. "We don't agree on everything. But what we do agree on is that the elections in Arizona are a corrupt mess," she said as the boos continued.
Noble said that a significant 25% to 30% of the Republican electorate is not a fan of Lake, which means a chunk of the moderate base may not turnout. He said his data shows 76% of independent voters also don't agree that Trump won the 2020 election, which he said is 50% of voters who truly don't lean to either party, along with less than 25% who lean-Democrat and more than 25% who lean-GOP.
"The 'stolen election' is not a good issue for the general," he said. "Jobs and the economy is a killer issue, the border is a massive issue, but then you go 'Hey, the earth is flat,' and it's like 'Whoa!' So that's a choice."
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