Yesterday, leading Nevada organizations gathered to announce a historic, multi-million dollar, immigration-based electoral campaign designed to flex the muscle and power of the pro-immigrant vote. The Culinary Union Local 226, PLAN Action, Center for Community Change Action, Latino Victory Project, Nevada’s Voice, and immigrant voters gathered to discuss the collaboration that will reach out to more than 120,000 Latino and AAPI (Asian and American Pacific Islander) voters.
Recent polling of Nevada voters from Latino Decisions and commissioned by America’s Voice found that 87% of Nevada Latino voters have either a “very” or “somewhat” unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump. Furthermore, Latino voter turnout has significantly increased from 15% in 2008 to 18% in 2012 and 2016 could yield the largest Latino vote share in Nevada’s history.
The initiative will be focused on energizing Nevada voters against Donald Trump and other Republican congressional candidates and is part of a national campaign targeting the growing immigrant populations in Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Per the Las Vegas Sun:
“We think that Donald Trump — his hatred and his bigotry — give us a very unique opportunity to engage these voters,” said Francisco Morales, a former staff member for Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., who is serving as state director of Immigrant Voters Win.
The campaign’s goal: Galvanize 120,000 immigrant voters and bring them to the polls. In addition to Trump and Hardy, activists are targeting Senate candidate Joe Heck and House candidate Danny Tarkanian, also Republicans.
…Yvanna Cancela, the Culinary’s political director, said the union’s 57,000 workers included immigrants from 160 countries who speak 40 different languages. Noting that polling had shown that 87 percent of Latino families in Las Vegas had a negative view of Trump, Cancela said the New York businessman and Nevada’s GOP candidates have “shown that they do not want to speak for families like ours.”
Morales said Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, along with the Supreme Court’s recent split on President Barack Obama’s executive order to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, would help energize immigrant voters.
“We think (turnout among Hispanic voters in Nevada) is going to be historic,” he said, “even greater than the number who turned out for the 2012 presidential election.”
As part of the Immigrant Voters Win campaign, activists will educate voters on how to register and explain why it is critical this year for immigrants to come to the polls.
The Las Vegas Review Journal also wrote on the groups’ efforts, highlighting the story of Estefani Guillermo:
Estefani Guillermo, a 20-year-old Las Vegas native, said she was turned off by Trump’s controversial rhetoric regarding immigrants — an anger that the national “Immigrant Voters Win” campaign wants to cultivate for November’s elections.
…Guillermo, who plans to vote for the first time this November, said she never paid much attention to elections because she didn’t understand how it could impact her everyday life.
But Guillermo said that changed this election cycle.
“If I want to make a difference in my household, I have to go out and vote,” she said.
Nevada’s Voice is a project of America’s Voice headed by State Director Viridiana Vidal. Said Vidal, “Donald Trump and others peddling his anti-immigrant vision are the reason I joined this fight, and I believe many in the Latino community feel the same way. This election has become personal for thousands of Nevadans who are tired of our leaders playing politics with our lives. This election will be a referendum not only on immigration, but on our nation’s core values. Immigrant voters will decide the future of this election and will remember those candidates that blindly sided with their political party and not with our community.”
Click here to view video from yesterday’s event. For additional pictures and tweets of yesterday’s event click here.
