Latino voters are one of the fastest growing demographics here in Arizona and across the country and, after this year’s presidential election, they’re also one of the most perplexing.
President-Elect Donald Trump made significant inroads with these traditionally Democratic voters, even as he promised mass deportations and tied immigrants to crime. National exit polls found Trump won 43 percent of the overall Latino vote — eight points higher than he did in 2020. And nearly half of Latino men voted for Trump.
Here in Arizona, where Latinos are a big chunk of the electorate, voters passed Proposition 314, which has been dubbed the new SB 1070, by 63%.
For Luis Ávila, founder and president of ICONICO and a longtime community organizer in the Latino community in Arizona, it wasn’t surprising — but it is foreboding.
He has been advocating for his community here since the days of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration raid and, this election cycle, he was a consultant for the Harris campaign in Arizona.
I spoke with him more about his reaction to Trump’s win and how the Latino community turned out for him. And it’s today’s Deep Dive.
Full conversation
LUIS ÁVILA: My reaction has been kind of, I could say broken into two things. One of them is an affirmation of something we've been talking about for a while, which is we know that Latino voters really cared about specific issues that we didn't have always answers to and we didn't have responses to. So you know, not surprising the truth is the result of what we saw.
But what is surprising for me personally, it's the scope of the result, right? Like seeing Trump not only won by significant margins in some areas but also taking, you know, the Senate and potentially a big chunk of the House and. And that for me was the shock, the fact that in some ways this country is giving him an open letter to see what he's going to make of the future of the nation, and that was the shocking part for me.
LAUREN GILGER: What about when it comes to Latino voters and the way they turned out and more than normal voted for Trump.
ÁVILA: Well, for those of us who work and live and are part of Latino communities, we know the diversity of our community. We know that we're a very, you know, plural community in lots of ways, and as time passes we're going to see the difference between, you know, Latino voters in Pennsylvania and Latino voters in Arizona, for example, right? A state that not only elected Donald Trump but also voted for the first Latino senator in the state of Arizona with Ruben Gallego.
So we're gonna see, I think the analysis in the next few months of who were those voters, right, who voted one way or the other, and those of us who are Latinos and, and those of us who are close and and look at this community, we know that this community is not a race, it's an identity, right? So in some ways we have less in common than people think and these results are an example of that, right?
There are members of the Latino community who saw Donald Trump as an answer to what they need, and there are many of us who actually know and have the memory of having people like him in power and what it means to immigrant communities and the impact that it has on issues like the economy and education and the welfare of our kids. So we, for those of us who have been here for a little while, we know what this is gonna result in.
GILGER: So let me ask you about another issue that passed pretty profoundly in Arizona, which wasn't a surprise based on polling heading into it, but Prop. 314 was on the ballot, the Secure the Border Act, this has been called the new SB 1070. But the reaction to it, the kind of, I guess, the mood around it was so different than 1070, right?
Like there was really not a ton of vocal opposition to this, not,, you know, even from immigrant community advocates, nothing like we saw around 1070 in 2010, which you were a huge part of right. I wonder what you think the difference is.
ÁVILA: Well, I want to take people to instead of 2010 and SB 1070, it's 2004 and Proposition 200. Proposition 200, you know, prohibited undocumented families to access public services, state services, and if we remember that, you know, it passed almost with 60% of the vote, but almost 40% of the Latino vote. Very similar to this, right?
So if the story is cyclical and we can learn something from that is that back and you know, a couple of nativist politicians really took over the Republican Party and made immigration the platform to turn out their voters. So you know, move to this year, right, 20 years later, and what I really think about is that it's a very similar story to now, a national level.
The reason why you didn't see your opposition is because most of the oxygen was being taken by the federal races, right? This is one of the most expensive media markets in the country, so our voices of course weren't gonna be prioritized when we were saying this is gonna impact us, this is gonna impact the economy, because it's the interest of media companies right now was to make the money that was coming from politics.
The truth is many immigrant communities were meeting and were discussing, you know, there were organizations that were talking about this with very, very few resources to try to fight against it, but we also knew that this is a moment when, you know, a small group of elected officials and others with special interest are running on the backs of immigrants to gain popularity and win elections. And that's not forever, you know, that's the story of Arizona in 2004 we started organizing, we started creating and shifting narratives.
We got together and we are a whole new generation of people running things in the state and that's about to happen to the rest of the country. Arizona is a microcosm. It's not an exception of what's happening in the country. It's actually the future of what will happen to the United States, and that means that shift in demographics, not meaning that demographics are destiny. That doesn't mean it's a Democratic or a Republican future. It's just a change, and we need to accept that and we need to know how to grapple with that.
GILGER: But it also sounds like that change, right, that demographic shift is going to look very different than people in the Democratic Party have thought it was going to look for a long time, right? Like it seemed like a given maybe when Barack Obama was elected in 2008 that like the Democratic Party was going to be the party of diversity, the party that's the big tent for minorities, for people of color, for immigrants, and that doesn't seem to be the case with this election.
ÁVILA: Yeah, but being Latino is not a race, right? Going back to it, then when people continue to make decisions based on their self-interest, right, on what is it that is good for them. You know, Obama actually won the Latino vote on the support of the immigrant rights movement, we can't forget that. So in 2012, he gets reelected, still us thinking that we need, we still can and hope the Democratic Party delivers those promises of immigration reform. You know, we're almost 20 years later and we don't have an answer to that.
People haven't seen an answer. You know, even Democrats with a majority in Congress didn't pass immigration reform, so I think this is another reason why Latinos also stay home. We saw Latinos voting for Trump at a higher number, but we also have to remember that a lot of people just stay home and those people who stay home, we should be talking about too.
GILGER: What do you think some of the misses were from the Democratic Party in particular from your perspective? Like, do you think there was a misunderstanding of this big broad definition of the identity of Latino voters, quote unquote, like, is that Latino vote phrase one we should just get rid of?
ÁVILA: You know, I think the Latino, the Latino identity continues to be a byproduct of marketing, right? It's not something that came from the community, so we're using probably the wrong term, but at the same time, we do have things in common, right? Things like a shared story of colonization and, in some cases, a shared language.
So I think that there are interesting things for us to Latinos to grapple with, and I think that's the future and the thing that excites me as a Latino and as a Mexican immigrant is to actually start conversations and and continue conversations about what does it mean to be Latino not only in the way that we're gonna continue to decide on elections, but on the ways that we are gonna have to also include and represent other populations in this country, including white poor folks or Native Americans or African Americans, other populations we also have to think about when we are entering into positions of power.
That for me is exciting is how do we, and who are we, as Latinos in this country and. That's going to be something that I think is going to take more time than just a simple election because it's a, it's a bigger question that's something that happens in November, you know.
GILGER: Yeah, yeah. So it sounds like you were not incredibly surprised, as many were that like talk of mass deportations, that derisive language about immigrants did not result in a lot of Latinos saying we're voting for the other person or coming to the polls or voting for Trump.
ÁVILA: Well, again, if Arizona is a microcosm of the rest of the country, we have to remember that that was the case for Latinos in 2004. That was the case for Latinos in 2006 in Arizona. They were voting against, you know, quote unquote Latino self-interest and, and for anti-immigrant stuff.
But when things changed is when it became a matter of race in 2010, when SB 1070 allowed and legalized racial profiling is when people then started thinking, oh, this is not that good because it's not only for undocumented people, but it could impact me.
And that is the thing that I continue to look forward to when voters start realizing that some of the decisions not only impact people of mixed status or undocumented people, people with criminal backgrounds, but that it actually impacts anybody. I think that's when people are gonna start realizing we know in Arizona that hundreds of thousands of people left the state and that impacted our economy severely.
We know that in Arizona, you know, conventions and events and conferences weren't happening because people were afraid of coming to the state. That impacted our economy. We know that these sort of situations really set us backwards in the state of Arizona, and the same is gonna happen to this country. We're about to see what the impacts really are and that they go beyond the people with mixed status.
GILGER: So you feel like there will be a backlash coming?
ÁVILA: Absolutely. I mean, there's no other way. If policies are rooted in hate, you know, that's what we'll get.
GILGER: Let me ask you, have you talked to anyone who's a Latino voter who voted for Trump? Like one of those conversations sound like?
ÁVILA: Well, one of them is that they continue to point to the fact that we didn't have an answer on the economy, right? What is the answer for us on the economy? It cannot be, it didn't get worse, right? It cannot be, well, well, things are better, you just don't know. That is just not an answer.
So you know, in order for Democrats, I think to regain or any party to regain the trust of Latino voters and again those who didn't come out right who didn't come out to vote, I think that there have to be some really bold policies that impact, you know, not only our pocketbooks but also our vision of the future, right?
We're entering an era in the United States where people are not very hopeful of the future and if the answer to that dissolution is just let's not go back, that's just not enough, right? We have to actually set out and chart a a plan for future and a vision for people to see and I think that was the beautiful thing about the state of Arizona that we did in the state of Arizona in the 2000s and 2010s that we actually started that vision and started working towards it. And we're just seeing again, you know, a slip as cyclical as history is, we're living it again.
GILGER: What do you think then as an adviser to some of these campaigns right as a community organizer who's been in Arizona for so long doing this work, what do you want to see change? What will you change about the work you do?
ÁVILA: Well, there are a few things. One of them is that if we start with the understanding that Latinos are a plurality, we have to be more represented in all levels of decision making, right? So not only Latinos but populations most impacted that actually are kind of moving away from Democrats. I don't think they're running towards the Republican Party. They're just stepping away because they don't know where to go, right?
So one of the things that we have to have actually more voices that are a strategic making decisions. So we are not a compliance community. We're not coming because we need to talk to them. We're coming because it is essential to the future of our party and our nation that we include these voices in strategic decision making.
And I think that is a really big difference that I'm not seeing everywhere at all levels of of a party we have to do more in in in remembering the parties are built by people and the people who live in these communities have to be part of the processes of of lawmaking of policy making of campaigning and I think that's a really critical piece.
And the second one I think that is really important is for us to really address the situation of the power that money has in elections, you know. We really are not talking about a really big problem here which is the amount of dollars that were invested in apathy, to be honest, in ensuring that sharing information on misinformation and disinformation on the power of the vote and the power of government. And I think some of that is being kind of left aside and putting blame on communities where we know that some of that comes from special interests, some of that is tracked down and tracked back to some of the most wealthiest Americans in this country, or some of them not even American.
And playing politics with us and playing and impacting our consciousness with us. We had to be real about that and we had to have a conversation about the role that the money has in politics, and we have to change that not for Latinos but for all of us.
GILGER: So you're not saying that that money was spent just to get the Latinos to turn out for the other side, but to get people to stay home?
ÁVILA: Absolutely. I mean, when we look at the analysis of the sources of information. That Latinos were consuming so much of that I was content created outside of this country. We have to continue to analyze and put some of the measures to know who is impacting this country's electorate. You know, Europe is doing that already other countries are doing that already, and we continue to play naive here in the United States like it's not happening, and there is a hand of other countries, you know, trying to sway the election results in their country and we have to talk about it.
GILGER: Last question for you. Are you angry?
ÁVILA: You know, more than angry, what I am, it's I'm really resolute. I really believe that this is the majority of Americans decided this election outcome and I can live with that. My focus right now, it's in focusing on the protection of the communities that will be most impacted by this, on people knowing their rights, on people not falling for charlatan strength to take advantage of them, on ensuring that we have the legal protections and that this country's system still works to defend our rights. So you know, more than anything I am focused on that.
I am focusing on preparedness, on readiness, because I believe in the idea of this country. I believe that through these next 4 years we are actually gonna live a better life afterwards. I actually believe that every time this country falls into this darkness, falls into this, you know, confusion of who they are, we always come out, you know, stronger at the other end, and that's what I'm focusing on. I really wanna get through this.
