October 23, 2020

How Trump’s message lands with some Latino voters

The president's reelection campaign has strong support from the owners of one Catalina restaurant.

With less than two weeks until Election Day and early voting well underway, President Trump rallied supporters at back-to-back events in Tucson and Prescott this week. Most polls show him slightly behind former Vice President Joe Biden in Arizona. Part of the president’s strategy to narrow the gap in the battleground stage has focused on engaging Latino voters.

Tony Paniagua looked into some of the reasons driving decisions in this growing voting bloc. He heard from Jorge Rivas, owner of Sammy’s Mexican Grill in Catalina, whose support for Trump led to backlash online and a supportive tweet from the president himself. Rivas, who immigrated to the U.S. from El Salvador, said he shares the president’s law-and-order stance.

“I know there are injustices still in this country, but breaking someone’s windows, breaking into their property, stealing anything that you can find and running away, running away with it and saying that that’s justice, that’s not justice, that’s looting,” Rivas said.

Paniagua also spoke to Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, who discussed her ties to the Democratic party and criticized the president for previously referring to immigrants from Mexico as rapists and criminals in 2016. Romero’s parents are from Mexico.

“My parents moved to the United States and immigrated all of the family with the great hope of having a better life for their kids,” Romero said.

Both Rivas and Romero agree that neither political party should take the Latino vote for granted. According to the Pew Research Center, Hispanic voters make up nearly a quarter of eligible voters in Arizona.

Arizona 360
Arizona 360 airs Fridays at 8:30 p.m. on PBS 6 and Saturdays at 8 p.m. on PBS 6 PLUS. See more from Arizona 360.
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