EDITORIAL: Are radical Dems driving Hispanics to the GOP?

There will be plenty of postmortem dissections of Tuesday’s election results, both nationally and in Nevada. Expect some of these autopsies to focus on how the ascendant hard-left wing of the Democratic Party has helped drive Hispanic voters to support the GOP.

It was only two decades ago that Democratic activists figured the nation’s changing demographics would cement their political majority for years to come. But it hasn’t worked out that way: Turns out Latinos aren’t the monolithic voting bloc that the cynical purveyors of identity politics condescendingly predicted they’d be. In particular, many such voters aren’t buying what progressives are selling.

“Over the past few years,” staff writer Tim Alberta wrote for The Atlantic this month, “Hispanics have begun abandoning the Democratic Party, defying generations of political patterns and causing varying degrees of panic on the left.”

The shift is evident in places such as Nevada, where Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Latino woman in the upper chamber, is neck and neck with Republican challenger Adam Laxalt, who has significant Hispanic support, according to polls. A Washington Post analysis revealed that Donald Trump gained ground — from 2 to 12 percentage points — between 2016 and 2020 in each of the nation’s 15 most heavily Hispanic congressional districts.

Many observers point to the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party as the problem. Rather than focus on the economy, gasoline prices, education and other day-to-day issues that concern Americans, the party’s loud progressive flame-throwers prefer to fight divisive culture wars, attack the police, belittle the American dream, promote government dependency and advocate for the kind of collectivist policies from which many immigrants fled. Woke ideology has its limitations outside the elite coastal enclaves.

“These immigrants come here to make money and keep their families safe,” María-Elena López, a Democratic political operative in Florida, told The Atlantic. “They are not here because the sea levels are rising, or because of social justice, or anything else. We’re out there talking about racism and the Green New Deal and defunding the police, and we’re freaking them out.”

Even the Biden administration’s de facto open border policy has turned off many Hispanic voters, particularly in south Texas. It’s difficult to “dispute the conclusion that Democrats have made it easier for migrants to attempt and complete an unlawful crossing into the U.S., making a historically bad problem much worse,” Mr. Alberta observed. Those he talked with agreed — and weren’t happy about it.

“Where is our respect for laws? Where is our respect for the people already here?” Sarita Perales, mother of four and former Democratic voter in Texas, told The Atlantic. “I’m an immigrant; I’m also an American. We are allowing our country to be overrun.”

One longtime Arizona Democrat told Mr. Alberta that Republicans now have the edge with Latino voters on issues such as regulation and encouraging small-business creation. This is a significant development given the diverse Hispanic community’s entrepreneurial tendencies and commitment to upward mobility and economic opportunity.

If the GOP makes major gains Tuesday, the party will likely have increased support from Hispanics to thank for it in many areas, including Nevada. Whether that trend continues hinges on whether Republicans continue to emphasize those core economic issues — and whether more moderate Democrats prefer silence to confronting the radical progressives now dominating their party’s agenda.