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IIn less than eight weeks, voters in the now blue state of Georgia will go to the polls to vote in the second round of the Senate on January 5, 2021 to decide whether the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff will join their Democratic colleagues in the Congress. These two seats are crucial to fulfilling the mandate Joe Biden needs to implement his ambitious vision for America’s future.
With the hopes and dreams of the Democratic Party resting on Georgia’s shoulders, it would be a costly misstep to overlook a key demographic: Latinos. There are nearly one million Latinos living in Georgia, the majority of whom live in and around the Atlanta metropolitan area. About 300,000 persuasive Latino voters who are registered to vote do not identify as Democrats or Republicans. These voters represent a small but decisive 5% of the electorate. In a world where races are won on very narrow margins, that 5% is a crucial casting vote.
In the days leading up to the 2020 general election, I saw the hopes of my colleagues rise as they watched a series of polls showing Biden leading the way in Florida and unprecedented early voter turnout in my home state of Texas. These hopes were quickly dashed. In the wake of the defeat, my phone began to vibrate and people asked, urgently, what went wrong with the Latino vote? It was the first time in my 30 years of political experience that the nation finally learned a truth that Latino organizers have been trying to convey for years. We are not a monolith and you must ask us for our vote if you want to win our vote.
Let’s be clear: President-elect Joe Biden won Latino voters. He spent more money engaging with Latino voters in his 2020 campaign than Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton. This investment paid off for Biden, with decisive Latino victories in the states he focused on competing, including Florida.
By now, we’ve all heard of the heroine of Georgia’s historic blue shift. Stacey Abrams’ unprecedented grassroots voter registration and mobilization efforts have unequivocally demonstrated that the antidote to poisonous voter suppression tactics and lagging voter participation involves two key ingredients: state and community-led operations.
Fair Fight Action was responsible for registering more than 800,000 voters in Georgia, a force to be reckoned with in what was once a trusted Red South. This level of mobilization, focused on Latinos, will be instrumental in tipping Georgia’s special election toward Democrats and securing these two remaining Senate seats.
Every 30 seconds in the United States, a Latino turns 18 and is eligible to vote. More than half of Georgia’s Latino population is under the age of 18. This means that there are thousands of Latino youth in Georgia who will turn 18 on or before January 5 and qualify to register to vote in Senate elections. This is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Latinos who are already over the age of 18 and who are not currently registered to vote.
The registration deadline for all Georgians wishing to vote in the second round of the elections is less than a month, on December 7. These next three weeks present a small window of opportunity for Democrats to expand their constituency. Emerging Latino populations can and will tip the balance in this election.
Latino groups and organizers on the ground, like Galeo, a nonprofit that helps register new Latino voters in Georgia, need funds and resources right now to mobilize Latinos in sufficient numbers to change the state. Over the past four months, Nuestro Pac, now the largest Latino-focused Super Pac that I helped found, spent more than $ 5 million to propel Latino voters in favor of Biden in swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada. and Pennsylvania. These efforts helped generate Biden’s margins of victory in many of the states he won.
Georgia presents a huge opportunity for Democrats, in part because the unique nuances of Latino voters in Texas and Florida, which are culturally distinct from elsewhere, are not present to the same extent in Georgia. The most pressing issue for Latinos in Georgia, and for Latinos in general, is Covid relief funds, which are currently being held hostage by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Health care is an equally critical issue for Latinos in Georgia; however, the Republican party has voted more than 50 times to strip Americans of the health protections provided by the Affordable Care Act and is seeking to defeat it through the supreme court.
Through the appointment of a new and diverse Covid-19 task force, Biden has already taken a crucial first step in instilling confidence in these voters. Now is the time to invest in grassroots organizing so Latinos can give Biden a mandate.
