Many believe that Project 2025, created largely by prominent Trump allies and veterans of his first administration, is in essence the policy blueprint for a potential second term from the Republican candidate. Despite Trump himself claiming back in July that he has "no idea who's behind it", the rumors that link the former president to the project refuse to go away. Just last week they, in fact, got bigger when Trump said he would hire Tom Homan, the author of Project 2025 and former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director.
Critics of the plan point out that the program outlines a far-reaching agenda including mass deportation, restrictions on reproductive rights, and crackdowns on LGBTQ+ issues. Yet, despite its far-reaching impact, no major Democratic Party entity had translated the document into Spanish, leaving a gap in outreach efforts towards Latinos, quite possibly the most crucial demographic this upcoming election.
Voto Latino, the civic engagement organization focused on educating and empowering a new generation of Latino voters, is looking to change that, by not only translating sections of the policy blueprint that resonate with older Latino voters but launching a $3.5 million video ad campaign featuring Spanish-language videos in the all-important battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, Rolling Stone reports.
This outreach effort marks several firsts for Voto Latino. On one hand, it's the first time the organization has run Spanish-language digital advertising. On the other, it's also the first time the group has targeted older, not younger Latino voters.
"99 percent of Latino young voters under the age of 33 are English dominant," said María Teresa Kumar to Rolling Stone. "This is strictly aimed at their parents and their grandparents, and that is what makes it unusual when we normally focus on young Latinos."
Considering the original document for the project is over 900-pages long, Voto Latino decided to focus on issues that truly resonate with the demographic, like for example LGBTQ+ policies.
"We decided on the LGBTQ question specifically because they're trying to weaponize this idea of Latino families, and oftentimes they're very stereotypical in what they perceive our priorities are," Kumar explains. "What we know at the end of the day is our polling shows that for everything from abortion to LGBTQ, the community deeply believes that those are actually private issues that the government should not be in in our bedrooms, that our government should not be judging others."
The timing of the campaign coincides with growing concerns among Democrats about waning support among Latino voters. A recent The New York Times/Siena College poll revealed that Harris is currently underperforming when compared to previous Democratic candidates while Trump has maintained his appeal to Latino voters, especially men, a particular demographic which the vice president has had trouble courting.
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