Speaker 1: Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and
Speaker 1: social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Speaker 1: Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course Latinos versus the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four election. Consider the numbers. Latinos represent the US electorate's
Speaker 1: second fastest growing voting group after Asian Americans. About thirty
Speaker 1: six point two million Latinos are expected to vote in
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four presidential election, four million more voters
Speaker 1: than in the twenty twenty election. According to the Pew
Speaker 1: Research Center, Latino voters have tended to have low turnout
Speaker 1: rates and elections, but this hefty increase in that electoral
Speaker 1: pool is due to the mobilization of enthusiastic and engaged,
Speaker 1: younger US born Latino voters, and you'll find that growth
Speaker 1: concentrated in swing states in the Western US like Nevada
Speaker 1: and Arizona. Forty five percent of all eligible voters in
Speaker 1: New Mexico are Latina knows, and California is home to
Speaker 1: about twenty five percent of all eligible Latino voters in
Speaker 1: the entire US. Latino voters have strong regional differences in
Speaker 1: their cultures and values, and this plays out around what
Speaker 1: they care about entrepreneurial opportunities, abortion, voting rights, citizenship, immigration,
Speaker 1: and other issues are front and center. Latino voters played
Speaker 1: a pivotal role in Joe Biden's twenty twenty victory, and
Speaker 1: they will figure prominently in a twenty twenty four presidential
Speaker 1: race in which Donald Trump can leverage strides he's made
Speaker 1: courting them. The both work hard to woo Latinos, and
Speaker 1: the race could be decided in part by who's the
Speaker 1: most successful. I'm happy to tell you that Maria Teresa
Speaker 1: Kumar joins me today to dig into all of this.
Speaker 1: Maria Theresa is the CEO of Voto Latino, an influential
Speaker 1: advocacy group that mobilizes Latino voters around a range of issues.
Speaker 1: It's been so successful that is now the largest voter
Speaker 1: registration group in the ipocket community and among youth voters.
Speaker 1: Greetings Maria Theresa.
Speaker 2: Tim, I'm thrilled to be here.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to tee this off by asking you,
Speaker 1: in the most general of ways, what's at stake for
Speaker 1: Latino voters in the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 2: That is such an all encompassing question, because I would say, Tim,
Speaker 2: that it is no different than that of our neighbors
Speaker 2: as American citizens. And one of the things that we
Speaker 2: saw under the Donald Trump reign was that he put
Speaker 2: Latino's front and center as the experiment of what he'd
Speaker 2: like to do with the rest of Americans. And I'd
Speaker 2: say this not lightly. We were absolutely the canaries in
Speaker 2: the coal mine when he descended that escalator and basically
Speaker 2: said that we were criminals and rapists. He tried to
Speaker 2: be too smart by half saying that it was the
Speaker 2: person crossing the border from Mexico. But there was not
Speaker 2: a Latino in America who understood that he meant us.
Speaker 2: And then he denigrated every single institution. When he went
Speaker 2: first after a Latino reporter of hore Ramos, that was
Speaker 2: his indication that he was going to go after the
Speaker 2: press as a whole, and we saw that when he
Speaker 2: was in office. Then we saw him go after a
Speaker 2: Mexican judge, and we saw his playbook that he was
Speaker 2: intending to do that for all of the judicial branch.
Speaker 2: And if we were to take his word of what
Speaker 2: he has now claimed in the New York Times, he
Speaker 2: intends to concentrate power and make America a democracy on
Speaker 2: paper only, and so while we have absolutely the Latino
Speaker 2: community been at his cross hairs. First, we are the
Speaker 2: litmus test of what he intends to do with our
Speaker 2: democratic institutions as a whole. And so when he speaks,
Speaker 2: you and I both took him seriously. From the onset.
Speaker 2: We saw many colleagues kind of shrike him off as
Speaker 2: a joke. But if someone tells you who you are,
Speaker 2: you believe him the first time. And boy, has he
Speaker 2: fulfilled everything he said he was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there should be a little question in people's mind
Speaker 1: about who Donald Trump is and what he intends to do.
Speaker 1: There's enough evidence now. People might have skated on that
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, if they didn't read or listen, they
Speaker 1: might have gotten away with that. But you know no
Speaker 1: longer and you know. And why should other voting groups
Speaker 1: be concerned about all of this, whether they're Asian America
Speaker 1: voters or black voters or white voters. What is the
Speaker 1: common thread or the commonalty here that each group should
Speaker 1: pay attention to.
Speaker 2: I would say that one of the reasons that immigrants
Speaker 2: fled and are here because they recognized that they had
Speaker 2: a deep entrepreneurial spirit, but perhaps no connections. And in America,
Speaker 2: if you have a good, fine idea, it has a shot.
Speaker 2: In Latin America, you don't have a shot at all
Speaker 2: at your big dreams because you are immediately born into
Speaker 2: a class, whether you like it or not, and you're
Speaker 2: immediately born into a corrupt system that you may have
Speaker 2: a great idea, but you're going to have to grease
Speaker 2: the hands of someone as little as the cable guy
Speaker 2: to put in your internet connection so that you can
Speaker 2: go ahead and found your company. And so when folks say, well,
Speaker 2: what is Donald Trump? You know, why is he such
Speaker 2: a threat to democracy? I also like to say we
Speaker 2: often talk about the rights that he has said that
Speaker 2: he's going to abdicate, whether it's a woman's rights and
Speaker 2: agencies over her body through abortion, whether it's condoning book
Speaker 2: banning so that we don't know our history. We can
Speaker 2: talk about those rights as fundamentals, but then we should
Speaker 2: also look at the rights of what makes America a
Speaker 2: thriving democracy, and it is because we believe in a capitalist,
Speaker 2: just system. Do we actually achieve that every day? No?
Speaker 2: Are we aspirational? Absolutely? And when folks from business Tim
Speaker 2: and I say this because you're with Bloomberg, often say, well,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump or Biden doesn't really make a difference. I
Speaker 2: always counteract. Is like the reason that we were able
Speaker 2: to be the first people on the moon, the reason
Speaker 2: that we were able to have an iPhone in our pocket,
Speaker 2: the reason that we have been at the cutting edge
Speaker 2: of research is that the government has been out of
Speaker 2: our business to think big as an individual. But the
Speaker 2: moment that you have in isocrasy that disrupts the ability
Speaker 2: for the little person with big ideas to break through
Speaker 2: because under the autocracy system, it depends on what favors
Speaker 2: you will do to your local government and to the
Speaker 2: top of the government and to part of the party.
Speaker 2: We can say that it's one of the reasons why Russia,
Speaker 2: being as large as it is, has not been able
Speaker 2: to thrive because it is an oligarchy. The reason that
Speaker 2: communist China every time there's a big idea look at
Speaker 2: Ali Baba, it has dampened its ability to compete in
Speaker 2: commerce in large part. And why you have so many
Speaker 2: middle class Chinese fleeing right now is that they have
Speaker 2: now hit a level of what they can and cannot
Speaker 2: do in their country. And so in thriving democracy is
Speaker 2: dependent on a thriving middle class with the ability to
Speaker 2: think big as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: I would add to the great point you made about
Speaker 1: how the US can excel spanned opportunities and take on
Speaker 1: challenges is because of our diversity. We have an innovative economy,
Speaker 1: and innovation comes from new ideas, and it comes from
Speaker 1: a plurality of ideas, and those ideas and that innovation
Speaker 1: are only as strong as the diversity of the population
Speaker 1: they represent, which is another reason why immigration is key
Speaker 1: to both US democracy and US opportunity and US economic growth.
Speaker 1: Which anyone who really digs into this nos and anyone
Speaker 1: who denies it as in telling the truth. In the
Speaker 1: same way that Donald Trump said he'll be dictator on
Speaker 1: day one, and we know he might be dictator for
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of days. Speaking of opportunity, you know
Speaker 1: your story I find inspiring and interesting. You were born
Speaker 1: in Colombia, then your family moved to California. You went
Speaker 1: to college at UC Davis and then graduate school at Harvard.
Speaker 1: Along the way, you became a legislative aid before joining
Speaker 1: Voto Latino. So tell me a little bit about how
Speaker 1: do you think about all that looking back at it now?
Speaker 2: So just to backup a few steps. My mother was
Speaker 2: a single mom in Colombia. She was Afro Colombian and
Speaker 2: had an eighth grade education. By all those metrics, tim
Speaker 2: I shouldn't be where I am today because I was
Speaker 2: born into a system that was already stacked against me
Speaker 2: for all of the legacy of what it means to
Speaker 2: be black in Colombia. My mother met my father, who
Speaker 2: adopted me when I was one year old, shortly after
Speaker 2: he met my mother, and they got married, though he
Speaker 2: got really ill, and so my parents had to pack
Speaker 2: their bags and move from a very solidly middle class
Speaker 2: in Colombia to northern California, where I like to say
Speaker 2: prepared me for the moment of Donald Trump. And I
Speaker 2: say this because my grandparents did not have their wits
Speaker 2: about them. That my father shows up with Latina and
Speaker 2: her daughter and their only interaction, quite frankly, with Latinos
Speaker 2: at the time were the migrant workers that worked their fields.
Speaker 2: And so while my father convalesced, I was three at
Speaker 2: the time, I navigated a household that was already trying
Speaker 2: to define who I was, but who loved us nonetheless,
Speaker 2: and set my mother to work in the field. You
Speaker 2: can imagine how awkward that was for Thanksgiving, but it
Speaker 2: started informing me also of the possibility that America offered me.
Speaker 2: I will never forget. My proudest moment was when I
Speaker 2: was nine years old and I had just come back
Speaker 2: from city hall in San Francisco, and the teacher asked
Speaker 2: what we were thankful for, and I raised my hand
Speaker 2: very proudly saying that I was thankful that today I
Speaker 2: was an American citizen. I believe that it meant so
Speaker 2: much for me to be able to unopen these possibilities
Speaker 2: that I knew at a very young age in Colombia
Speaker 2: were closed. My mother worked very hard to help make
Speaker 2: THENDS me But then I went to UC Davis and
Speaker 2: my world opened up.
Speaker 1: And you took great advantage of those opportunities that came your.
Speaker 2: Way, Oh Tim, I was hungry because I will tell
Speaker 2: you that I knew that it was through education and
Speaker 2: through access that I was going to be able to
Speaker 2: have a different life, not for myself, but for the
Speaker 2: family that I wanted in the future.
Speaker 1: If that makes sense, it does make sense. And I
Speaker 1: also love your use of the word hungry because it's
Speaker 1: so evocative, right, It's you know, literal hunger for food.
Speaker 1: It's intellectual hunger for new ideas, it's hungry for new opportunities.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people can be hungry.
Speaker 1: Not every one of them feeds themselves in the way
Speaker 1: that you have and the other things that you talk
Speaker 1: about about your direct experience as an immigrant. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm an Irish American, many generations removed. I think my
Speaker 1: relatives first came over in the eighteen thirties or the
Speaker 1: eighteen forties. And I think recent waves of immigrant Americans,
Speaker 1: because we are an immigrant country by definition, forget that
Speaker 1: we have this commonality, because we've gotten ours, whether that's
Speaker 1: economic or cultural, or spiritual or political, the legacy migrants
Speaker 1: have put their stakes in the ground, and I find
Speaker 1: it troubling when they don't read their own history and
Speaker 1: look at actually the important bonds they share with newer
Speaker 1: generations of migrants.
Speaker 2: Well, I think you spark something oftentimes people like to
Speaker 2: And this was really very much unleashed by Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: but I would say Sarah Palin had a hand in
Speaker 2: it as well. This idea of how immigrants are the
Speaker 2: challenge in America, and in fact, what we've been able
Speaker 2: to demonstrate throughout history, whether we're talking about Irish Americans,
Speaker 2: whether we're talking about Chinese Americans, and the list goes
Speaker 2: on that, in fact, what we've been able to do
Speaker 2: so differently than the rest of the world is bring
Speaker 2: in the most innovative entrepreneurs. And they may not be
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs in our sense, but they're entrepreneurs in that they've
Speaker 2: recognized that they're fleeing something that is in just or
Speaker 2: so stacked that they come to the United States because
Speaker 2: they think that here they could become the best versions
Speaker 2: of themselves. And as a result, in a multicultural America,
Speaker 2: we all profit from it. And I often say Tim
Speaker 2: that you don't have to take my word for it.
Speaker 2: You don't have to take my word that multicultural America
Speaker 2: is our superpower in an increasingly global world. You just
Speaker 2: have to take nefarious activities of foreign actors who tried
Speaker 2: to divide us in elections through race. There's well documented
Speaker 2: that the Russians did massive interference in our twenty sixteen election,
Speaker 2: and it was all around race. And it's because they
Speaker 2: recognize that a divide in America is a weakened America,
Speaker 2: but a collective, strong, multicultural America is the one that
Speaker 2: we'll be able to actually map the next hundred years,
Speaker 2: not just for the United States, but for the globe.
Speaker 2: And while we may not be completely satisfied in attaining
Speaker 2: what our founding fathers saw through the Constitution, we are
Speaker 2: well ahead of everybody else, and a multicultural America will
Speaker 2: demand collectively that we continue trying to achieve that perfect document.
Speaker 1: So how did you come to vote Latino? How did
Speaker 1: that happen for you?
Speaker 2: So we're on the this is our twentieth year anniversary.
Speaker 2: So I like to say we're twenty years young. And
Speaker 2: if I were to be completely transparent, I was tragically
Speaker 2: in New York when September eleventh happened, and I was
Speaker 2: on the path of going into corporate America like so
Speaker 2: many young people at the time, and I had this
Speaker 2: realization that while I was the first person in my
Speaker 2: family to graduate get my masters, and I was about
Speaker 2: to engage in living the immigrant dream of every parent
Speaker 2: for their child, that is different was that really my
Speaker 2: dream was also acknowledging that my cousins who were younger
Speaker 2: than I were not okay. And at the time tim
Speaker 2: I did not have the language of institutional racism, but
Speaker 2: there was something very clear that the women in my
Speaker 2: family were thriving, and the young men in my family
Speaker 2: were not. And we grew up in Sonoma, the liberal
Speaker 2: bastion was as segregated as you could possibly imagine. And
Speaker 2: I stepped back and I realized, I'm about to go
Speaker 2: into corporate America to give people who have access in
Speaker 2: information more access and information. And anyone can do that.
Speaker 2: But at this point I had a set of values
Speaker 2: that I felt that if we can enfranchise and start
Speaker 2: talking to young people about the importance of their democracy
Speaker 2: and how they fit into it and how they can
Speaker 2: help self define themselves and their family by participating, that
Speaker 2: we could have a revolution for good and it can
Speaker 2: be transformative. And about a year later, I was talking
Speaker 2: to a mentor of mine and he introduced me to
Speaker 2: Rosario Dawson, who had just launched a campaign called Voda
Speaker 2: Latino with MTV. And that's all it was supposed to be,
Speaker 2: tim it wasn't supposed to be anything more. And I
Speaker 2: saw this ad and granted I had worked in Congress,
Speaker 2: I'd gone to the Kennedy School, I had been interning
Speaker 2: the sacrament of State Legislature when I was in college.
Speaker 2: I would consider myself highly political, but it wasn't until
Speaker 2: I was twenty eight years old when I saw one
Speaker 2: of the PSAs where one of the actors was looking
Speaker 2: straight to the camera say registered to vote because I
Speaker 2: can't that I finally felt seen that, I finally felt
Speaker 2: someone say you are Latina and American and what a
Speaker 2: beautiful thing, and what's the power. And it was that
Speaker 2: advocacy that I realized that this is where I wanted
Speaker 2: to spend my time, and so, believe it or not,
Speaker 2: I quit my job. I moved back home to my
Speaker 2: mom on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, and I
Speaker 2: funded an underwrite vit Latino for the first three years
Speaker 2: on my credit card. Whoever's hearing this, don't ever do
Speaker 2: that this is a terrible idea. But it was this
Speaker 2: deep understanding that I had navigated America for my mom
Speaker 2: since I was nine years old, and there were millions
Speaker 2: of other young people doing the same thing. And while
Speaker 2: Latinos are the second fastest group of growing Americans, we're
Speaker 2: also the second largest of Americans. And for the last
Speaker 2: two census tim it's been because of the Latino growth.
Speaker 2: Fifty two percent of the US population growth has been
Speaker 2: attributed to Latinos, not immigration, but the birth of American Latinos.
Speaker 1: If you can, in a kind of a direct and
Speaker 1: succinct way, tell me a little bit about what your
Speaker 1: involvement in Voda Latino meant to you as an activist
Speaker 1: and someone who was deeply politicized.
Speaker 2: So when I inherited Vota Latino, it was just an
Speaker 2: idea in PSAs, and it was the first organization to
Speaker 2: speak to me as an American, and I fell in
Speaker 2: love with its possibility because I knew that when I
Speaker 2: was underage, I was navigating this country for my mother,
Speaker 2: for my grandmother by translating everywhere, and I knew that
Speaker 2: millions of other Latino youths were doing the exact same thing,
Speaker 2: and they didn't realize that at the time that when
Speaker 2: they turned eighteen, all of a sudden, they would have
Speaker 2: greater agency to impact their families than through simple translation,
Speaker 2: by really navigating the country, by basically registering to vote,
Speaker 2: registering their families and changing dynamics in this country.
Speaker 1: And understanding the tools that they needed to use to
Speaker 1: empower themselves.
Speaker 2: That's exactly the vote.
Speaker 1: Alone, although it's an important one, but you brought many
Speaker 1: other organizing principles to bear on that effort.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. One of the things that if you
Speaker 2: were to ask what makes us principally so different from
Speaker 2: other voter registrations, I would define us more as a
Speaker 2: civic education and advocacy organization, because not only do we
Speaker 2: register you to vote, but then we inform you about
Speaker 2: the issues that matter to you, and then we teach
Speaker 2: you how to take action. We don't leave you the
Speaker 2: next day, but we really create a community. And what's
Speaker 2: neat is that if you were to go into Texas
Speaker 2: and ask a seventeen year old if they know Little Latino,
Speaker 2: almost seven out of ten will say that they do.
Speaker 2: We've been able to say see how young people, once
Speaker 2: they recognize that the levers of power really lie in
Speaker 2: their hands, they participate and they start changing the direction
Speaker 2: of their states.
Speaker 1: So on that happy note of both brand recognition among
Speaker 1: voters and your great organizing effort, I want to take
Speaker 1: a quick break so we can hear from a sponsor,
Speaker 1: and then we'll come right back. I'm back with Maria
Speaker 1: Theresa Kumar, CEO of vot Latino, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: the power and promise of Latino voters in the US.
Speaker 1: You've just been regaling me with both your poignant and
Speaker 1: powerful personal story of how you became a voter organizer
Speaker 1: within the Latino community, and then Voto Latino's own strides
Speaker 1: in both the depth of its representation across a number
Speaker 1: of states and the variety of issues that it embraces
Speaker 1: and advocates for. On that note, can we talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about demographic You know, I think many Americans,
Speaker 1: particularly white Americans, think of Latinos as this big homogeneous
Speaker 1: block of people doing something here there, And it's a
Speaker 1: richly diverse, geographically dispersed community. And that's important, I think
Speaker 1: in understanding that communities interests as voters and its needs
Speaker 1: as citizens.
Speaker 2: Right absolutely. And I think one of the things is
Speaker 2: tim that most fellow Americans don't know is how young
Speaker 2: the population is. So according to a Peuce study that
Speaker 2: came out a few years ago, the most common age
Speaker 2: among whites is fifty eight, the most common age among
Speaker 2: African Americans is thirty three, But the most common age
Speaker 2: among Latinos. I'll give you a guess.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm well, since you've set me up, I'm going
Speaker 1: to say twenty.
Speaker 2: Two, eleven years old.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I wasn't even close, and.
Speaker 2: Most folks aren't, right. I mean, I asked the same
Speaker 2: question in Little Rock with a conversation we were having
Speaker 2: with Hillary Clinton and her crowd, and I have to
Speaker 2: tell you that when I said eleven years old, she
Speaker 2: included gasped. But it also speaks to the moment we're in.
Speaker 2: It speaks to the moment where you have voter suppression
Speaker 2: laws that are trying to beat back not the voter today,
Speaker 2: but the voter that's coming. It wasn't until twenty eighteen
Speaker 2: that Latinas became the second largest demographic of voters. We
Speaker 2: have a Latino voter turning eighteen every thirty seconds in
Speaker 2: this country. And they are not on the coasts, but
Speaker 2: they're in the eight states where we have focused on.
Speaker 2: They are in Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas.
Speaker 2: We can park Florida there for a second, but this
Speaker 2: is what's really interesting. In a place like Arizona, where
Speaker 2: the Latino vote is close to forty percent of the vote,
Speaker 2: what's just as interesting is that thirty five percent of
Speaker 2: them are young people under the age of twenty nine.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, vote Latino proudly registered and turned out
Speaker 2: thirty two thousand Arizonans. Nineteen thousand were first time voters.
Speaker 2: Biden won by less than twelve thousand votes. But guess
Speaker 2: what the opportunity is in Arizona alone. We're expecting one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty three thousand young people to have turned
Speaker 2: eighteen in the last four years, so more than ten
Speaker 2: times the margin of victory that Biden squeaked by.
Speaker 1: And tell me, they also tend to be more engaged
Speaker 1: with the process than their parents or their grandparents, right, Like,
Speaker 1: they're less extisent about expressing themselves politically, about registering to vote,
Speaker 1: about actually voting, which is a huge cultural and democratic
Speaker 1: change that's fundamental.
Speaker 2: Right Well, and this is where people like to say, well,
Speaker 2: we see that Latinos are turning to the right, and
Speaker 2: that's not the case, because the older Latinos, even they
Speaker 2: sixty percent of them voted for Biden. They did. Seventy
Speaker 2: percent of young people voted for Biden in the last election.
Speaker 2: But what we find is that people don't talk to
Speaker 2: young people because they don't recognize how engaged they are
Speaker 2: on the issues of gun safety, the environment, student loans, abortion, abortion,
Speaker 2: right abortion, and so when people say, well, Latinos don't
Speaker 2: care about abortion, said, the majority of Latinos are thirty
Speaker 2: year old women. They don't want the government deciding what
Speaker 2: their trajectory should right. They care because that eleven year
Speaker 2: old is their kid, right, the one that I was
Speaker 2: talking to you about. Right. And this is where I
Speaker 2: think media and people in power really need to check
Speaker 2: their biases at the door, because for so many years
Speaker 2: we keep hearing that Latinos are deeply Catholic and therefore
Speaker 2: anti abortion. But even though we're deeply Catholic, we are
Speaker 2: Pope Francis Catholic who has been a leader and a
Speaker 2: champion for social justice, for environmental movements, and yes for
Speaker 2: recognizing that you should not shame a woman if they
Speaker 2: have an abortion. And so I think that that's oftentimes
Speaker 2: the disconnect when it comes to how people perceive Latino's
Speaker 2: in our Catholicism. And I say this because I think
Speaker 2: it's very important for us to understand how Latinos view
Speaker 2: themselves when it comes to their politics.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's you know, it's also sorry to interrupt,
Speaker 1: but I you know what you just said about the
Speaker 1: church and then media biases. One step is for the
Speaker 1: media to think about their biases. Of course, the other
Speaker 1: thing is to do the hard work of not being
Speaker 1: lazy in terms of who they're speaking to when they're
Speaker 1: drawing conclusions about what voters want. Because there is an
Speaker 1: active group of older, more traditional Latinos who are more
Speaker 1: accessible many times for the media, and it's the younger voters.
Speaker 1: I think that it's harder for the media to access
Speaker 1: and pay attention to in the Latino community, and it
Speaker 1: takes a little bit of work, but I think you'd
Speaker 1: see more of these diverse views reflected in the media
Speaker 1: if the media did a better job of extending the
Speaker 1: range of the interviews it does.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely right, and I think that unlike in the
Speaker 2: older white community, where the majority of voters are older whites,
Speaker 2: in the Latino community it's completely inverse. The biggest pool
Speaker 2: of eligible voters are under the age of thirty three.
Speaker 2: If you do not know how they're feeling, then you
Speaker 2: actually don't know the course the country is going to take.
Speaker 2: In a place like Florida, Florida is the only state
Speaker 2: in America where young Latino voters will not eclipse older voters,
Speaker 2: and so a lot of the media takes their clues
Speaker 2: of what's happening in Florida, but they do not have
Speaker 2: the pulse of what's happening in the rest of the country.
Speaker 2: When you said that Latinos are of different backgrounds, it's
Speaker 2: absolutely true. But what we have found at Vote Latino
Speaker 2: is that the biggest commonality is not the country your
Speaker 2: family came from. It's the state that you grew up in.
Speaker 2: So if you grew up under our Pio's watch, it
Speaker 2: actually doesn't matter what country your family came from, because
Speaker 2: the moment.
Speaker 1: You see you're referencing the Maricopa County, Yes sheriff in
Speaker 1: Arizona who led basically with the club.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. And so the moment that young person
Speaker 2: walked out of that house, they were subjected to terrifying
Speaker 2: racial profiling, in some cases witnessing their parents being locked away.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that we did at
Speaker 2: Bode Latino is that we identified the eight states, and
Speaker 2: I'm proud to say that we have never left those states,
Speaker 2: and in that bandwidth of ten years in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: we have helped flip five of them. And if you
Speaker 2: were to look at the only organization that has been
Speaker 2: consistently there. It has been Vote Latino because in some cases,
Speaker 2: some of these states don't have unions, in some cases
Speaker 2: they don't have active plant Parenthood chapters, in some cases
Speaker 2: they don't have a lot of national presence. But we
Speaker 2: went into Georgia and we worked with Stacy Abrams long
Speaker 2: before people told us it was a possibility. But it
Speaker 2: was because while Latita's were only two percent of the populace,
Speaker 2: when we started working there to vote, they were sixteen
Speaker 2: percent of the classrooms. We knew that they were going
Speaker 2: to eventually graduate to become voters. We took big bets
Speaker 2: tim they faded off.
Speaker 1: At least I think seven of the eight states you
Speaker 1: mentioned to our swing states, at least six. I guess
Speaker 1: I would say, I don't think of Texas and Florida's
Speaker 1: swing states.
Speaker 2: Texas is the biggest possibility. Can I tell you Texas
Speaker 2: is where California what. I'm bullish on Texas because Texas, actually,
Speaker 2: you don't even have to take my word for it.
Speaker 1: I'll take your word.
Speaker 2: Twenty eighteen. In twenty eighteen, Latino youth actually increased their
Speaker 2: participation by twenty three percent. In twenty twenty, they came
Speaker 2: out by twenty one percent.
Speaker 1: Well, now that you've convinced me that Texas is in play,
Speaker 1: which I did not think it could be in play,
Speaker 1: and maybe you're saying it's going to be in play
Speaker 1: one day. We can come back to that. But on
Speaker 1: that note, I want to take a break and hear
Speaker 1: from one of our sponsors, and then we'll continue this
Speaker 1: very interesting conversation. I'm back and having a great conversation
Speaker 1: with Maria Teresa Kumar, CEO of Voto Latino, and we
Speaker 1: are talking about the twenty twenty four presidential race. And
Speaker 1: right before we took this break, Marie Theresa, we were
Speaker 1: talking about activating the Latino vote in different states and
Speaker 1: what that might look like. We touched on Texas, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to step back from that in a big
Speaker 1: picture way and hear you out about how you think
Speaker 1: the Republicans slash Donald Trump and the Democrats slash Joe
Speaker 1: Biden are positioning themselves around the vote, and why don't
Speaker 1: we start with Trump and the GOP.
Speaker 2: So the biggest opportunity for the Latino vote is going
Speaker 2: to be among young people, because that's really where the
Speaker 2: vote is growing. And if you see where the vote
Speaker 2: is growing, where they will make significant impact, whether we're
Speaker 2: talking about Georgia or North Carolina or Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: even Texas. The thing that makes me pause about the
Speaker 2: Republican's commitment to courting this increasingly powerful cohort in increasingly
Speaker 2: important swing states is that every chance they get, they
Speaker 2: try to put a hurdle to their participation at the
Speaker 2: voting booth. And I think that's all we really kind
Speaker 2: of need to know about what their priorities are. And
Speaker 2: then you have in these same states very Strongmann type
Speaker 2: of leadership that tries to escape the responsibility of legislating
Speaker 2: for the whole of their population by trying to put
Speaker 2: the onus on the boogheman of the immigrant communities. And
Speaker 2: one thing that I've been able to learn from experience
Speaker 2: is that when you do that, whether it is a
Speaker 2: shriff our PIO, a shared at Angle, Thompton Crado back
Speaker 2: in Colorado, when we help flip that state, what you do,
Speaker 2: in fact is actually activate a community that's been a
Speaker 2: political up to that moment, and they start participate aggressively
Speaker 2: in elections because that voting booth becomes an SOS and
Speaker 2: it becomes their pathway to sovereignty from people who are
Speaker 2: being so cruel to their families and the pressures of disenfranchisement.
Speaker 2: And so when people talk about the Latino vote and
Speaker 2: they try to say, well, Latinos are going Republican, while
Speaker 2: the pulling may say that, their actions at the voting
Speaker 2: booth say something else. And I pointed most recently in
Speaker 2: the special election in Ohio around abortion access, where in fact,
Speaker 2: if you were to dust off of who voted for
Speaker 2: that bill, overwhelmingly it was the black and Latino vote,
Speaker 2: and the vote that was evenly split among men and
Speaker 2: women were white voters. And so when folks again tried
Speaker 2: to believe that Latinos are going right, I would like
Speaker 2: to say, well, just like there was never a red
Speaker 2: wave during the mid term, there is not a Latino
Speaker 2: defection from the Democratic Party. If anything, it might be
Speaker 2: disillusionment because change isn't happening fast enough, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that they're actually being right leading because the Party
Speaker 2: of Trump has vocally demonstrated through rhetoric and action that
Speaker 2: they don't believe in a multicultural America.
Speaker 1: And on the GOP positioning towards DHACA, the dreamers and
Speaker 1: citizenship for migrants who are born here and grew up here,
Speaker 1: and now our adults they have been tone deaf and
Speaker 1: heartless around that issue as well, in lots of ways,
Speaker 1: in addition to the voting booth issues you've brought up.
Speaker 1: When you say you know that the vote isn't fraying,
Speaker 1: what do you make of in twenty twenty? You know
Speaker 1: this phenomenon where it was repeatedly run up the flag
Speaker 1: that cultural conservatism and sort of a pro business positioning
Speaker 1: within certain segments of the Latin vote made Trump an
Speaker 1: appealing candidate, and that in fact, a lot of sensationalism
Speaker 1: around socialism and creeping socialism, et cetera, et cetera was
Speaker 1: used effectively to change the cohort and provide Trump with
Speaker 1: inroads he hadn't enjoyed before in the party, hadn't enjoyed before.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's just a false narrative or isn't
Speaker 1: statistically significant?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I think that is. It's learning where that
Speaker 2: socialism message played well and where the Democrats ignored, and
Speaker 2: that was Florida. And that is because the Democrats were saying, well,
Speaker 2: how can possibly anyone believe that we're going in a
Speaker 2: socialist direction? That doesn't make any sense where America. What
Speaker 2: they failed were having cultural sensitivities that there were people
Speaker 2: in Florida who fled socialism and we're.
Speaker 1: Having particularly Cuban particularly.
Speaker 2: Cubans right and now the new wave of Venezuelans, and
Speaker 2: so we along with others, were flagging that this was
Speaker 2: going to be a particular issue in Florida. When the
Speaker 2: Republicans tried to take that message to Texas and to
Speaker 2: other states, it didn't bode well because most of the
Speaker 2: folks that their families fled Latin America was not for
Speaker 2: socialists regimes. They were here for economic reasons. So it
Speaker 2: didn't mash up, it didn't align. And when we did
Speaker 2: a lot of our polling post the election, we found
Speaker 2: that the folks that did vote for Trump, outside of
Speaker 2: the socialist message, the number one reason was because he
Speaker 2: was a businessman and number two because he signed their
Speaker 2: COVID checks. And so you can say what you want,
Speaker 2: but they could say, well, I don't know what the
Speaker 2: Democrats are going to offer me, but this person can
Speaker 2: be a racist, but at least he provided me some
Speaker 2: sort of relief. Right. There is a lot of learning
Speaker 2: that needs to happen in the Latino community. Is there
Speaker 2: mostly first generation that a president's name on a check
Speaker 2: is actually not his cash but their cash.
Speaker 1: Right, Which is actually the story of Thenald Trump's life
Speaker 1: as a businessman too, is every check he signed has
Speaker 1: been someone else's money.
Speaker 2: Who else is money? At least he's consistent. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know what you heard. That's good. So anyway,
Speaker 2: So one of the things that we learned in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, if you were to see what happened, for example,
Speaker 2: because everybody kept outing Southern Texas, if you saw what
Speaker 2: happened in Southern Texas was that everybody that voted for
Speaker 2: a Democrat in twenty sixteen was back aligned with Beto Urke.
Speaker 2: So there was one district that flipped, but that was
Speaker 2: the only district in Texas that became Republican gerrymandered. So
Speaker 2: anything that was a Republican stripe was meant to win
Speaker 2: that seat District fifteen. What they did well was that
Speaker 2: they identified Magalatina to communicate what they do so well
Speaker 2: of using her as an example that they were making
Speaker 2: in roads. But what our data shows, and again what
Speaker 2: Pew Charitable Trust recently was able to demonstrate too that
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two, the lack of investment in Latino
Speaker 2: turnout by the Democratic Party had the Latino's participating by
Speaker 2: thirty seven percent less than they did in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: So the headlines that Latino's were turning right did exactly
Speaker 2: what it was meant to do. It cost investment in
Speaker 2: the Latino community that could have favored the Democrats in
Speaker 2: Central California, in Upstate New York, in certain places where
Speaker 2: racist should not have been this close.
Speaker 1: And so you would argue that there is no defection
Speaker 1: taking place. It's on the edges. And what's really happening
Speaker 1: is that the Democrats aren't committing as fully as they
Speaker 1: should to actually grow this beautiful pie sitting right in
Speaker 1: front of them, right.
Speaker 2: It is the most let's say, you know, oftentimes if
Speaker 2: you people ask what is it that you do, Maria Tresa,
Speaker 2: I say, I market democracy every single day. So if
Speaker 2: you take the best practices of Nike, Nike understands that
Speaker 2: the way they grow their market share is by talking
Speaker 2: and advertising and explaining why Nikes are better than Adidas
Speaker 2: and they're winning. If you talk to any corporate head
Speaker 2: that does direct to consumer, if you ask them what's
Speaker 2: your number one market that you're trying to attract. It's
Speaker 2: going to be Latino youth because they have the youngest, fastest,
Speaker 2: great demographic of disposable in full stop. The fact that
Speaker 2: the Democrats don't seem to completely own this opportunity is
Speaker 2: really beside myself. I mean there are places like I
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, Arizona, where Biden won that state by less
Speaker 2: than twelve thousand votes, but waiting in the wings are
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty three thousand Latino youth to be
Speaker 2: registered to vote, who when you pull them, are seventy
Speaker 2: percent aligned with progressive values. That's a marketplace miscalculation of
Speaker 2: wasted opportunity.
Speaker 1: The Rio Grande Valley.
Speaker 2: Yeah in Texas, Yeah, No, it's no, and it really is.
Speaker 2: And it's not just the population in waiting on the
Speaker 2: sidelines trying to learn a system, but it's also they
Speaker 2: have incredible leadership in Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. The Nevada
Speaker 2: State House for a while the leadership was all Latina women.
Speaker 2: That's powerful. That should signal to the Democrats that people
Speaker 2: are eager for leadership and eager to be talked to.
Speaker 2: And oftentimes ten people say we why do Latinos need
Speaker 2: to be talked to. One is, oftentimes they come from
Speaker 2: families who have fled governments that democracy can get you hurt,
Speaker 2: so you don't participate in those countries' governments. So there's
Speaker 2: not a history of participation in this country. Number one.
Speaker 2: But then number two, if you look at the school
Speaker 2: systems in the US, only eight states require a year
Speaker 2: of civic education out of fifty states to graduate from
Speaker 2: high school, only eight out of fifty. If we know
Speaker 2: in certain states like Texas, we're fifty two percent of
Speaker 2: your kids K through twelve are Latino, seventy five percent
Speaker 2: of them are close to being people of color. Where
Speaker 2: is this new generation of Americans learning how democracy works.
Speaker 1: Well in that context? How do we educate people properly?
Speaker 1: And how do we get good information to people that
Speaker 1: they can act upon. And one of the other things
Speaker 1: I've been curious and concerned about is young Latinos, like
Speaker 1: many young people everywhere, rely on social media as a
Speaker 1: primary conduit for engagement with the world around them and
Speaker 1: for acquiring and digesting information. And disinformation and misinformation are
Speaker 1: long standing problems now on social and I was wondering
Speaker 1: how you felt about the role it might play in
Speaker 1: this election in terms of being a factor that people
Speaker 1: need to be aware of within the Latino community.
Speaker 2: I think as a whole, my biggest concern going into
Speaker 2: this election is that we are not ready, whether we're
Speaker 2: talking about through government regulation, through politicians, through the media,
Speaker 2: through organizations, we are not ready to prepare our country
Speaker 2: and its citizens for the deep fakes that are going
Speaker 2: to be waiting in line. And we do need a
Speaker 2: quick way of teaching literacy on media consumption. And one
Speaker 2: of the ways that people are going to trust more
Speaker 2: than governments and more than traditional institutions and even media, sadly,
Speaker 2: are the people they know and influencers and corporations. When
Speaker 2: you look at where people lay their trust, even though
Speaker 2: people like to browbeat corporations, there's also a level of
Speaker 2: trust in them that government entities sadly are not enjoying
Speaker 2: because of the erosion of trust that disinformation has led to.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that vote works on
Speaker 2: every year. We're one of the co founders of National
Speaker 2: Voter Registration Day, and during that time we were actively
Speaker 2: work with Walmart and Steve Madden, Zoomies and dozens of
Speaker 2: organizations Universal music and such, and we provide them with
Speaker 2: toolkits that they could share with their employees and with
Speaker 2: their customers on basic information on where to vote, how
Speaker 2: to vote. If they need a ride, we partner with
Speaker 2: Uber so Uber can give them a ride to the polls.
Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, it's going to
Speaker 2: be everyday citizens, because you have flagged my deepest concern
Speaker 2: for this election. Are people going to be able to
Speaker 2: properly cast a ballot on the day that they're supposed
Speaker 2: to in the form that they're supposed to do with
Speaker 2: the idea that they need because someone else has not
Speaker 2: gotten into their ear and told them otherwise. One of
Speaker 2: the things that we just saw in New Hampshire, for example,
Speaker 2: was the fact that there was a deep fake robocall
Speaker 2: telling Biden supporters not to go vote.
Speaker 1: It was actually even a little worse than that. It
Speaker 1: was an artificial Joe Biden voice exactly right, that was
Speaker 1: well developed enough that recipients of the call believed it
Speaker 1: was Biden on the line. And I think this is
Speaker 1: probably like the first inning of all of this, because
Speaker 1: it will get combined with video and deep faked videos,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be a whole new era of propagame.
Speaker 1: I know we've talked a lot about a lot of
Speaker 1: things today, but I always like to ask guests what
Speaker 1: they've learned as they've struggled through, or adapted or solved
Speaker 1: problems along the way. Watching the Biden administration coming on
Speaker 1: top of the Trump administration and now both of these
Speaker 1: men are going to be butting heads to try to
Speaker 1: take the White House back. What have you learned watching
Speaker 1: that dynamic and how it will affect the Latino community
Speaker 1: that you didn't know several years ago.
Speaker 2: So for a long time tim when I started this
Speaker 2: journey of Litte Latino twenty years ago, I had to
Speaker 2: tell people that they had to trust that when they voted,
Speaker 2: that their vote would work. With very little to show
Speaker 2: for the transition of the House in twenty eighteen, with
Speaker 2: the most diverse group of Americans occupying the US House
Speaker 2: of Representatives, they collectively passed over four hundred pieces of
Speaker 2: legislation that was really a blueprint of how America should
Speaker 2: lead in the twenty first century, everything from gun reform
Speaker 2: to investing in the environment, to Women's Agency, to immigration
Speaker 2: and a whole host of stuff. And so I was
Speaker 2: able to tell folks look your vote works. Now we
Speaker 2: have to finish the job in twenty twenty. And if
Speaker 2: you were to tell me that Joe Biden was going
Speaker 2: to be such a consequential president when it comes to
Speaker 2: policy that I think is going to eclipse even FDR.
Speaker 2: I was not ready for that. But it was because
Speaker 2: of the collective power of a multicultural America, a multicultural
Speaker 2: group of coalitions coming together and putting pressure with the
Speaker 2: White House, the Senate, and the House of how they
Speaker 2: expect their government to function and work. And so before
Speaker 2: I had nothing. Now I have so much to show
Speaker 2: that voting does work. And you know a lot of
Speaker 2: folks are going to try to say that Biden is
Speaker 2: too old for the job, but I would go back
Speaker 2: and it's like, it's what makes him a statesman. He
Speaker 2: actually understands the machinations that are needed to have Congress
Speaker 2: work for the American people. And it's an understanding of
Speaker 2: how our systems work that oftentimes the public does not see,
Speaker 2: that goes behind closed doors and makes people do the
Speaker 2: right thing, even during I would say, such a difficult
Speaker 2: time that our democracy is facing. And so going into
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, my hope is is that that multicultural America.
Speaker 2: While many of us are tired, we've been doing this
Speaker 2: a long time. We trust that the reason we're tired
Speaker 2: is that we actually have material results, and the last
Speaker 2: thing we need to do is figure out how we
Speaker 2: can collectively put the threat of a MAGA Republican base
Speaker 2: to rest by rising up once again in record number
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: We are out of time today, Maria Theresa, I so
Speaker 1: appreciate you coming on in educating me and spending time
Speaker 1: with our audience.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to Tim, It's always been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Maria Teresa Kumar is the CEO Voto Latino, an influential
Speaker 1: advocacy group that mobilizes Latino voters. You can also find
Speaker 1: her on Twitter at Maria Teresa Here. At crash Course,
Speaker 1: we believe the collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising,
Speaker 1: and always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I learned that
Speaker 1: Latino voters are going to pose a huge problem for
Speaker 1: both Joe Biden and Donald Trump as they fight it
Speaker 1: out to win the twenty twenty four election. What did
Speaker 1: you learn? We'd love to hear from you. You can
Speaker 1: tweet at the Bloomberg Opinion, handle at Opinion or me
Speaker 1: at Tim O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You
Speaker 1: can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right
Speaker 1: now and leave us a review. It helps more people
Speaker 1: find the show. This episode was produced by the indispensable
Speaker 1: Anamasarakis and me. Our supervising producer is Magus Hendrickson, and
Speaker 1: we get editing help from Sage Bauman, Jeff Grocott, Mike
Speaker 1: Nizza and Christine Vanden Bilart Blake Maple's as our sound
Speaker 1: engineering and our original theme song was composed by Luis Gara.
Speaker 1: I'm Tim O'Brien. We'll be back next week with another
Speaker 1: Crash Course.