Promises Broken, Latino Voters Split On Election Day Strategy

PHOENIX, ARIZONA—Sandra Bernal plans to boycott the upcoming midterm election.

“It’s a peaceful way of protesting,” she told ThinkProgress in Spanish, “It’s saying, ‘We’re here and we’re tired of so many broken promises.’”

Bernal, a US citizen from Mexico who has lived in Phoenix for nearly 20 years and raised three children on her own, said her views on politics were shaken to the core by two recent events: the arrest of her undocumented sister, and President Obama’s decision to delay a planned executive order to stop some deportations. She said the mostly-Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s decision to go along with the President’s new deadline for action alienated her even further.

“I think they’re doing nothing more than dragging this out, giving us false hope so that we keep voting for the Democratic Party,” she said. “They’re using us like puppets, thinking we’ll go along with their game. Unfortunately, many Latino groups are working right now to get out the vote. But I think it would be better for us as a community, as a people, to boycott, to not vote. Then they’ll learn that without the Hispanic vote, they’re not getting anywhere.”

With the 2014 election just weeks away, and the Democratic control of Congress’ upper chamber in question, Latino voters in Arizona and around the country remain divided on the best strategy to build enough political pressure to achieve real action on immigration reform.

The idea of a boycott has some traction in Phoenix and beyond. Carlos Garcia, the executive director of the organization Puente, recently released a statement saying, “Without affirmative relief for our families, we are calling for a boycott of the vote.” Arizona-based activist and writer Angeles Maldonado went further, comparing Latinos’ relationship with the Democratic to domestic violence, and asking: “What is keeping us from saying that it’s time for Latinos and migrants to refuse to mobilize for the Democratic party?”

Other groups, including Los Angeles-based organizing group Presente, are urging a targeted boycott of certain political races — specifically, against the Democratic Senators in tight races who joined Republicans in a recent vote to repeal the temporary protections given to DREAMers, recipients of deportation deferrals. “They didn’t have our backs—so we won’t have theirs,” the group wrote. But they emphasized that Republicans, despite their aggressive attempts to woo Latino voters over to their side, would be just as bad for the community, if not worse. “By no means are we saying vote Republican, we’re simply saying that on that item on the ballot, skip it.”

Some Latino activists vehemently disagree, and are working day and night to register and turn out as many voters as possible on November 4. One of them is Stephanie Aguilar, a DREAMer working with the organization Mi Familia Vota (“my family votes,” in Spanish). On a recent weekday morning, as temperatures climbed near 102 degrees, she sat outside the Student Union at Glendale Community College, calling out to the students racing to get a coffee on the way to class: “Are you registered to vote? Good morning, are you registered?”

Though her Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status gives her permission to work and protects her from deportation, Aguilar can’t vote. She says the calls for a boycott from those who can are “kind of hurtful,” and told ThinkProgress, “A lot of people have fought for the right to vote — for women, for minorities. I think that a vote is the platform of our democracy and what keeps our government ‘of the people.’ Somebody telling us to basically keep quiet is not the way to move forward.”

Aguilar, who came to the US at age five, says she and many young Latinos in Arizona had a political awakening when the state legislature passed the harsh immigration enforcement law SB1070 back in 2010. She was in high school at the time, and felt moved to get involved. “There were so many laws that were being targeted towards our community that I felt that we had to do something,” she said. “I knew we needed to stand up to what was going on and let people know that their vote counts and get them engaged.”

A study earlier this year found that Hispanic voter registration increased 27 percent between 2008 and 2012, and turnout among the Latino community increased nearly 40 percent. Aguilar says she can see the impact of this increase. “There have been some more candidates who are more immigrant friendly elected because of these efforts, to the state legislature and also city council members and more local officials.”

Democrats won 5 out of 9 congressional races in Arizona last cycle, and broke the Republican super-majority in the state legislature by winning 8 seats, largely thanks to Latino voters. As the Supreme Court struck down some of the most controversial pieces of SB1070, the state government declined to implement most of the law’s provisions, convincing Aguilar that her efforts were paying off: “I can’t vote,” she said. “But when I register someone to vote, then I feel like their voice is being heard even if mine isn’t.”

Though Mi Familia Vota is officially non-partisan, their voter drives this fall have targeted high schools and colleges in Latino neighborhoods, communities that historically tend to favor Democrats.

Other groups that have have participated in get-out-the-vote efforts in past years, like the grassroots group Puente, are more ambivalent this time around. Organizer Francisca Porchas explained, “The biggest thing we feel is that [the Democrats] need to be held accountable and they mustn’t be left off the hook for their broken promises. We are in the process of figuring out what that looks like.”

In Puente’s new offices just blocks from the Arizona State Capitol, Porchas recently led a community meeting about this very issue. Several dozen people of all ages, from infant to elderly, gathered in the tiled event space. Porchas began by handing out a black and white xeroxed newsletter listing upcoming events and local campaigns. It was just like any other club’s weekly newsletter, except for a grey box of text running down the side of the page titled, in Spanish, “One By One.” It listed the names of community members in different categories: deported, has a court date with ICE, and “freed by the power of an organized people.”

Standing under a poster showing concentric circles radiating out from a map of Arizona — like the center of an earthquake — Porchas and other organizers announced upcoming know-your-rights trainings, a forum about abuse in local immigration detention facilities and plans to plant a garden outside the office. But the participants, whether they were teenagers or mothers with several children in tow, were fixated on the looming election and what they see as “betrayal” from President Obama’s party.

“They didn’t deliver what they promised us!”
“We’re not happy and we’re not going to vote for them!”
“We’re not calling for a boycott, we’re just saying that we’re no longer going to vote blindly for Democrats.”

Members of Puente have been arrested over the past few weeks protesting at Democratic offices in DC and Phoenix. Porchas says these civil disobedience actions and voting aren’t mutually exclusive tactics to bring about change. “I think that we’re a broad united front,” she said, “and that it’s like a million flowers blooming in terms of how people want to take on the Democrats and ensure the message is being spread out to the general public.”

The message, it seems, is being heard loud and clear. Though the delay of an executive action on deportation relief was aimed at protecting vulnerable Democratic lawmakers this November, it may end up having the opposite effect, and depress Latino turnout in key states.

Between the calls of “Vote!” and “Don’t Vote!” in the lead-up to the midterm elections is a third message: “Vote Independent!”

Increasingly, activists are urging the Latino community to look beyond the Republican-Democrat divide, saying both major parties have shown a willingness to throw them under the bus when things get politically sticky. Immigration attorney and advocate Matthew Kolken recently wrote: “The most powerful way to send a message to Washington is not for the Hispanic electorate to sit this one out, but rather to vote en masse for third-party candidates acting as a destructive force in as many elections as possible.”

Momentum for this shift predates the latest immigration reform debacle. Over the last decade, as the number of registered Latinos has grown, the percentage of the population registered as Independent in Arizona has more than tripled.

“I’ve actually have seen a lot of people register as independents this year instead of picking on particular party,” said Aguilar. “We’ve had more people just talk about, ‘Oh what does this person want to do?’ instead of, ‘This is the party that I want to be affiliated with.’”

And at least one independent candidate in the state has attracted the attention of the Latino community. Immigration attorney Jose Peñalosa is challenging Democratic Arizona lawmaker Ruben Gallego for an open seat in US Congress.

Peñalosa said the rise of registered Independents in the state, which he hopes gives his bid a chance, is “a reflection of the folks in this state getting tired of partisan politics. People want to be able to speak their heart and their mind on issues and not follow the agenda of a party. I think right now, folks are really open to that idea. When we go canvassing, when I talk to people, they say, ‘Hey look, it’s the person. It’s not the party.’ Hopefully, the folks vote that way in this election.”

Running as an Independent, he said, allows him to push harder for immediate relief for undocumented people, free from the concern about hurting a particular party’s future prospects — while his work as an immigration attorney gives him a firsthand look at the impact of the President’s delay of executive relief.

“The politicians and their supporters say, ‘It’s just a couple months delay. Trust that everything’s going to be okay,’” he said. “I tell my friends, ‘If you really feel that way, I respect that, but come with me to immigration court and tell that to the kids whose parents are on the verge of being deported. Go with me to the detention centers, and then tell that to my clients whose case is over, who have done everything they can and still can’t get a benefit. What happens is that the politicians don’t live in the community and don’t see the urgency. They just take it as a political cost of doing business, and that’s unfortunate.”

Citing the momentum behind other major independent candidates this year, most famously in Kansas’ Senate race, Peñalosa said, “I think it’s something that’s going to come up more in American politics, that independents are going to rise up.”

This is little comfort to Sandra Bernal, who is currently taking care of her sister’s four children in addition to her own.

“The older ones are getting rebellious, and getting bad grades in high school, getting to class late if show up at all,” she said. “They were getting honors before their mother was detained. I think it’s their way of showing that they don’t agree with what is happening to their mom.” Her voice breaking, she pointed at her three-year-old niece, who solemnly toddled around the room in a yellow floral dress and ruffled socks. “The little one is always biting her nails. She cries frequently. She needs her mother.”

But her mother, Norma, has been detained for nearly 6 months, most of it in Eloy Detention Center — a private prison with an egregious human rights record, run by the Corrections Corporation of America. Her next court date isn’t set until March, thanks to the mounting backlog at the nation’s underfunded immigration courts, and she can’t leave on bail to be with her family.

“She told me the food is very bad and it’s very difficult to be there,” Sandra Bernal said. “They get punished for little things that happen, like they’ll be banned from seeing family visitors, and banned from talking to their lawyers on the phone.” Even on days where they are allowed to visit, the nearly two hour round trip often makes it impossible.

The President’s original deadline for an executive order, which may or may not help Bernal, was the end of summer. Then it was Thanksgiving. Then, New Years. Tonight, President Obama is expected to announce that he will act in the next 40 days. Bernal told ThinkProgress she has little faith in the new timeline, or in the Democratic Party.

“Personally, I think it’s all talk and no action. It reminds me of Mexican presidents who talk and promise but never deliver.”