Hispanic Republican vote grew in Virginia, but not radically

Hispanic Republican vote grew in Virginia, but not radically

The conservative writer Giancarlo Sopo says that the successful Republican candidate for governor, Glenn Youngkin, “won Hispanic voters in Virginia by 9 points, 54% to 45%. He cites a Fox News poll. By contrast, the Washington Post’s exit poll found that only a third of Hispanics voted Republican. The vote totals in districts and precincts where a lot of Hispanics live suggests the truth is somewhere in between: Youngkin probably got around 40% of the Hispanic vote, up from what Trump got in 2020, but not radically higher. Youngkin does seem to have won a majority of the votes of Hispanic men, but not Hispanic women.

One issue that attracted Hispanics to Youngkin was Youngkin’s antipathy to left-wing educational bureaucracies and critical race theory. Some Hispanics are annoyed by left-wing school officials, with their racial and sexual obsessions, and left-wing indoctrination. In Virginia, that turned off some Hispanics and made them vote Republican, even though they had previously voted for Democrats. The Los Angeles Times reported on one example:

Jorge Morales feels increasingly uneasy about the local public schools. He worries his two teenagers’ education is focusing too much on gender identity and race at the expense of math, science and history.

“I think they’re pushing a victim mentality on my kids. And that’s the type of education that we’re trying not to propagate,” said Morales, those fears fresh on his mind after he cast his ballot for GOP hopeful Glenn Youngkin at an early voting site in Stafford, a Virginia exurb 40 miles outside Washington…..

Youngkin’s message resonates deeply with Morales, a libertarian who has voted for Democrats such as Obama and Northam in the past…The 45-year-old Colombian-born immigrant, who works as a geographer with the U.S. Army, follows the Loudoun County debates from his home an hour away in Stafford. He doesn’t believe his children’s schools are experiencing the same turmoil, but now he’s paying closer attention.

He was perplexed this year when his daughter, 14, told him of a classroom conversation about gender-identifying pronouns, a topic he believed should be left up to parents. And he worries his kids, who are half-Latino and half-white, may be demoralized by the focus on race, which could affect them in the future when they apply for jobs.

“If you don’t get it, then you think to yourself: ‘Is it because of my color or my skin?’” he said.

Usually, I publish letters to the editor and articles near election time, attacking left-wing politicians in newspapers in swing states (like Pennsylvania and Florida) and counties where I expect the election to be close.

On the eve of Virginia’s November 2 election, I wrote in Morales’ home town newspaper, the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, about the spread of critical race theory in the schools, and how it is a discriminatory ideology that Virginians should reject. Morales’ local legislator, Democrat Joshua Cole, lost a close election on November 2 to Republican Tara Durant.

In 2020, I criticized Delegate Joshua Cole in the Free Lance-Star for sponsoring a failed bill, after I discovered that its fine print would have led to teenage killers later being allowed to carry a gun after being released from incarceration. I also sent my concerns to The Blaze, which published an article critical of Cole as a result of my doing so. I had assumed that The Blaze article would later be used in attack ads against Cole. I suspect the Republicans never used this in leaflets or ads attacking Cole, though (I am not sure, because I don’t live in that district). If I had been in their shoes, I would have used it in an attack ad.

Youngkin attracted a decent number of Never-Trump voters who voted for the Democrats in Virginia state elections in 2017 and 2019 out of antipathy to Trump. Youngkin got the votes of 35% of voters who disapproved of Trump. By contrast, the Democratic candidate for Virginia Governor, Terry McAuliffe, only got 18% of the vote among voters who disapproved of Joe Biden.

Hans Bader

Hans Bader

Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law. He also once worked in the Education Department. Hans writes for CNSNews.com and has appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.” Contact him at hfb138@yahoo.com

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