Out with immigration, in with the economy: Kamala Harris' Latino messaging switch

Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes

SALT LAKE CITY — For months, Javier Palomarez urged the Biden campaign to shift its messaging toward Latinos. A former Obama adviser, Palomarez thought President Joe Biden's team focused too much on immigration and identity politics, and not enough on the economy. In May, a survey of U.S. Hispanic Business Council members — of which Palomarez serves as president and CEO — confirmed his concerns: When asked who they plan to support in the presidential election, Trump had a 10-point lead, 43% to 33%.

Now, four months later, Vice President Kamala Harris sits atop the Democratic ticket, and she is taking a different tack when approaching Latino voters: hammering a middle-class message on the economy, while speaking about immigration only sparingly.

"I'm delighted with where Kamala's campaign is going," Palomarez said. "Hispanics are not a monolith. We're concerned about all the things every other American is concerned about."

Harris' approach was on full display Wednesday, when she appeared at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's leadership summit in Washington, D.C. Her 25-minute speech focused almost exclusively on the economy, laying out her plan to combat housing shortages, lower costs and expand health care. When she mentioned immigration, it was only in passing, calling into question former President Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations. And when discussing Latino identity, it was only to draw a connection to her own middle-class upbringing, as the daughter of an immigrant mother.

"I know where I come from," Harris told Latino politicians, business leaders and other attendees gathered at the conference. "We have to put the middle class first. We have to put working families first, understanding their dreams, their desires and their ambitions deserve to be invested in, and it will benefit everyone."

The messaging strategy is a sharp deviation from Biden's efforts to court the Latino vote. In the final months of Biden's campaign, he made a hard push for Latino voters: His campaign launched the "Latinos Con Biden-Harris" initiative much earlier than other Latino outreach programs in past presidential cycles, and his campaign spent millions on Spanish and Spanglish advertising.

But Biden's message was largely focused on immigration and Latino identity, knocking Trump for his approach on both. In a Univision Radio interview in Nevada in March, Biden claimed Trump "despises Latinos" — while adding that Biden, on the other hand, understands "Latino values." He frequently chided Trump over his past comments on immigrants and immigration, as well as critiquing Trump's immigration policy.

"He says immigrants are 'poisoning the blood' of this country, separated children from parents at the border, caged the kids, planned mass deportations systems," Biden said in March. "We have to stop this guy. We can't let this happen. We are a nation of immigrants."

Focusing on immigration was seen as a key way to win over Latino voters, especially in Western battlegrounds like Arizona and Nevada. In a March memo written by Julie Chávez Rodríguez, then Biden's campaign adviser, proposals to "fix our broken immigration system" and "secure the border" were listed atop the "issues that matter most to Western voters."

Now, several months later, Harris' appeal to Latinos has sidestepped discussing immigration almost entirely — a message Palomarez endorses. "Immigration is not the top issue to us," he said. "It's important, but it's not at the top. The economy is."

Harris has acted accordingly. In visits to Latino-heavy swing states like Arizona and Nevada, she has keyed in on a race-neutral economic plan, emphasizing it would benefit "all Americans."

Emilia Pablo, Harris' Nevada Latino Media Press Secretary, emphasized Harris' plans on health care and housing to help Nevadans "not just get by, but get ahead."

"All across Nevada, Latinos are rallying behind the vice president because she's always fought for us," Pablo said.

One aspect of that plan — her housing policy — is a "brilliant" way to target Latinos, said Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican consultant.

"How do you have a Latino housing plan without saying it's a Latino housing plan?" Madrid, author of "The Latino Century: How America's Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy," told Politico. "The answer, and they nailed this masterfully, was by saying this housing plan is specifically targeted to those that have never owned a home or come from homeowners in their families." That policy, Madrid added, will overwhelmingly benefit Latinos.

That was the message Harris gave to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute on Wednesday. In her speech, she repeated her plan to help the middle class. She spoke about plans to lower grocery costs by ending price gauging; to incentivize home buying by offering down payment assistance; and to lower taxes for families by expanding the child tax credit. At times, she specifically referenced Latinos, like while mentioning the Biden-Harris administration's work to lower insulin costs: "First of all, Latinos are 70% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes," she said.

But her message was largely focused on the middle class, not individual ethnic groups.

"I see an America where everyone has an opportunity to own a home, to build wealth, to start a business," she said.

Harris mentioned immigration only twice during her speech: when talking about her mother, a South Asian immigrant; and to call into question the logistics of Trump's mass deportation plans.

"How's that going to happen?" Harris said. "Massive raids? Mass detention camps? What are they talking about?"

Harris has gone mum on immigration, perhaps, because her current strategy is both unpopular among swing voters and her own progressive base. But the overall messaging switch — to push the economy, not immigration or identity politics — has seemed to work among Latino voters: her entry into the race coincided with a new jolt of enthusiasm among Latinos, and she quickly coalesced support from a wide swath of Biden-skeptical Latino voters.

"It should not surprise anybody that after Kamala Harris made a 180-degree turn away from racial identity politics, started talking about housing and economic policy in those terms, and adopted essentially a Republican plan on border security, her numbers started to immediately correct back into the normal historical range," Madrid told Politico.

On Wednesday, the message seemed to resonate: Harris' speech earned loud, prolonged applause from her largely Hispanic audience, and just outside the auditorium, attendees lingered to praise her speech.

"I think she obviously understands that the majority of Latinos are, in fact, working-class people," said Gilbert Burgos, the interim president of the National Hispanic Medical Association. "Those are the people that will, for the most part, benefit from the policies that she's trying to move forward."