Hispanic Americans aiming for bipartisan solutions, not political games

While Hispanic Americans and Latinos have stressed inflation, jobs and rising crime and major issues of concern, as many as 94% prioritized the need for more bipartisanship and cooperation in Washington, a fact that came to light in a 2022 poll conducted by UNIDOS US, a research and policy analysis organization that has focused on Hispanic American issues since 1968.

The poll, taken between July 20 and August 1 ranked 14 issues in terms of priorities for Arizona based Latinos, finding that of those categories 49% considered inflation the most pressing concern. Thirty four percent focused on jobs and 27% on crime. 

Still, of all the 2,750 eligible Latino voters polled nearly all of them agreed that bipartisanship cooperation across the aisle was of importance. Latinos were even at 80% wanting candidates with government experience and the same ratio desiring candidates with business experience. 

Hispanics favor compromise to get solutions over partisan controversies

Those sentiments, originally reported by ADN America in September have grown as polls are showing all Americans want Congress and the White to work together across both sides of the aisle.

According to a recent December 15, 2022 Marist poll “74% of Americans, up from 64% in February, say it is more important for government officials in Washington to compromise to find solutions that stand on principle… The 74% of Americans who prioritize compromise over principle matches the highest proportion of Americans with this view in a decade.”

Polls conducted by Marist demonstrate that the top issues UNIDOS US found were of concern to Hispanic Americans were of general concern to all Americans across the board with 31% prioritizing inflation, 18% immigration and 11% on crime.

Forty one percent of Republicans cited inflation as their top issue while 20% of Democrats cited it as their second most important issue showing solidarity with the priorities of polled Hispanics. A September 2022 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center reported that 80% of registered Latinos polled prioritized the economy while 70% were concerned about violent crime.

Hispanics have historically called for bipartisanship

Hispanic support for bipartisanship has come out in various ways during the past year, and even throughout the past several years.

In September, a pair of Latino consultants, one Democrat, Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha and one Republican, Mike Madrid, went as far as to launch a new bipartisan website focused on the views of Latino voters, a chaser to a podcast the two created “The Latino Vote,” a podcast focusing on the same subject matter.

“We’re taking on disinformation in a bipartisan way,” Rocha told Axios in September. “This website will fill a big need for journalists, academics, political professionals, and elected officials,” Madrid said in a statement.

The bipartisan pair said they want the site to feature updated polling about Latino voters on both sides of the aisle and feature news and opinion from Latino consultants and advocates from both parties. They said the need for bipartisanship focus is the consensus in the Hispanic and Latinos communities that  both parties are ignoring the needs of Mexican American voters in the southwest and Puerto Rican voters in New York and Florida.

Feeling ignored by both parties is an issue that resonates with Hispanics.

Last year, an April 27 delegation of 400 Hispanic Catholic leaders who visited Congress to address the root causes of migration flagged bipartisanship as an important issue to resolve the problem, according to an April 29, 2022 report from Crux, a Catholic news publication.

Reps. Daniel Newhouse and Salud Carbajal from Washington and California, respectively, met with the delegation to acknowledge their concerns about bipartisanship.

“Congress can’t keep kicking the can down the road,” Newhouse said, stressing that the legislative branch needs to pass immigration reform that “strengthens our national security, secures the southern border, and recognizes the contributions of many immigrants already in the U.S.”

Carbajal mirrored those sentiments, stressing to the Hispanic delegation that, “this shouldn’t have to be a partisan issue,” stressing that the Senate should be able to work together on reform the way the House has.

One of the delegation members, Erica Fernandez Zamora an organizer from the California advocacy organization, “Fuerza Unida” said the need for bipartisanship was critical.

“We hope they continue reaching across the aisle because this shouldn’t be a party decision. It should be something that they come together for, as immigrants are providing for the nation.”

Zamora also noted that while she was happy to meet with Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s staff, she was disappointed she didn’t actually get face time with the senator herself.

“As a constituent, as a voter, and as an immigrant myself too, I wish they would take the time, especially for those of us that came all the way from California to meet with the representatives on issues that are really important for the state and for the nation,” she told Crux.

In addition to visiting Sen. Feinstein’s office from the Democratic side of the aisle, the delegation had a chance to meet with Sen. Chuck Grassley from Iowa.

Father Juan Molina, the president and CEO of the Mexican American Catholic College in the Archdiocese of San Antonio said the meetings like those they had with Grassley and Feinstein were “great” but that he also noticed some members of Congress seemed disinterested in their concerns altogether.

“I noticed that some of the doors were closed from both sides of the aisle,” Molina said. “That was a little disconcerting because it used to be that when we sat down, we would express our opinions, they would tell us a few things and we would go on our way. It was all civil.”

Mauro Pineda, who led a delegation of six Hispanic Catholics to meet with the staff of Sen. Tammy Duckworth from Illinois said he didn’t hold back, and used the opportunity to stress the frustration the Latino community was feeling about the lack of resolution on the immigration issue.

Pineda said from the start he told Duckworth’s staff he “didn’t want to hear political talking points, statistics, or blame placed on Congressional leaders across the political aisle for not getting things done,” Crux wrote.

Bipartisan discussions have been brewing in the Hispanic community for several years. In 2018, two Latino politicians from both parties spoke at George Washington University’s Marvin Center on the issue.

Rep. Darren Soto, a Democrat from Florida, and Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón, a Republican non-voting Congressional representative from Puerto Rico participated in a discussion moderated by Laura Maristany, the associate director for constructive politics at the Democracy Fund, a bipartisan investment company.

Soto said he was a longtime supported bipartisanship, and evidenced his claim by voting to admit a Republican congressman, former Rep. Carlos Curbello, from Miami to the all-Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus in November.

The caucus voted to exclude the representative in what soon erupted into a highly publicized controversy. That same caucus also rejected Rep. Mayra Flores in 2022.

Flores, the first Mexican born U.S. Congresswoman in history later tweeted that the CHC’s denial showed “true bias.”  

González-Colón said Hispanics tend not look at party lines as much as they focus on finding solutions together.

“Hispanics, we tend to unite more, we tend to communicate better,” she said. “Although we may be in different parties, we are united in many issues – why not sign letters together?”

Bipartisan success speaks for itself with passed legislation

During the past few years, bipartisanship has proven to have successful results on major legislation.

In 2018, Congress empowered the drug war by helping combat the opioid problem with the Support for Patients and Communities Act. That legislation requires the U.S. Postal Service to track international packages and test them for drugs with a focus on China which officials say is the primary source of fentanyl. It also empowered physicians assistants and nurse practitioners to prescribe addiction treatment medication.”

In 2019, the House and Senate came together to approve the Bipartisan Natural Resources Management Act, hailed as the “largest public lands bill approved by Congress in a decade.”

That bill combined 100 separate pieces of legislation responsible for designating more than 350 miles of river as wile while creating nearly 700,000 acres of new conservation and recreation areas. It also protected 370,000 acres in Montana and Washington from mineral development.

That same year Congress avoided a second government shutdown by compromising on former President Donald Trump’s border wall. While the bill committed far less than the president’s desired objective of $5.7 billion, it allocated $1.4 billion to the effort in an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 83-16.

The following year in 2020, Congress came together to protect Americans amid the Coronavirus pandemic by passing a $2.2 trillion Coronavirus rescue bill, the CARES Act.

“With rare bipartisanship and speed, Washington is about to deliver massive, unprecedented legislation to speed help to individuals and businesses as the coronavirus pandemic takes a devastating toll on the U.S. economy and health care system, the Associated Press reported at the time in a March 27, 2020 article. “The House is set to pass the sprawling, $2.2 trillion measure Friday morning after an extraordinary 96-0 Senate vote late Wednesday. President Donald Trump marveled at the unanimity Thursday and is eager to sign the package into law.”

Bipartisanship in the Biden era

While the Biden era has had some bipartisanship cooperation in areas such as foreign policy and support for NATO allies and Ukraine, it has suffered in others.

In March 2021, Business Insider noted that, “not a single Republican lawmaker in either chamber voted in favor of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic aid package [the American Rescue Plan Act] over the past few weeks, reflecting their fierce opposition to an early Democratic legislative priority.” The bill was ultimately passed in March 2021 by a razor thin Democratic majority in both chambers.

That same year, the president threatened to veto the bipartisan infrastructure bill [Inflation Reduction Act] unless it included a massive spending plan, a move that drew criticism and ultimately led to passage along party lines with no Republican support.

“The Inflation Reduction Act, passed by the House of Representatives today, is about to become the first comprehensive climate legislation in U.S. history,” observed Robinson Meyer in an August 12, 2022 article published by The Atlantic.

“Compared with Congress’s desultory approach to the issue in the past, the numbers are striking: The legislation will spend roughly $374 billion on decarbonization and climate resilience over the next 10 years, getting us two-thirds of the way to America’s Paris Agreement goals. But perhaps the most important number about the package is zero. Zero Republicans in the House. Zero Republicans in the Senate. The IRA was adopted entirely along party lines, with all Democrats and not a single congressional Republican in support of the legislation.”

When the Act was passed, it was hailed as the “first major win for Biden,” by the Washington Post.

While the Act was hailed as a victory for Biden, it did little to pull both parties together, a challenge both the president and newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will face going forward during the second half of Biden’s term amid the 118th Congress.

While both parties continue to target the Hispanic vote as it is the fastest growing demographic in the United States, the polls show the Latino community is seeking evidence of cooperation instead of unilateral policymaking, a fact evidenced in the polling, which shows 94% of Hispanics are seeking bipartisan cooperation.