Republicans launch new efforts to woo Latino, Asian voters in Orange County
Can a party of people who back Donald Trump win over non-white voters? Even small gains might sway elections.
A grassroots group of conservative activists plans to set up tables outside grocery stores in Stanton on Saturday to kick off a pilot program called “Basta,” aimed at getting more Latinos to register and vote Republican in upcoming elections.
Drawing their name from the Spanish word for “enough,” which has long served as a rallying cry for Latino activists, “Basta” leader Ron Flores of Huntington Beach said he wants to dispel the belief that Latinos don’t turn out for elections — and that they’re a lost cause for the GOP.
“They do vote, but why didn’t they vote for us? Because we don’t go out into the community. We don’t speak Spanish. We ignore them.”
A day earlier, and a couple miles to the south, leaders from the local, state and national Republican party gathered to open their first field office for the 2022 cycle in the heart of Little Saigon.
“This is the biggest investment we’ve ever made into this community,” Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, told the largely Vietnamese American crowd who gathered to celebrate the office opening in a shopping center along Brookhurst Street.
“Why are we investing in communities that haven’t traditionally identified as Republican?” McDaniel continued. “Because our values align.”
Both efforts are part of a growing push by Republicans to reach nonwhite voters in Orange County, and beyond, ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
A majority of nearly all nonwhite voting blocs have long leaned reliably to the left. After the 2018 midterms, when Democrats swept away Republicans in much of Orange County and elsewhere, former California Republican Party Chair Jim Brulte warned his colleagues that their party needed to reach diverse voters. If not, he said, the party risked getting sidelined nationally the same way Republicans have been exiled in California, where diverse support for Democrats has given the party every state elected office and a supermajority in the state legislature.
“It seems that some of that advice is now being translated into action,” said Marcia Godwin, a professor of public administration at University of La Verne.