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Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and we're glad to have you with us today. In 39 states, voting in the 2022 midterms has already begun and with more than 6 million ballots already cast, political observers are still working to understand what motivates Americans to vote and how they decide who they're going to cast that ballot for.

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This week, Futuro Media released its first-ever poll of Latino voters and the results offer critical insights into the fastest-growing racial and ethnic group in the US electorate make up more than 34 million eligible voters. Now, the poll look closely at the battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, down in the Sunshine State where Latinos account for more than one in five eligible voters, it's the incumbent Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who earned higher ratings than his opponent, Charlie Crist.

In Georgia, where Latinos make up about 6% of the state's eligible voters, there's a slight preference for incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp over his Democratic challenger, Stacey Abrams, but head on up to Pennsylvania and it's the Democratic candidates in both the Gubernatorial and Senate races who have a slight edge would Latino voters. What does all of this actually tell us? Joining me now is Julio Ricardo Varela, who's president of Futuro Media and co-host of the podcast In the Thick. Thanks for being here, Julio.

Julio Ricardo Varela: Thank you for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Also with me is Héctor Sánchez Barba, who is the CEO of Mi Familia Vota, a non-profit organization that encourages Latino electoral participation. Héctor, welcome to The Takeaway.

Julio Ricardo Varela: Thank you for the invitation, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Julio, talk to me about why this poll out of Futuro Media was important because I got to tell you these days, polls make me very grumpy. Tell me why this poll was one we really needed.

Julio Ricardo Varela: I hope it doesn't make you grumpy, Melissa. One of the things as we know that Latinos are the second largest voting cohort in the country, Futuro Media being a non-profit independent media company founded by Maria Hinojosa who's my co-host son In the Thick, and my sister, Maria's the best. We really thought that it was so important as we continue to look at the midterms and beyond that we don't forget our community. One of the things that we really wanted to do with this was to was to realize that Latinos are really swing states and are very important in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia and even in Florida.

Just focusing on Georgia and Pennsylvania where Latinos respectively make up 6% of the eligible voting population, given the fact that the margins are so narrow in a lot of these races, Latinos can make the difference. What we wanted to do was go beyond the horse race and actually highlight issues that, if politicians and candidates put a little bit more thought into how to outreach Latinos, could actually influence choices.

I don't think a lot of people are talking about the issues that motivate people to vote. We wanted to make that connection. Being a small non-profit media company, we want to play with the big boys sometimes. Hopefully, this will start a wave of new polling coming out of Futuro Media, especially for the 2024.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let me push you on something here, Julio. On the one hand, I love this language of "Latinos are, in fact, swing states." Not just that Latinos live in swing states, but when you look at population, when you look at capacity to affect electoral outcomes, on the other hand, like states, aren't Latino voters a truly diverse category of voters, not just in terms of life experience, but in terms of political positionality, policy prescriptions, all of that.

Julio Ricardo Varela: Absolutely. The polling of the three states that we did totally reflects that. One of the things that I'm actually encouraged by the bigger American narrative about Latinos in the electorate is that we're past the Latinos or unified voting block. That's never was the case. It is showing in the polling not only the polling that we've done but in the polling that other outlets have done. I think it's super important to understand that this is not some new discovery.

I think what we're finding is Latinos are now at that point of you can now influence elections. If a candidate or a party actually invested in understanding the issues that motivate Latinos to vote, then it'll get interesting. Because by doing that, you begin to have a more consistent electorate that would either choose for your party or for your candidate.

That hasn't actually happened yet for Latinos. I think we're starting to see it evolve over this cycle. I'm encouraged that we're pushing in the right direction, but there's still a lot of education, there's a lot of explanation and this assumption that Latinos are true democratic voters is just not true and never has been true.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Héctor, I want to come to you on this because Julio's giving us in certain ways the bird's eye 10,000, a foot perspective on some of this. I want to hear from you because Julio's point is so well taken in order to be that swing state, in order to move these elections, folks got to show up. Perhaps in midterm elections more than any other, the game is always a GOTV, get out-the-vote game. Talk to me, Héctor, about what you're seeing as the actual mobilizing and motivating factors for Latino voters.

Héctor Sánchez Barba: Thank you, Melissa. In familiar about that, we have the largest field operation in the Latino community with the working in 10 states from citizenship, [unintelligible 00:06:37] border registration, border education, mobilization, et cetera. A lot of the beautiful central pieces of democracy and civic participation. Something that is very interesting is that the whole nation and everybody talks about the Latino boat, but nobody talks about the serious challenges that we have in the democratic process for Latinos to participate.

For example, in the lack of investment in the Latino community, we are the community that receives the less money with anything related to civic participation in democracy, from political parties, foundations, or an institution that works on democracy. Democracy in our nation is extremely expensive. I just wanted to put that as a context to understand the huge challenges that we see on the ground when it comes to democracy in the nation.

Having said that, we need to see the real investment, it's not enough to say we love tacos in Spanish. We need to see how they are aligning their budget, mobilizing, knocking on endorsing Spanish really doing an strategic approach to reach out our communities. There is poll recently that says that 50% of Latinos say they have not been contacted at all by any of the parties. That's a very worrisome issue.

We need to see real investment, we need to see practical approaches and that's why at Mi Familia Vota we are doing all the C3 work, but we're also doing very aggressive campaigns, educating the Latino community on the serious dangers of extra extremism, what we call the MAGA Migos. In the context of this poll that Julio discuss in Florida, we are really educating the community about the danger that the scientists represents for the Latino community, Julio [unintelligible 00:08:32], well, they don't really focus on issues.

When it comes to the scientists, he opposes every policy issue of data priority for the Latino community on immigration, on education, on economy, on the abortion. Let me just make a quick point on abortion. We had a poll, we don't need those, in which for the first time in history, abortion came up as one of the top five priorities for the Latino community.

In Florida, in particular, 70% of Latinos in Florida believe that it should remain illegal. When it comes to the scientists, he has signed to law, one of the worst 15-week abortion bind in the country. We don't think carry exceptions for rape or incest. That is why Mi Familia Vota launched the campaign [unintelligible 00:09:19] study scientist to mobilize Latinos to focus on these people.

When it comes to investments, yes, there is a lot of work to do in Florida. Republicans are up in Spanish and English started in a Latinos [unintelligible 00:09:31] and our communities bombarded with narratives about socialism and there is a lot of disinformation at alarming rate over there in Florida.

Julio Ricardo Varela: Melissa, to Héctor's point about abortion, yes, it's an issue that pertains to the Latino community and it's important and we ask that. We ask that question about a women's rights to choose codifying roe. What's interesting about our findings is it's important, but it's also incredibly polarizing.

Part of the strategy to maybe solely lead on that issue might be a loss opportunity in capturing independence and Democrats in states like Florida, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Let me give you one specific example. The Puerto Rican community in Florida, in Georgia, there are Puerto Ricans in Georgia and in Pennsylvania, and especially in a place like Pennsylvania, our polling found that if even by focusing on the issue of de-colonialization of Puerto Rico, whether Puerto Rico's a state or independent.

However, just making that effort would help certain voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and even Florida to actually choose a candidate that talks about that. I'm not minimizing the issue of a woman's right to choose as a political issue. It is definitely something that the Latino community has deep interest in, but it's also a very polarizing issue. What our polling tried to get into is to look at other underrepresented issues that don't get talked about.

Like who talks about Puerto Rico in the midterms, when, in fact, you have just in Pennsylvania alone? If there was a bigger strategy on grabbing the Puerto Rican voter because you're talking about a community that's been there for generations that could swing the state for someone like a Federman. We're not seeing that and it's exactly Hector's point about investment.

As much as great as the work that Mi Familia Vota does, and so many other outlets do, why is it on the community to be the outreach? When will political candidates and parties, in general, say, "You know what? This is the second-largest voting cohort. This is the future of America." We need to begin investing and investing aggressively. For us, it's like the people that are in the power of campaigns are not connected to Latino community, and that's a sad reality.

Then we're going to have this same conversation two years from now until something changes. This notion of Latinos as swing states, I am obsessed about that, Melissa. That is basically my career as a political journalist. If some of our polling gets to have people in campaigns, oh, wait a minute. Maybe it is about public health. Maybe it is about climate change, or maybe it is about bilingual schools. Bring that up because it's not even part of the conversation.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Stick with us because we have more on Latino voters and the 2022 midterms in just a moment. It's The Takeaway. You're back with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. I'm still in conversation about Latino voters with Julio Ricardo Varela, President of Futuro Media, and Héctor Sánchez Barba, who is CEO of Mi Familia Vota. I want to put another issue or question on the table for both of you.

I'd love to hear you both. Hector, I want to come to you on this first. It's one thing to talk about Latino voters, but at least one other important part of this is Latino representation, something that we've obviously seen explode in very troubling ways in the context of the Los Angeles City Council debacle. Also, here on The Takeaway, we've been following SHELections.

One of the races we've been following closely is in Texas, between two Latinas for the Texas 15th Congressional District. I'm wondering, in a broader sense, about the ways that it matters to also have an opportunity to elect Latino representatives.

Héctor Sánchez Barba: That's a very important question, Melissa, to make the connection between the Latino vote and the representation that we have in every space because we are the most underrepresented community in the most important spaces of power. We did our research when I was chair of Financial Le on this important issue, and that was the conclusion. When it comes to the Latino vote, just to close that conversation in this context, we need to make sure that we highlight that it was Latinos and minorities in the nation that say this democracy during the last presidential election.

All of the minorities voted Trump out of office. It was only one group in the nation that voted in majority to continue extremism and continue everything that the Trump presidency represented. It was white borders. We haven't seen any story in the nation really highlighting that. All the stories are talking about the three Mexicans in the vote that are voting for Trump and the Cubans in Miami voting for Trump.

It hasn't been real analysis to really understand what is happening from that particular perspective that I mentioned. When it comes to underrepresenation, is very important to tie this issue because they have been a structural exclusion of Latinos from every space of power. Literally makes it harder for Latinos to participate in the democratic process to run for office, especially for Latinas. Melissa, if you are a Latina and you are the most qualified, we had a nice story on this issue.

You are like the super rockstar of Latinas in the nation that is ready to run for office at the local, at the state or the federal level. Most infrastructures in the nation prefer to support very mediocre white men with a lot of issues, maybe dramas or public exposure that are amazing in Latina. That is unacceptable. That's why initially we launched Latinas represent to make sure that Latinas run for office.

There is an element here. When I was with NHLA and we were pushing it during the Badman administration to have more Latinos in office, and during the Biden administration, obviously. The White House was totally closed during the Trump administration for any serious Latinos leader. We ask and advocate for more Latinos in the White House. In the case of Biden, we want the 20% of the administration to be Latinos, but at the same time, we added Latinos have to support and reflect the policy priorities of the Latino community.

In the case that you mentioned in Flores in Texas, if you look at her policy priorities, she's fully aligned with Trump and doesn't support anything that Latino community, that the policy priorities will represent. We cannot support this kind of candidates.

Julio Ricardo Varela: It's all about representation, Melissa. This is the biggest issue that I think Latinos are facing and will continue to face. What is important is we cannot forget that this is about representation. The best way to accurately reflect what our community is thinking is to constantly be with the community and challenge the conventional thinking that this is a blue or a red issue.

It goes beyond that to be honest because let's face it, 2022, even though there are indications that what's happened in the last two years with the pandemic, with the lack of any movement on immigration reform, I think people tend to forget that on the first day of office in the White House, President Biden made immigration a priority. I know it's not the top issue, but it's definitely an issue that motivates people and nothing has really happened.

Issues with the economy, issues with the future of this country, those are real issues that Latino voters are experiencing every day. Because Latinos are not put on what Hector says, there's a structural problem, we're an afterthought, we're a checklist item. Now there's this sort of incredible interest in us. Here we go a couple of weeks before the midterms. I'm done with the whole, well, Latinos didn't show up for the midterms.

I'm like, "What have you done? What are campaigns doing to get people motivated? What are the policies being enacted? What is the messaging?" The first Latina senator Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, she could lose. I think that's going to create some repercussions given all the advances that have happened in the 2020. When you look at places like Arizona and Nevada, or even up in Pennsylvania this is a critical moment, but I refuse to let people blame it on our community because our community's been underrepresented, ignored.

We've had to do everything ourselves. I don't necessarily think we are seen as part of the American electoral fabric. My vow of myself is that I'm not going to ignore my community. If I can create lanes to at least challenge some of this thinking as a journalist, as a podcast host, I guess as a pollster now, that's my goal moving forward because we have to disrupt the structural race, the structural issues that have removed the voice of our community. Sadly, you mentioned the LA City Council debacle. That's not going to help us. There's a lot of more work to be done.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Julio Ricardo Varela is president of Futuro Media and co-host of the podcast In the Thick. Héctor Sánchez Barba is CEO of Mi Familiar Vota. Thank you both for joining us today.

Julio Ricardo Varela: Thanks, Melissa.

Héctor Sánchez Barba: Thank you for the invitation.

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