Republican strategist on the rise of the third generation Latino voter and their impact on the U.S. presidential election

In the lead up to the U.S. presidential election, Imperfect Paradise is sitting down with four notable Californians to talk about a range of issues including gender, race and democratic values.

The series includes philosopher and gender studies scholar Judith Butler, artist and Black Lives Matter Co-founder Patrisse Cullors, and L.A. city council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

This week, Imperfect Paradise host Antonia Cereijido talks with Republican campaign strategist Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a political action committee that opposes Donald Trump’s version of Republican politics. Madrid’s recent book, The Latino Century: How America's Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy, argues that both the Democratic and Republican parties have failed to make a compelling case that gets to the heart of what resonates with Latino voters.

In this conversation, Madrid and Cereijido dive into the issues Latino voters care about most, the rising numbers of U.S.-born Latinos, and how important that base is to securing the U.S. presidential election.

Interview excerpts have been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Madrid on why political messaging around immigration isn’t winning over Latinos

Currently, 80% of all of the growth of the Latino population and Latino voters is U.S.- born. And most of that is third, and now, a discernible fourth generation voter.

This is not a voter who has the experience of the stories that you're telling [about immigration]. They're part of family lore and they're important, but they're important in a way that an Italian American knows about their grandfather stowing away on a ship to come across the Atlantic as a 15-year-old stowaway and finds himself in New York City.

They're far removed. And so when Donald Trump is talking about these issues, they don't believe that he's talking about them at all. And so they take on these assimilative characteristics that start to mirror the overall population.

And it defies conventional wisdom because so many people in politics and in the media and in academia have been so consumed with equating the immigrant experience with Latino identity, that what was happening was it didn't recognize the fluidity of ethnicity generationally.

The difference between second and third generation is tectonic.

The Latino voter for the next 30 years is going to be 180 degrees different than the way we've looked at and talked about the stories of Latinos for the past 30 years, when we were a very migrant dominant group. That's changing, and changing quickly.

Madrid on why both parties need to shift their messaging to economics if they want to win the Latino vote 

Most of the conversations about [Latino voters] not being a monolith, most people are usually referring to country of origin…We're the fastest growing segment of the blue-collar working class. And we have found that as we speak more and more to Latinos as working class voters, that's sort of the lingua franca. It's an economic class issue more than a racial and ethnic issue.

[...]

There's strong indicators that even in the Trump era, even with this overt racism, more Latinos and Black men are moving more towards the party in large part because of this economic populism and partisan populism. And Donald Trump is the populist candidate at this moment in time. And that's why he's winning these votes.

[...]

What makes me optimistic is that Latinos are the single largest voting block that are voting primarily on middle class issues. While the Democratic party doesn't message or focus or prioritize middle class issues, the rise of the Latino vote is going to get us back to a place where both parties are going to have to have a middle class agenda.

And so until both parties speak to the middle class and start speaking to people that are saying, ‘I need economic relief, an aspirational economic agenda,’ you cannot solve for the racial problem because you're making the racial and ethnic problem worse.

What I'm arguing is that whichever party is able to capture the hearts and minds of an aspirational multi-ethnic working class will be the dominant party of the next generation.

Madrid on who he thinks will win the Latino vote in the upcoming presidential election

Kamala Harris will win the Latino vote… But, look, the history is made on the margins. First of all, I can't tell you how shocking it is for somebody like me, who's been working with Latino voters for 30 years, to hear from the campaign that ‘if she gets 60%, that's successful.’ Those are horrible numbers. This doesn't happen overnight. It's not like voters are moving like 15 points overnight. If you're losing one or two points every year for 12 or 15 years, that's what gets you into the panic zone. And that's where the Democrats are. To put in perspective, [Donald Trump] was in the high 20s, when he ran in 2016. Eight years later, he's in the high 30s. Like in a time of incredible partisan polarization, when nobody is undecided, to have a 10 point shift is truly extraordinary.

What's happening is a generational realignment of politicization and attitudes from what we have traditionally identified non-white people as having. So yes, Kamala Harris will win the Latino vote. But the question is by how much.

Listen to the full interview on Imperfect Paradise here