Trump’s racial politics shape midterm elections

“Oh Juan, why do you have to make everything about race?” That is a common complaint I get on social media. But how can anyone honestly discuss the Florida midterm elections without talking about race?

Let’s start with Latino voters, before looking at Black and white voters. President Trump’s national approval among Latino voters is way underwater at 27 percent, according to NBC. That is a political shock, given that Trump won the Latino vote in Florida in 2024 as well as the majority of Latino men nationwide.

In the last two years, Trump’s numbers with Latinos, about 20 percent of the state’s voters, have fallen off the map. His polling with Latinos is now so bad that Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) ran an advertisement separating herself from Trump’s immigration enforcement.

“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar said in the ad. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”

Republicans like Salazar are desperate to protect their political lives.

Who can forget that last year the Cuban-born leader of “Latinos for Trump” himself faced deportation by ICE? The co-founder of “Latinas for Trump,” sounded a similar note last year. She wrote: “This is not what we voted for. … What we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings.”

Florida cities and even rural farms have been the scene of ICE tearing at the Latino population by wrongfully arresting and deporting people without criminal records. 

Sixty-six percent of Latinos in a recent NBC poll agree that Trump’s handling of illegal immigration has “gone too far.”

Florida’s Republican governor........

© The Hill