“It really all depends on me. I’m my sister’s voice, my brother’s voice, my parents’ voice,” say John Paul Garcia, 20, the only member of his family who can vote. The latest from AP's AmericaDisrupted series:
GRAHAM, N.C — Like many Americans, Ricky Hurtado had different plans for his summer.
Latinos have long seemed on the cusp of realizing their potential at the ballot box, only to see their impact undermined by disappointing turnout and an Electoral College that favors heavily white states. In 2016, fewer than half of eligible Latinos cast ballots, as the country elected a president who promised to a build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and repeatedly used Latin American immigrants as a foil in the debate over it.
“It really all depends on me,” said John Paul Garcia, a 20-year-old Hurtado campaign volunteer and the only member of his family of six who can vote. “I’m my sister’s voice, my brother’s voice, my parents’ voice.” “I want the 21,000 Latinos in Alamance County to know they’re very much part of the conversation here.”Hurtado’s parents arrived in the United States in the trunk of a car.
“1996-1998, those were the years that changed everything,” said Paul Cuadros, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who wrote a book on Latino immigrants in a rural area near Alamance County. “Once the children started showing up, that’s when you had the backlash.” Out of school, Hurtado went to work at a consulting firm focusing on racial equity. He won a scholarship and earned a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton. He was ready to take a job in Oakland in 2014 when he abruptly decided California could wait.
That’s partly due to the enduring power of Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson, a Republican who first came to office in 2002 when he ran TV ads that warned of “aliens” in the county and played music from the old TV series “The Twilight Zone.” Johnson says he has no animus against immigrants. “I have several friends that own restaurants here that are here illegally,” he said. “I could care less as long as they follow laws of our land.”
Lugo says he see evidence that Latinos in North Carolina are turning to the GOP in these turbulent times — particularly after the violence that accompanied protests over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after being pinned to the ground by Minneapolis police. Latinos are repelled by scenes of chaotic demonstrations and the debate over defunding police departments, he said.
On Facebook, he sometimes confronts old high school friends who support Trump and post harsh anti-immigrant sentiments, gently reminding them they grew up together. He says the exchanges end amicably. The Pew Hispanic Center found that 59% of Latinos say they or someone in their household has lost a job or wages due to the virus, well above the 43% of U.S. adults reporting the same.
Antonio Arellano, whose group, JOLT, tries to expand Latino power in Texas, noted they regularly cite health care, not immigration, as its top issue in polls.
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He set out to mobilize Latino voters. Then the virus hit.“It really all depends on me. I’m my sister’s voice, my brother’s voice, my parents’ voice,” says John Paul Garcia, 20, the only member of his family who can vote. The latest from AP's AmericaDisrupted series. (Fixes typo)
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