George W. Bush Had Better Latino Outreach Than Joe Biden

 Let's take a trip back to 2013: 

George W. Bush went to bed at around 9pm every night when he was president — except for Cinco de Mayo, that is. It’s a fact that former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez says embodies Bush’s legacy with Latinos.

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In the 2004 election, he won a record breaking 44 percent of the Latino vote. It’s a record that no Republican candidate has since topped. In the last presidential election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney garnered just 27 percent of Hispanic votes.

Arizona State University political science professor Rodolfo Espino says that Bush worked the hardest to build a coalition of Latino voters.

“Bush set the standard for what Republicans who want to be president need to do. We’ve seen Republican candidates not follow the guidelines for the platform he was pushing for and he paid the price,” Espino says citing John McCain’s lackluster performance with Latino voters.

Members of Bush’s administration say that his comfort with Latinos may have stemmed from his Texas roots. Not only did the former Lone Star state governor grow up around many Latinos, but he also has a first generation immigrant in the family. His younger brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, is married to the Mexican-born Columba Bush.

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One issue on which Bush gained much Hispanic support was on immigration. He tried and failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation, but was stymied by Republicans in Congress. Though he has stayed out of the recent immigration debate, at a 2012 speech in Dallas he asked that the issue be discussed with a “benevolent” spirit.

“Immigrants come with new skills and new ideas. They fill a critical gap in our labor market. They work hard for a chance for a better life,” The Washington Post quotes Bush as saying “Not only do immigrants help build our economy, they invigorate our soul. America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time.”

Marin believes Bush laid the foundation for the immigration debate that unfolded after the 2012 presidential election.

“Bush worked very hard to give us immigration reform. Today we have the gang of eight, but at that point in time it was the gang of two — him and Senator Ted Kennedy,” Marin says. “He was so concerned with small businesses and he really recognized the entrepreneurial spirit of the Hispanic community.

Of course, the GOP decided to go in a different direction in regards to courting the Latino vote (See: Romney, Mitt and Trump, Donald). But sadly for those looking for a true opposition party, the Democrats have not seized he opportunity to make any significant gains either.

Fast forward to 2020 (Politico, The Intercept, The Philadelphia Inquirer):

“I do not think that the Biden campaign thinks that Latinos are part of their path to victory,” said Jess Morales Rocketto, the former digital organizing director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “If you don't think Latinos are part of your path to victory, then you do what they're doing.”

Chuck Rocha, the architect of the Bernie Sanders campaign’s Latino strategy and founder of the pro-Biden Nuestro PAC, said that Biden’s success in Arizona was “the perfect storm.” The Biden campaign started spending big on TV ad buys early on and, though they were slow to ramp up Latino outreach efforts in the state, groups like Living United for Change in Arizona, or LUCHA, were doing the work on the ground. Rocha also believes that marijuana legalization being on the ballot was “another driving force” for Latino turnout.

“The Latino outreach started late,” Rocha said. “It could have been better, and we’re lucky that Joe Biden caught up with his spending when he did, because the outside spending was not comparable. What we’re seeing is a billion dollars that was spent talking to white persuadable voters and less than $24 million talking to Latinos for outside orgs.”

Philadelphia City Councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez said Biden’s campaign “gets mad at me for speaking out." But, she said, "I don’t want there to be a scenario where we lose and my community gets blamed for their lack of engagement.”

“They want to do everything on TV,” Quiñones-Sánchez said of the campaign. "When they pivoted to field they waited until the last minute — literally we just got people on the street this week.”

The Biden campaign acknowledged most outreach had been virtual across the campaign until this month, when canvassing started. But the campaign stressed it has been reaching out in other ways, through weekly Latino phone banks and virtual events. During a visit to Philadelphia last month, Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.), Biden’s running mate, held a meet-and-greet with community leaders at Taller Puertorriqueno, in the largely Puerto Rican neighborhood of Kensington.

“We’re running the most robust Latino outreach program any presidential campaign has ever had in Pennsylvania," Sinceré Harris, the Biden campaign’s senior adviser in Pennsylvania, said in a statement. "In addition to our robust organizing and outreach efforts, we’ve made historic investments in paid communications across all platforms that launched in the summer.”

Still, some local Latino leaders said they fear not enough has been done in a region that could be key to the state — and toward a demographic Trump is targeting.

“There are people in MAGA hats knocking on doors in the barrio right now,” former Philadelphia Councilmember Angel Ortiz said of GOP work in North Philadelphia. “You got people looking around like, what is going on?"

Ortiz stressed that things now feel as if they’ve shifted into “full-court-press mode,” but with not much time to appeal to voters.

Remember all this when people ask either, "How did Biden lose?" or, "Why was it so close?"