The Battle for Latino Voters in the Rust Belt
MILWAUKEE—On a rainy Tuesday afternoon in May, I visited the evangelical pastor Marty Calderon at God Touch, his church in Milwaukee’s Lincoln Village neighborhood. A gentle, quiet presence, Calderon has become one of the most sought-after Latino endorsers for Republican office seekers in Wisconsin, having spent years working to build Latino support for the GOP here. It hasn’t been easy. Until recently, to his great frustration, national Republicans all but ignored Milwaukee and its Latino population, he says.
But these days, Calderon is at least “cautiously optimistic.” In 2020, the Trump campaign opened an office on Milwaukee’s historically Latino South Side, doling out signs and selling Latinos for Trump hats; Calderon offered a prayer that year at the start of a Trump rally in Waukesha. Last September, the Republican National Committee set up a Hispanic community center in Milwaukee, along with others in South Florida and Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. And in April, the National Republican Senatorial Committee announced a seven-figure initiative—“Operación ¡Vamos!,” or “Operation Let’s Go!”—to court Latino voters in Wisconsin and eight other swing states.
The immediate goal is to build on growing Latino support for the GOP through ground-level outreach ahead of the midterm elections this fall. The
