 Hi everybody, I'm Luis Figueroa and representing the Future Forum Board here on behalf of the Future Forum, thank you all so much for joining us today. I just want to start with a few thank yous to our sponsors, the Downtown Alliance and FVF Law. The Future Forum's events are made possible by our incredible members and our sponsors. And I'd also like to thank the LBJ staff and especially Sarah McCracken for her work to put these events together at this beautiful venue and historic venue of the LBJ Library. For those that may not be as familiar, the Future Forum brings together individuals with different backgrounds, experiences and points of views to discuss local, state, national and even international topics that affect us today. Our goal is to create informed bipartisan discussions and I hope you'll join as a member to help support the work and elevate discourse and policy and politics today. For today, speaking of, we're at the election only 19 days away. We wanted to explore an issue that has been featured in news over the recent months. There are rumblings of a political shift in the Rio Grande Valley following the 2020 elections. And we're honored to be joined today by three guests to discuss the evolving politics, the complex electorate and the factors driving change in South Texas. So first we have Cecilia Baillie is a writer, journalist, anthropologist and founder of Culture Concepts, a consultancy focused on ethnographic research, cultural analysis and storytelling. She has conducted research and written stories about Latinos in the US-Mexican border for over 20 years. And she's been a writer at large at the Texas Monthly since 2000 and has been published in numerous other media outlets including Harper's Magazine, The New York Times and the San Antonio Express News. Also joining us is Dr. Sergio Garcia-Rios, Associate Director for Research at the Center for, I'm sorry, Associate Director for Research, the Center for Study, Race and Democracy at UT Austin right here. His research investigates the formation and transformation of Latino identities and the political implications of these transformations. He has also served as the Director of Polling and Data at Univision News. Moderating today's discussion is my friend Steve Taylor. He's Editor-in-Chief of the Rio Grande Guardian which has been placed for 17 years and I highly recommend anyone interested in following the news and happenings in South Texas to subscribe and look into the Rio Grande Guardian. Please keep in mind that there will be some time for questions at the end of the panel and I will now turn it over to Steve to moderate our discussion. Thank you all very much. I'd like to just say thank you to the Future Forum for inviting us today and I'm looking forward to this conversation with Cecilia and Sergio. We were thinking we would probably have one more guest here but unfortunately that didn't happen so what I did, I tried to get a lot of opinions before coming up here from some people I respect for across the political spectrum as to what their analysis was and got a range of views so we could speak for hours and hours on this I know. So I just, there's a few of them though I'd like to explain, mention their responses or give those responses before asking the questions. And so one businessman I know said, Valley Hispanics do not pay much attention to labels. They rather vote on what they hear and what they believe. One example being the mayor of McCallan, he's a registered Republican, he won in a very Democratic area. Another is the mayor of Donna who's been winning that city for many years, he's a Republican. So the point there is that we've always had Republicans in the elected office but obviously at the city level the party labels are not there. Another example is the Democratic candidate now for State District 27, Morgan Lamentiere. She's running as a Democrat but she comes across as being very pro business and many Republicans like this person will vote for her. So is this guy right? I mean there's always been, there's certainly not a lot of progressives there and one candidate today put out and sent me a press release saying she's got the endorsement of Bernie Sanders and I'm thinking was that a death wish? I don't know. So I don't know who wants to go first on that. I can say something about that and really this is a fascinating statement. I'm particularly interested in how this person says we don't pay much attention to labels. I think that's partially true but only partially, I think at the end of the day and that's some of the status identities, our identities are important and I think what he might really be wanting to say is that we haven't really felt attached to either party. In that case I think it's right. Latinos traditionally have voted Democratic and there's always been that 20 to 30 percent that Latinos have voted for not only in the rebranded valley area which historically has shown these percentages but also at the national level and it seems like now people have forgotten how much of a support Bernie Sanders but George Bush had from Latinos. He was really the first T.O. Bush but then if I can use the same image of the T.O. politician that translated to Bernie Sanders who was actually the second round of the T.O. Bernie and who was the favorite candidate in the primaries among Democrats. And so what I think is that Latinos have always had a hard time identifying with this sorting of the party the most other groups easily aligned with what Latinos generally are more drawn to is the things that they the matter in the day to day and today so happens that one thing that Latinos really are thinking about so price of price is the economy is the economy is prices is the inflation right and yes two three years ago it was healthcare with the price of healthcare and with coronavirus healthcare in general so Bernie Sanders was the favorite candidate and so I think I think there's a lot of truth in this statement and a lot we can learn from this short statement that you shared with us because we can learn that this is in a way the story of Latinos and as they become more and more political but then there's certainly a demographic shift and hopefully we can engage more with this other part of the demographic shift but I think it's true only partially Cecilia yeah what I would say is that the Rio Grande Valley is has very specific context and factors going on but it's also in some ways a little bit of a kind of microcosm or reflection of the bigger reality across the country so the thing that I find very specific to that context the local context is that it was dominated by Democratic elected officials for generations and so what I found in my research down there is that the parties didn't debate ideas or policy positions it was always the Democrats that would win and so candidates ran more on name and Republicans ran as Democrats and so I think that is what's shifting and in 10 people that I interviewed in Brownsville eight of them compared local elections to high school elections where it's about the most popular person winning and all you see is the billboards with the names but we don't really know what they stand for and so I think what you're seeing down there is like now this is requiring people to actually at least begin debating issues and so those identities are being kind of sorted out again and then that may happen again down the road the thing that is a reflection I think of a national not trend but reality is as I said he was saying what we found in Texas statewide through a lot of one-on-one interviews is that partisanship is fairly low among a lot of Latinos I wouldn't say all of them and by partisanship I mean like an iron clad commitment to the party's platform so if the party supports this then I will support this for this election what you find instead more is for different levels there's low levels of partisanship one is you know you have fairly new voters a lot of Latinos haven't their families haven't been voting for a certain party over generations another is that the parties haven't engaged Latinos on either side directly and the third is there are other people whose views are sort of fall on multiple spots of the political spectrum it's not just that they're all moderate they can have a very progressive position on one thing and fairly conservative on another so I think all of those things are at play in that one statement yeah yeah sure this is rather a broad one to start with then I would like to ask how many in the audience are from the Valley or from the radio of South Texas excellent there's two or three here that's good maybe in the Q&A we could yeah we can have that have a conversation and I'm asked that because the many people will not be aware that they might think it's just a dusty border town you know that's the Valley it's just not that today we've got two big metropolitan areas in Brownsville and the McCallan Mission, Edinburgh area and population if everyone was counted is probably two million people now so it's become more sophisticated and you know that after the set my question will be after the second and third generation the second or third maybe the third or fourth generation are not so tied to the struggles of the parents and the grandparents which who like you say they used to always vote Democrat and now there's perhaps a detachment from those struggles and therefore they're more open to other ideas and yeah that's precisely the demographic change that I was talking about we're we're seen certainly in the rebranded Valley area and and perhaps across the country is that the chair of second third and even fourth generation is much larger than that of first second generation so the immigration experience is further away from what feels personal for for years we have assumed when I say we mean political scientists and pollsters have assumed that it's immigration that thing that will mobilize Latinos I think we have in part play a role in creating this narrative we political scientists in creating this narrative that it is immigration that's going to mobilize Latinos and we're seeing for many years now and a clear trend and some of the point that we've been doing through a vision clearly chose this is that that's no longer the priority and it's not longer a priority because ultimately what matters is what you live day to day you have to feed your family you have to educate your children those issues matter for Latinos just like it might have for anyone else but that experience of Latinos and sort of the struggles of the of the of the immigrant generation it's less of direct link to the Kiger percentage of Latino so you know political scientists have found that the further remove you are from this experience the further it will affect you still there people still will think in those terms you still think of in terms of I'm Latino I'm my heritage right but the way that you think and prioritize more importantly the way that you prioritize immigration will be for their way and and really the day today will become your priorities so what that does to Latinos and what that does to I think now an important share of the voting block is that they might look like other voters non-Hispanic voters and thinking that immigration will continue to be forever the issue that will occur the most about it's in a way a racialized assumption specifically about immigration I like this point from for one of the sort of experts I spoke to on immigration Hispanics in our region are truly split on this many want to be part of the movement to clamp down and shut down the border they've been exposed to enough messages about the border being out of control but they also do not want to be associated with what they consider to be law-breaking and those that do not want to wait in line and opt to cross illegally but other Hispanics see their relatives and their own past and know that the issue is a lot more complex and thus will not vote strictly on this issue fair point yes I agree with both of you or both of you have said on immigration even with Democratic voters a lot of them a lot of Latino Democratic voters sit want immigration to be legal right and and whether those narratives are fair or not this whole notion of you know do it the right way that people subscribe to that very much there's a kind of very kind of law-abiding and and a sense of yeah also a sense of immigrants should be able to come legally but without knowing how difficult that's become and so you will find I would say that like possibly even a majority of Democratic Latino voters they they are they're not just going to say we everybody should come in right they they have subscribed to these ideas that it should happen lawfully legally in some kind of orderly way and then but then I find Republicans that are very sympathetic to immigration and especially the Trump voters in the Valley I find them to be kind of more ideal ideologically mixed and like I spoke with someone who said if the Democrats had done something for immigrants to make them legal or to just make the situation better I would stay for the party but they just courted us and courted us they never did anything she if some of you speak Spanish I love this saying she said she said no they say that they love us they love us but they never will marry us and then so then now she's actually responding to these arguments about border control and you might think that's kind of in conflict right but but the sense is just like do something about this issue and I do think that what is specific to the valley is people are in those communities where these things are playing out and so some of it as they are responding to those broad narratives there was a time in the valley where Democrat Republicans alike were against a border wall and after that got politicized more strongly under Trump now you do find people down there that are in support of the wall the next subject I'd like to ask you about Celia something close to your heart the Trump train something you studied something you studied for sure so the Trump train was this I spoke to a Republican activist who said that's where it all started for him started out with eight people by the time the election came around there were 5,000 people involved in these this huge caravan many of them in different cities and and that Republican like the fact that I asked is it still there is that will that will that still be there in the next election with Trump not on the ticket he said yes because everyone were angered that all the policies of Trump have been reversed by Biden so so we're still active but and then so I asked a Democrat on this and he said the influence of Trump is still there like the sound effect of rumble of lightning in the sky that continues for a few seconds like a charismatic leader he gave license to people to say out loud and act on attitudes that are not tolerated by the fish official Democratic platform the Democrats abandoned those key issues in their official platform and did not allow for any gray areas I'm referring to the following issues support for the police access to guns for personal security but not military weapons treating abortion as a moral issue rather than a health issue harsh sentiments against immigrants due to our the sour national economy and the epidemic of hate crimes in the US the contrasting views there from a Republican and a Democrat but the Trump polling you did about that I'm a cultural anthropologist so like that's the stuff that excites me is to see how people live something how they experience it on the ground right and not just their views but that was really interesting to talk to people about how they felt participating in those events and if you look at the two regions of the country where Latinos shifted the more the most towards Trump Florida in and Texas in particular both places had these very public caravans and then nationally you saw some some trending to the right in other locations but the areas that had these public events that seem to also like create a lot of momentum but what was interesting to me about the way people spoke about those events is there was a sense of belonging and there was a sense of voice and empowerment and in our study statewide of Latino voters as a whole those are two things that they typically a lot of them don't feel they don't feel they belong in different ways in the country or in the political system where they're not being seen another thing is they don't feel empowered and they don't feel like their voices is considered not just by elected officials but kind of at multiple levels socially as well as politically and so what people were experiencing there I think was a kind of a self-empowerment it felt very grassroots they started the the Trump trains in south Texas where it wasn't the Republican Party coming in and organizing those things folks have this origin story of how it started and they went and they bought the flags and they got their friends to come and before you knew it was thousands of people and they talk about how there were people there of all stripes and and everybody was very nice to everybody you know we don't expect that from what you see in the media and so I think you know that's what we can take from that and there were also like strong expressions of cultural identity in those in those Trump trains in the Valley it was like you see some people with the Hanoi and proud and then in South in Florida people were playing salsa music so this I think that's another erroneous narrative that folks down there voted right for Trump because they identify as white we can we should also talk about that where race comes into this and how people make sense of it but I just think they were like these massive public events that emerge from the ground and people experience political engagement in a very different way than they typically have been engaged down there and I think one of the key things that you're saying is sort of well one that sense of belonging and then sort of how that makes them feel and as opposed to sort of whiteness I think one key aspect and one of the things that we've been observing is the way that what belongs means for Latinos sort of and it said and and what gives them a sense of identity and identification to being American right part of that is also that feeling of respect for law and order and and respect for certain values that they want to feel that they're part of and that feeling of being more American I think they got that with joining these groups but that's always colored by a Latino flavor right even even today we see some of the campaigns you know using this very traditional Republican platform but then you know there's Selena music in the rallies and there's like there's a thing we're going to be seeing is now the Latinization of the of both parties but then who asked them to join the party that's really the question and I think what we're seeing is we're hearing reports of Republican party putting in more money in in certain districts certainly 15 is one of the streets where they're paying a lot of attention and Democrats seem to actually move away from investing in these parties in these districts so Latino will respond to that and and sort of for polling shows that once they're reached out to vote for whatever party they create a stronger bone a stronger bond with that party and if they're not being reached out to if they're not being invited to the party upon intended they might not join right and so I think that's one of the things that's going to come out of the election is well Latinos are becoming more and more conservative and that might be true because of these demographic changes that we are talking about but also they're finding that they've been forgotten by the Democratic party we've been asking this question in our polling do you think the Democrats are care about Latinos they don't care much or their hostile and the same thing with Republicans and we are finding a declining attachment to Democratic party and then growing sort of they're forgetting about us and and Republicans sort of split half and they don't care their hostile and so really what more Latinos are finding is that they really don't find a home they don't find a party to join yeah yeah you mentioned district 15 there so and the influence of what we call the dark money it's it's rather pronounced now and so whatever results come in on election day to some extent that it could be skewed by just how much negative advertising there's been particularly in a district like 15 where it's totally one-sided either side of 15 in 34 and 28 it's pretty even I mean the Vicente Gonzales Henry Cuellar have been able to to get super PACs on the Democratic side to support them that hasn't happened in in 15 and I think it's now up to seven million dollars which the Rio Grande Valley has never seen before we've never had this much interest so that could you know that could skew things so when I speak to a lot of the Democrats down there and they they're just pumped up they're riled they're they're angry with the Democratic the DCCC the congressional campaign for not not investing in Vallejo and not putting out the negative acts against Monica de la Cruz and they say they're not they've got the infrastructure obviously if it's been a Democratic area for decades a Democratic infrastructure is there and so they think that's going to be sufficient that ground game will be sufficient so I think it's still very very even 15 but there's no if you watch TV or cable on the internet and the mailers I don't even live in 15 and I get one a day in the mail for Monica de la Cruz but why don't we talk yesterday in the preview preparing for this about the that documentary for which focused on Myra Flores in district 34 and I wanted to ask about that the influence of the evangelical churches there you know the pastor basically found her and and sort of educated her and is her campaign manager yeah your thoughts on that one that we made on MSNBC well the the takeaway I think is that there's there's there's a project right there's a project beyond just just in the the person there's a building up of these profiles with sort of people who have potential and that's happening across the country but it's it's probably one of the first time that the this the evangelical church as it is and in in in in their political arm invest in in a Latina in the way that they're doing right now and so it's it's telling because it's in this it's in in Texas in the river and the valley but um but the takeaway is that the the investment of the attention paid to to building someone who can eventually run is what's standing out I'm I'm less you know interested in sort of the type of politics the chess is what we can take away which is the narrative and sort of the the the the politics of each party was built without Latinos in in the conversation and so Latinos don't necessarily find a place in either party and it's time that someone pays attention and sort of fuels Latinos into the conversation of the role that they're going to play we're about you know to hit 20 of the population in areas like the rebranded valley it's well over 30 percent right certain places is 80 percent and so it was about time that someone paid attention is everyone surprised because is the Republican party doing this well yeah it might be surprising but the takeaway is not so much whether Latinos have the capacity to hold uh Republican values but it's that if the evangelical church look at this as a project and it's so happened to be a Latina and so does it take a way I think it's interesting to me being from the valley to go back and see the difference especially in what we call the Upper Valley but the McCall and Edinburgh area where you do see visibly stronger presence than when we were going up of these churches and even like on street corners with signs and things like that and that's where I make a kind of parallel with the Trump trains in the sense of the sense of creating a voice and creating presence and connecting that with political agency in a way that the Catholic church some part some portion of the Catholic church did traditionally around especially like activists in the colonia so where the church was also a partner but as a whole the Catholic church doesn't do that right and I do see that pretty strongly in that upper in Evalgo County but more broadly on the issue of religion and social conservatism another two simple narrative that circulated is that Latinos are naturally Republican because they are religious and socially conservative and I would say that when we interviewed voters that tie between religion and political affiliation was stronger for evangelical churches and sort of non-denominational Christian less so with Catholics there's kind of more flexibility some vote based on their you know anti-abortion stance and some are can differentiate between some religious view and some political views and then there's plenty of people that are kind of very socially progressive these days and might even be like economically financially more conservative so I don't think that we can rely on that simple statement anymore and another aspect of the 2020 presidential election that was really pronounced in south Texas we spoke about this previewing this is the the energy issue where Biden in one of the presidential debates says we just got to go away from fossil fuels and he didn't know just how important that is to star county or subartic county and when star county goes for Trump heavily heavenly democratic area and now the republican super PACs are investing heavily in that county thinking that they can that pay a whole slew of candidates in every position you know from the lowest to to the to to the county judge they've got that is competitive this there's there are races they've never been races before but but people thought well they're going to take our jobs away if if uh Biden wins we're not going to have there's not going to be an oil and gas industry and so that was a particular aspect of that 2020 which may have skewed things but what's interesting what's interesting about that is that it's not necessarily a political reaction to it it's not an ideological reaction to it it's again it's it's a pocket book yeah it's it's jobs and so we might think from from our you know academic points of view and sort of the um elite sort of discourse that that's purely ideological is not it's it's the day-to-day politics and people don't necessarily think about these things um the way that um we political scientists and posters think about they they react to what they see on the day today and so it's it's a democratic candidate taking away their jobs it's not that it's someone taking their jobs period period and who's promising to bring it back some other candidate right and so uh and and this sort of goes back to that initial conversation about uh party affiliation which uh I think it's there because it was sort of the fault uh but as as as as issues become more complex and and and the sorting of the two parties again was built without our voices in in in the mix it doesn't necessarily match one or another and so we shouldn't really be that surprised the latinos and we shouldn't be surprised if latinos in 15 years change back to one or the other or or back to mostly being them correct uh because um there still hasn't been that match and and we don't have it and again I I point back to uh bernie's handers being the preferred candidate for for for latinos and this this might seem too extreme and I think in the minds of day to day latino they're not extreme because if you ask them do you want jobs yes I want jobs do you want to work in the old company in an old industry yes do you want healthcare yes who gives me those two I think trump I think sanders now um congressman quest said I could use this um yeah he's getting funding from the super PACs and so is Vicente Gonzalez in 34 and as as we've said Michelle Bayeco's getting nothing he said well the um progresses on the east coast they funded my opponent in the primary lots and lots of money spent on on his primary opponent and uh you know that elizabeth warren bernie a whole slew of them were helping her and obviously quay was getting funding from the establishment Pelosi etc but he said why can't Michelle's got not not getting any money why why where are they where where is the elizabeth warren and bernie they could be putting all the money in to to help her when she she can't but I'd like to go back to an issue we've sort of touched upon it the the lack of political discussions that in my reporting I don't see the house meetings I don't see the town hall meetings in some there's some of the biggest turnouts uh in the in the elections are the very very small cities where you know you're running for school board or you're there's a race for city government and that's because they're the biggest employers and the candidates are running and if they if their slate wins there's going to be jobs for my fat for the different families so there's huge turnouts there but you don't see um you just don't see any any discussion in in in the parties particularly the democrats have been in power for so long so that I tend to look at what they've done over the years and and it's just automatically people vote that way so there's no no discussion of ideas I'd like to know where the the ideas come from you know are they in I know in the colonial groups the the ideas come from the ground up um there are house meetings there there are that's how the policies are formed but at the on the with the political parties that doesn't seem to be the case in the in the valley and so if you don't have those meetings um you know where's where's the solidity if if they those meetings didn't take place and therefore policies are not hatched in that way where is where is that solidity for that party uh well I mean I'll see quickly that um I I I do think Latinos are engaged and they're politically engaged um and there there are many ways that you can engage politically um and it might not always be just electoral and and there's always been a barrier sort of for Latinos to engage electorally um but uh we know there's there's high interest in getting involved now when um when you're not being part of the conversation as to you know it's hard for Latinos to run even in districts where's high percent of Latino and when you're not when your district usually you know has been uh gerrymandered multiple times it's also kind of hard hard to get motivated to vote um but but um but I think there's interest there's just not uh it it's it there's not interest from the party towards uh Latino necessarily on either one we're seeing that shift hopefully now we see uh interest from both parties uh grow but I think Latinos are politically motivated they just haven't been part of the conversation at the table right in in our interviews statewide um we found that even the non-voters uh were following at least national politics to some degree especially these days with social media etc so it wasn't apathy it was with the non-voters it was that they for different reasons um they don't feel that their vote is going to make a difference and their experiencing powerlessness or being lack of belonging in other ways in their lives and so it seems like something that that is not uh where their vote will have any effect and also voting is a social habit that's what we keep pushing out through that study is it's not just a rational choice it's something where if you haven't been doing it it doesn't come naturally right so a lot of people vote already because we're kind of trained to do it um but in the valley I do think that there is an exhaustion among voters with establishment politicians and I think that's why down there they voted for Bernie Sanders during the primary and then they also were very sympathetic to Trump and in fact there was one of the Trump one of the major Trump organizers that was telling me that she's like when I asked her to think about that she's like yeah you know I would say that Bernie is like that like our Trump for them you know it's someone who's like coming and saying no you don't have to believe everything they've been telling you they don't have your best interests in mind and there's another way of doing things right and so I think that's what's what's key is is um I do think the valley and I'm from there is kind of a test case of kind of uh political dominance gone wrong or like I said because they are small towns and because uh traditionally people have been able to influence voters like I only need you know very few voters to win a local election and I have a big family name so I'm gonna work that name to get certain families and other people to vote for me maybe I'm gonna hire a political ally illegally and get somebody to go out and drive voters to the polls and so if I keep the electorate small I I can determine who wins this election and they never included voters in conversations and so I do feel like we heard more of the kind of more cynical cynicism if you will I'm cautious to use that word down there than we did in El Paso San Antonio Houston or Dallas um so I think I hope that this is a turning point where I think it's good for the valley to get competitive and it's good for the parties to have to pay attention and it's good to have the the governor's debate down there it is a small portion of the population but I I do think it shifts the conversations around Latino voters yeah and as a consequence of that we might find candidates actually running in their own party rather yeah every everyone would run in the Democratic Party Republican or Democrat and then all the big fight is in the primary and then in the general everyone goes to sleep because the races have been decided and that's no longer the case but then we could put on top of that another layer is the I'm a soccer fan so I'll say it I'll describe it as an own goal the Democrats ability to score own goals in District 34 first of all Philemon Vella resigns didn't need to do that that that produces a special election in July when people are not thinking about politics and the Democratic leadership in Washington decides well we're not going to spend any money in that special election because the redistricting will be in play in the in the November election that district's been redrawn it's going to be more Democratic leaning more Democratic friendly that's true so they just said you know we're not going to support the Democratic candidate the candidate loses suddenly Myra Flor is the Republican winner and now the incumbent is elevated which didn't have to happen one if Vella had stayed in place and two if the Democrats perhaps had got behind their candidate and so now she can quite rightly go around as the member of Congress doors open she's she's on a level playing field with with Congressman Gonzalez in terms of their you know the ability to you know they're both two two Congress members of Congress run against each other and as a byproduct because she is a member of Congress first Republican first woman first Mexican born all that that we've seen we've heard that it's it's also helping in 15 with with the Republicans is giving you know boosting her chances just to be associated with with her so there the Democrats have you know brought that upon themselves yeah I mean and it's it's it's again a sort of good indicator of how much they they how much parties believe where Latinos stand right is and and and I think statewide we're getting different signals from Myra for us and our poll which we'll release on Tuesday shows that it's not the same story in in in the statewide as it is in in the southern area less popular and so but I think we're doing a lot to elevate the narrative that whether you exist or not I think are constantly talking about myra floris instead highlighting these things about her it's sort of elevating the conversation which it's kind of the cycle interesting cycle where we're kind of surprised that she you know won but then keep talking about it so now we're elevating so I don't know if we're gonna distort a idea of really what she stands really and perhaps she's been politically savvy as well about things because on the abortion issue she said she is supportive of abortion in cases of incest and rape which is not the case for a lot of the republicans and so that's a Latino flavor type of politics that we're gonna see right republicans in a way and she's advocating for immigration reform and making some immigrants legal which most republicans are not right now yeah so I'm being told our time is up for our conversation and we're gonna open it up to the audience if anyone has any questions we've got 15 20 minutes or so hi my name is steven and i'm a graduate student at the lbj school of public affairs thank you for your time and insight today uvaldi is a small conservative town with similar political stripes to the electoral politics of the rgv do you foresee any changing in this election cycle and voting trends in the rgv because of what has occurred in uvaldi based on the our our report i think there is support for gun control and uvaldi will have you know made that that feeling stronger i mean the south texas is is a is a big area for hunting so people don't want their their hunting weapons taken away but but these assault type weapons no i don't think they support i don't have the polling for that that's my sense so yeah i think the uvaldi could have an impact statewide and could could have an impact in the valley you know instantly there were prevails across the valley people are obviously very saddened by what happened there uvaldi is a much smaller area but yeah you're right about the demographics thoughts i mean i haven't done any interviews so i hesitate to say to speak directly to that i i do remember like one person i follow on social media who's a big fan of myra flores then when the uvaldi shooting happened was like writing public statements myra flores what are you going to do about this like you know and that's where i said that that some of these folks are ideologically kind of uh you can't you can't just pin them down uh one way or another i and on the gun issue in general like i found people on the right latinos on the right who were by and large open to before uvaldi open to more a little more regulation and then you find people on the left who are very supportive of guns right i would be surprised if it was the driving issue i don't the thing is is it gonna with every election it's like at that moment which issue ends up becoming first or second for you but that's my guess i mean it'll make more of a difference on the left right but i don't know if enough to galvanize new voters or a much bigger turnout and and unfortunately i don't think we will get um an answer from polls our our own survey um has a a a robust over sample uh but but but the key here is what silage just mentioned that um we might see changes in terms of your position towards uh gun ownership and gun control i don't think i don't know if that necessarily is going to translate into uh partisan voting and and and partisan affiliation um but i i do think we're gonna see shifts in how people perceive um uh gun legislation um i'm not so sure that's gonna translate to a political preferences i don't know yet and ultimately i think most polls won't be able to show any clear distinction if you're if you hear that whatever national poll and i'm going to say this if you hear that any national poll shows movement on this particular town for their hundred latinos that they include in their sample they actually don't know they're making it up i appreciate an honest pollster there's one particular ad that's running down there it's probably statewide very powerful ad from the one of the parents who lost a child there there and um she comes out supporting uh better overall but that that's um you know having it must be having some impact uh because when that when when all these cities pass their resolution saying we are poor this you know and the and the as i say the prayer vigils would the very next day or two days three days there was nothing from the city commission when they passed those resolutions that asked the legislature to do anything none of none of the leadership in the valley said i think maybe one or two elected officials said something well okay now is the time for action let's have some legislation to address this well that was that was vacant there was just nothing no leadership there at all one way or the other hello and thank you for being here uh as a Hispanic from a rural county i've seen kind of a shift in in the party as i as i grew up my father would always say you know mijo the the democrats refer us that's that's who they're for but i don't see the language of democrat and republican anymore i see conservative and liberal and liberal almost being used as a slur almost as my age and the people in my demographic it's that's something you have noticed over all and that liberals have not been seen as the hard working party anymore the blue collar party anymore as we've seen billionaire tech look into being liberal has that taken away from americano's hardworking ability and what what they see in themselves thank you what county is that that you're talking about where are you from that's right that's right so i want to say that this is exactly what we're talking about right it's it's the that feeling of one there's so many things that you say that i almost wanted to there's another recording so go back and pick notes of every single thing that you say i talk about this in my class too right so the how latinos see themselves in texas right hardworking americano respectful of things right that's the the identity that we like to attach to and does that align with any political party i mean it's up for debate which one it aligns with right so and and and i think you're you're thinking that it aligns more with the republican party now that narrative might very well be true because it might also be the narrative that many across the country see right that is that the republican party is a party for the working class and and we might debate on that right i might see it differently but but you're not alone and i think that's the the key point is that many across the country see that shift and that the elite now is the is the democratic party and that he has forgotten you know the working class party and that and that's the reason why the candidate had to be biden because he was biding who would be able to align with working class in you know pennsylvania and certain states that were important and so i think the democratic party has ways to go to convince latinos that the working class latino because often when we talk about and i guess the national level when we talk about the working class we almost mean white as if latinos weren't working class too and so i think what we need is a conversation about what it means to be working class and be latino i love that i love both of of y'all's comments that was very astute observation on your part and and it gets me thinking and i do think um you know on the right the republicans are very very good at narrative that's what they're very good at right and so there is a kind of liberal is a bad thing right now and that and that's spreading and then liberal is a term when we ask latinos what does it mean to you are you liberal or conservative or do you identify with those terms at all and what do they mean to you liberal has always kind of had like a vague definition for latinos you know and some of them if they're spanish speakers they identify it with being liberal like you're too socially liberal and that's not a good thing and so to begin with i don't think the term really resonates with people on the ground and then on top of that it's being kind of vilified right but i but then more broadly i do think that those notions of the parties are shifting and so the vote for democrats among working class latinos was predicated on them seeing themselves as working class which there's a question of whether people want to see themselves that way or not even if they are working class there's a lot of resistance to that like they don't see themselves as oh i'm poor and someone's supposed to help me right and the other thing was race that before it's this notion of if you're anything but white the democrats are the only ones who care about you and people talk down there about how like trump managed to kind of shift the definition of the republican party for people and folks will say in the valley it's not best drop but they'll say when i grew up i was told that republicans were white wealthy people and democrats were for the little guy and and now the definition of both parties in their minds has changed i think she had a question as well so i'm from i'm from the upper valley myself uh we've had a couple of years of uh major disruption to the traditional campaign methods uh and i was wondering whether you all have the sense that politica are still playing the same role that they used to play kind of in the 90s and the 2000s or if there's been kind of a change especially since um since covet has hit do you have that the democrats will argue that that's why they suffered as well in 2020 they did not go knocking on doors republicans did and because democrats were more respectful of whatever health and regulations were going on and they put that they they say that was a reason they underperformed what about now that's what they said then we'll have to we'll have to see but also there's been legislation changing the way uh the politica errors the the election workers can um help voters with their mail-in ballots etc so that's um that's lessened um the amount of involvement they can have um and so and obviously we've lost La Palanca that you can't vote straight ticket anymore that's a big a big deal for for democrats i think so but um they're still they're still there they still work um but their opportunities to help the elderly you know drive them drive them to the polling locations help go in and then now that we have new laws on on you know what the alleged election judges can do um you know and this this rules their laws there now you can video everything and film it we're waiting to see what what impact that has for those of you who are not familiar politica errors are a very very regional thing very specific and they're women who get hired typically women um who get hired to get out the vote but to get out the vote for a particular candidate and so there are complaints also about sometimes the legality of it or they'll just like fill up vans with people from nursing homes and bring them out to to get the candidate to win but they do play this role of getting out the vote in in different ways like i regret that i always wanted to do like an anthropological study or write a bottle for texas monthly and i never did it's a fascinating phenomenon down there it's also women at the center of like politics right which is really interesting hi i'm a second year grad student at wj school and i'm from houston but i had a question about incrementalism with what's happening with a republican party where they're in it for the long game and i can see it happening now in the rgb is that's what is that's what they're doing like the same thing they're doing with row versus wade where they're in it for the long run 50 years whatever it takes i didn't hear the first oh yeah so in middleism along it's a long term strategy with what it's just starting now like just plotting as far as like starting with little candidates putting the money in investing in this community i have no idea what internal conversations the republican party might be having but it if it is um it it seems like they if fell on their they they didn't know i think my sense uninformed sense is that if show them right i don't think they they they knew how much they could do until it happened and and but and then now i think they're seeing the the potential and i i think they're gonna we're gonna see more and more of that i can tell you that our poll has shown that they are reaching out and this anecdotes that i'm hearing sort of confirms that they're reaching out much more so i i don't see any reason why they will stop promoting candidates one and two continue to reach out ultimately all like one sort of and i hope my research sort of chose is to highlight the importance of latino sticking seriously and it seems like at least in the valley the one party that's taking latino seriously is the republican party and so i don't see that stopping i can see how that might get translated to other political markets there has been a presence in the valley of like the coke brothers have been there for a while and they create these centers kind of community centers that also help people with other things and so i would say at that level that it has been a long-term strategy i don't know at the level of the party i i agree with sergio that the party responded to an opportunity that they suddenly saw right but but there has been money going in down there um yes i had a question um thank you all so much for being here i really love having these conversations um so we've seen a recent and open shift of political alignment and we've seen so with congresswoman myra floris um so she was like using the saying of like quote unquote pro god in her in her commercials and campaigning i just wanted to know if do you guys think this shift of like pro god quote unquote would be um i guess like a tool that democrats would shift towards um because just like back home i'm from the real grand valley and um that was like solely the only thing that people voted for um myra floris was over dan sanchez of course um was um the pro god statement so i want to go i almost want to go back to um that's about the latino flavored uh republican right and you know quay uh quay are is um pro word right and the democratic candidate and so uh you know politicians adapt and they win because they adapt right and so um i i think there's a lot to learn from these uh campaigns and others will see it i think it's hopefully these forums bring the type of conversation to the forefront that it's not it's not as simple as saying latinos are becoming more republican is more to say is this kind of this we have understood the dynamic and we've been seeing it for years again quay are it's a different type of democrat right and so uh it's what latinos won and ultimately um what whatever candidate is able to sell that is the candidate that will win so uh yeah that's the strategy and others will most likely will follow uh i think to the earlier point that this fantastic uh point about um trump being able to change the narrative um i think there was an appetite for that and sort of trump maybe even bump into this uh strategy i don't know how uh well thought out it was from the beginning but you just found this niche and exploit it and i think now you know trumpism will survive without trump so um i i i think yeah people will continue to emulate whatever works what i would add to that quickly is that i'm not a political strategist by any means i'm study human behavior but um i know like i've been talking to viscente gonzalez he felt that um sort of the national uh not the platform but the national narratives that the democratic party created weren't helpful to him with his particular constituency right so i think it's also about how local people running at these local levels i mean he's a national elected official is how do you underscore how do you just explain focus on different positions of the party that do resonate with those voters right but instead they're working with this kind of one way of talking about what the democratic party stands for that's very dominant through media through national politics and and they need to be able to adjust for their own voters and constituents um if if we're ending now i'd like to just say that i found a way of bringing lbj into the conversation as we're as we're at the presidential library but i can't take credit it's really um a retired professor for muti pan american gary mounts politics professor he said um but point out that um it was president johnson excuse me who taught in south texas as we know his legacy includes the war on poverty civil rights voting rights and um he passed medicare medicare and and and i mentioned all that because because in south texas in the valley there's there's the democrats and republicans have not fought on the issues because there's been a sort of one party rule democrats have never had to um make their case it's there's been other reasons family ties you know sort of other reasons why why you vote a certain way they've never had to explain their position so they've never championed they've never said this is our legacy as a party and and and locally today they don't say that they have been in power all these years and and the valley is growing fast we're the interstate has been developed we've got a um a regional university we've got international trade with a gateway to america and those things didn't just happen we didn't get the funding for our as louis knows very well we didn't get the funding for our universities uh because people wanted to help south texas and the border region elected officials working with the civil rights groups had to fight through the course to get it and we don't hear any any of that and so when the democrats don't even tell the voters who they what they represent you know that's shame on them but that's that's what's happened but that's because we haven't had to have any discourse maybe it'll change now they need to tell their story so yeah bring up bring our voices and sort of again like i said i i all all i want is for latinos to be taken seriously and uh and i think it's coming from an unexpected source but i think the attention is here and you know these these forms definitely are um an example of how we need to have these conversations and hopefully we get to have them at the national level too so thank you for sharing your time and expertise with us today if you are not yet a member of the future forum i encourage you to sign up on our website lbjfutureforum.org or come visit with us after members enjoy first access to events and happy hours networking opportunities and benefits at the lbj library upcoming events include an austin mayoral forum on october 28th at noon next week in this same space also on november 16th at noon we will host a virtual event examining the supreme court in light of recent major decisions right across the plaza the lbj school will be an early voting location starting october 24th through november 4th and will serve as an official voting location on election day november 8th parking is available in lot 38 the lbj library parking lot and the hours are 7 am to 7 pm i want to give a thank you to today's event organizers lauren sprain and louise figuero thank you well as sarah mcquacken and the entire lbj future forum board thank you again to today's speakers and finally thank you to our audience for engaging on today's most important policy matters i hope to see y'all again soon