Vice President Kamala Harris sought to pitch her candidacy for the nation’s highest office to Latino voters while delivering remarks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference in Washington on Wednesday.
In a 20-minute speech, Harris ran through many of the same themes and proposals she frequently touts on the campaign trail, with a specific focus on how it would impact Latino communities, a voting bloc that is expected to be influential this November.
The vice president also used her remarks on Wednesday to criticize her Republican rival for the White House, former President Donald Trump, for his administration’s family separation policy at the border, and his recent pledge on the campaign trail to carry out mass deportations of those who are in the country illegally.
“And while we fight to move our nation forward to a brighter future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will keep trying to pull us backward,” Harris said on Wednesday. “We all remember what they did to tear families apart, and now they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation – a mass deportation – in American history.”
Harris went on to tout her agenda on the economy, mentioning her proposals to crack down on price gouging in the food and grocery industries during times of crisis, offer down payment assistance to first-time home buyers and expand the Biden administration’s cap on the cost of prescription drugs like insulin from just those on Medicare to all Americans, noting a statistic that Latinos are 70% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes.
“For years, I have been proud to fight alongside the members and the leaders of this incredible caucus,” Harris said, adding that their work together has been about defending workers’ rights, expanding health care and forgiving student debt.
“CHC, our work together has always been guided by shared values and a shared vision,” the vice president said.
The vice president pledged to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants while also securing the border.
“We can do both, and we must do both,” Harris said.
She touched on abortion and health care as well, accusing Trump of wanting to end the Affordable Care Act and mocking the former president’s answer in last week’s debate in which he said he had the “concepts of a plan” for an alternative to the ACA. Trump last week said he would only repeal the health care law if he came up with something better.
This year, an estimated more than 36 million Latino voters will be eligible to cast a ballot in the general election, according to the Pew Research Center, an increase of nearly 4 million since 2020.
The voting bloc could prove critical this November in battleground states like Nevada and Arizona – where Latinos make up about 22% and 25% of the eligible voting population, respectively, according to the Pew Research Center. Recent polls and data from recent election cycles show Hispanic voters -- who have historically backed Democratic candidates -- may be increasingly more open to the GOP’s message.
While statistics from the most recent elections show Democrats still have a firm grip when it comes to the support of Latino voters, the margin by which Democrats have won among such communities has shrunk.
In 2020, Trump got the support of 38% of Latino voters to President Joe Biden’s 59%, according to the Pew Research Center. By contrast, Hillary Clinton won 66% of Latino voters in 2016 compared to Trump’s 28%.
Before Harris entered the race, polls showed a close race between Biden and Trump among Hispanic voters. Democrats are hoping the vice president will be able to rally such voters around her campaign.
A poll from The New York Times and Siena College released in June, the month before Biden dropped out, showed the current president leading Trump among Latino voters by just one percentage point when third-party candidates were not thrown in the mix. The New York Times and Siena College poll released this month, however, showed Harris holding a nine-percentage point lead over Trump among such voters in a head-to-head matchup.
Earlier this week, the Harris campaign launched a new push to reach Latino voters during Hispanic Heritage Month, spending $3 million on Spanish-language radio, leveraging a bilingual phone banking program and sending surrogates on the road to attend events, such as the Detroit Tigers Hispanic Heritage Tailgate.
Biden later Wednesday hosted a reception to mark Hispanic Heritage Month at the White House, during which he jabbed at Trump's comment that immigrants coming into the U.S. are “poisoning the blood of our country."
"We don't demonize immigrants, we don't single them out for attacks, we don't believe they are poisoning the blood of the country," Biden said. "We're a nation of immigrants and that's why we are so damn strong."
Biden also used his remarks at the reception to speak about November's election, calling it the most consequential of our lifetimes and criticizing "the other team."
"The other team doesn't see the world like we see it, they don't have the same attitude we have," Biden said. "They are the most closed-minded people I've ever dealt with."
He added that he was "so happy" about Harris "being upbeat" in her campaign. The vice president has sought to lean into the messages of joy and optimism on the campaign trail.
The president was introduced at Wednesday's reception in the White House East Room by actress and businessowner Jessica Alba.