The political arm of the largest Latino civil rights organization in the United States will officially support President Biden’s re-election Tuesday in the battleground state of Arizona, CBS News has learned.
The UnidosUS Action Fund will formally endorse the Biden-Harris ticket at an event in Phoenix that will also include the group announcing its support for Ruben Gallego, Congressman, the Democratic candidate in one of the nation’s most heated Senate races. Gallego is in a tight race with Republican Kari Lakean ally of former President Donald Trump who repeatedly pushed his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
“The choice for Latino voters is really clear,” Janet Murguía, president and CEO of UnidosUS, told CBS News in an interview before the approval.
“With Biden, we can move forward and continue moving forward on the path to progress and a better future,” Murguía said. “With Trump, we are returning to truly extreme policies and an economy that crushed Latino families when he was in office.”
Murguía said the decision to endorse Mr. Biden included policies that she said would benefit the Latino community, such as expanding the Affordable Care Act to include DACA recipients. Another factor is the threat posed by Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric, she added.
“He’s talking about mass deportations,” Murguía said. “Not just at the border, but across communities. It would harm families, destabilize communities and have a detrimental effect on our national economy.”
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The UnidosUS Action Fund will focus on mobilizing the more than 2 million Latinos living in the battleground state. In 2020, Mr. Biden won Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes, a narrow margin in which Hispanic voters played a critical role. One in four voters in Arizona in 2024 will be Latino.
According to a new poll released Monday by The New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Mr. Biden is behind Trump in Arizona and four other battleground states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and Georgia.
As the civil rights organization aims to achieve high Latino voter turnout in November, Murguía said there are obstacles in its path, including misinformation and lack of awareness.
“One of the biggest barriers to voter turnout has been the lack of investment in mobilizing Latino voters,” Murguía told CBS News.
“We saw in the last election that very few Latino voters were contacted by either party or the candidates to go out and register to vote or vote on Election Day .”
With this endorsement, UnidosUS is also calling on the Biden-Harris campaign to amplify its outreach efforts on the ground, arguing that it takes more than just traditional ads to reach Latino voters.
“That means good old knocking on the door and phone calls, in-person engagement, being present in our community,” Murguía said.
With six months until Election Day, UnidosUS will also focus on mobilizing Latino voters through get-out-the-vote efforts, such as door-to-door canvassing, phone calls, voter education initiatives voters, promoting its supported candidates and even providing voters with transportation to get to the polls. on election day.
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