Boston — Americans will vote on Tuesday in the midterm elections, which will decide which party will control the US Congress and decide where US government spending goes. Therefore, Latin America and Latinos, in particular, are a relevant part of the game.
At stake are 435 seats in the House of Representatives, where Democrats control the chamber but five seats could swing to the Republicans.
In the Senate, 35 seats out of 100 are being contested. For this legislature, there is a 50-50 split, and Democrats currently control it with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote.
Elsewhere, there are 36 governorship contests, including in all four states bordering Mexico: California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. In general, Latino participation in these elections is expected to break records and, therefore, influence the results.
Latino power
University of Minnesota political scientist and professor of Public Affairs Larry Jacobs told Bloomberg Línea that Spanish-speaking voters are one of the fastest growing participants in the American electorate and could have “a potentially decisive influence on the results.”
“The large Latino population in South Florida and Texas could very well decide the outcome of these midterm elections,” Jacobs said.
Leonardo Paz, a researcher at the Center for Prospection and International Intelligence at Brazil’s Fundação Getúlio Vargas, drew two possible scenarios for the midterm elections that will choose the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
For him, a more Republican Congress may pay less attention to Latin America and be less concerned about what is being done in the region than the Democrats.
“A more Republican Congress -- and it’s a more classic Republican, a little different from the Republican ‘a la Trump’ -- is a Congress that pays a little less attention to Latin America and is a little tougher on Latinos in general on American soil itself,” he said.
“Notice that in these last years of the Bolsonaro government, the US government, via Congress, has criticized the Brazilian government, directed at human rights, or concern about the elections, or the climate. But always the letter that came from the US Congress to criticize Brazil came from a group of Democrat congress members, and not Republicans,” Paz said.
For the region as a whole, Paz says the countries of the world became less concerned about criticism from the United States over, especially regarding human rights and climate issues. “And the Trump administration was a good example of that,” he said.
“Democrats are more critical and more active when it comes to pressuring countries on the climate, democracy, and human rights agenda.”
While US Democrat congress members are seen pushing harder on issues like foreign policy in Latin America, domestically they are more flexible with the rights of Latinos, especially in relation to the so-called ‘Dreamers’, Latinos who were taken as children to the US and have lived their entire lives in the country.
“A more Democratic US Congress tends to increase the rights of these people by bringing them closer to the rights of all Americans, while Republicans try to slow down that process more. This is also true in immigration policy,” Paz said.
A Congress that debates a more Republican immigration policy produces generally tougher, more restrictive policy, while a Democrat tends to be more flexible, according to the professor.
“However, the Biden administration, in my opinion, didn’t go as far to overturn or relax the tougher policies that the Trump administration did. But a more Democratic congress generally tends to move more in that direction.”
Paz also said that a relevant concern about a Republican Congress has to do with acting for voter suppression, that is, creating laws that limit the ability of certain people to vote in the United States.
“If so-called felon reenfranchisement or people who have been arrested lose the right to vote, in some ways that hits Latinos more proportionally than white Americans,” he said. “If there is a federal targeting of voter suppression policies, which are usually local policies, it may increase the impact on Latinos, who in general are more vulnerable to these tougher voter restriction policies.”
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