Por Favor Vote Hoy-- PorTodo Nuestro Bien

This isn't a new poll but it could be the numbers we see on our TV screens tonight. Say a prayer. A result like that in Texas today is going to be dependent on, among other things, Latino turnout. Virtually all polling models assume Latinos will not turn out in large numbers. If that changes today, say goodbye to Ted Cruz and... HELLO BETO! Nearly 39% of Texans are Latino. BETO will win if they vote today in larger numbers than has been usual. AND, a big Latino turnout in Texas today could also help in more than a few districts with big Hispanic populations-- here's who has the most to gain:

• TX-02- 29.6% Todd Litton
• TX-07- 31.5% Lizzie Fletcher
• TX-10- 25.9% Mike Siegel
• TX-21- 27.7% Joseph Kopser
• TX-23- 70.8% Gina Jones
• TX-27- 50.8% Eric Holguin
• TX-32- 28.3% Colin Allred

California is another state with a huge Hispanic population-- like Texas, around 39%-- where an oversized Latino turnout today could be determinative, maybe even electing a progressive senator, Kevin de León, instead of reelecting the conservative Dianne Feinstein, with a shameful anti-immigrant history unworthy of our state. In California congressional races, a big Latino turnout will make all the difference in 7 close, key races:

• CA-10- 40.0% Josh Harder
• CA-21- 72.1% TJ Cox
• CA-22- 45.9% Andrew Janz (Devin Nunes' district)
• CA-25- 37.9% Katie Hill
• CA-39- 34.6% Gil Cisneros
• CA-49- 25.7% Mike Levin
• CA-50- 29.7% Ammar Campa-Najjar

And then there are the key Senate races in Arizona (30.1% Latino) and Nevada (27.1% Latino) which have both tightened up in the last month.



So... has Trump been enough of a determinant to rouse Latino voters up in big numbers tomorrow? All cycle, the answer has been a disappointing "NO!" But that seems to have changed in the last few weeks. Yesterday, Chris Kahn and Dan Trotta, reporting for Reuters, wrote that a new IPSOS tracking poll shows a 
marked increase in Latino enthusiasm for voting this week.

Hispanics are more interested in voting this year than in the last U.S. congressional midterm elections in 2014 and their enthusiasm outpaces that of all U.S. adults, according to a Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll released on Sunday.

The poll also found likely Hispanic voters nearly twice as inclined to support Democrats for the House of Representatives as Republicans in Tuesday's elections.

Voter registration groups are using Republican President Donald Trump's nationalist, anti-immigrant rhetoric as an opportunity to drive up Latino enthusiasm. In an illustration of their passion, one group that is part of an alliance that has reached out to more than 1 million potential voters in Arizona took its name from the Spanish word for "fight."

...Latinos could play a crucial role in several races, from tight Senate battles in Arizona and Texas to Florida's close Senate and governor's races. In California, the flourishing Latino population has helped put in play some Republican-controlled House districts Democrats hope to flip.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken Sept. 1 to Oct. 29, found that 36 percent of Hispanic voters said they were "certain" to vote, up from 27 percent in 2014. That increase is nearly double the five percentage point rise in voter enthusiasm among all Americans over the same period, the poll showed.

Enthusiasm appears especially high among Hispanic Democrats.

Forty-two percent of Hispanic Democrats said they were "certain" to vote, up from 29 percent in 2014. Among likely Hispanic voters, 60 percent said they will vote for a Democratic candidate for the House, and 32 percent would back a Republican.

Hispanics are a politically diverse group, with 55 percent of likely voters identifying as Democrats, 31 percent as Republicans and 12 percent as independent, the poll showed.

Just over half, 53 percent, of likely Hispanic voters said they were "very motivated" to pick a candidate for Congress who opposes Trump, compared with 43 percent of all likely voters, 75 percent of likely Democratic voters and 9 percent of likely Republican voters.

...America's 29 million Latinos account for nearly 13 percent of eligible voters this year, but their turnout rate has declined since 2006, according to the Pew Research Center. Only 27 percent of eligible Latinos voted in the last midterm elections in 2014, and only 16 percent of those aged 18 to 35, Pew said.

Running For Congress-- In America's Reddest District

Texas' 13th congressional district, the panhandle, is the reddest in the country. The huge district, which stretches from the Oklahoma panhandle and the New Mexico border 450 miles east to the Dallas exurbs, includes Amarillo and Wichita Falls. The population has been declining or stagnant for 3 decades and the PVI is a horrifying R+33. Although Trump didn't do as well as Romney had (80.2%), it was close-- 79.9%. Hillary took 16.9% of the vote. Sad. Mac Thornberry, a complete Trump enabler and rubber-stamp, was first elected in 1994 and he's been re-elected with around 75% each cycle-- except for the cycles he has no Democratic challenger-- as in 2016, 2014, and 2012.

This year 70 year old Greg Sagan is running. As of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline, Thornberry had spent $1,159,122 to Sagan's $23,594. Last week Hamilton Nolan published a piece on Sagan in Splinter News, The Loneliest Democrat in America. Sagan doesn't "stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Ever. Nor does he wear an American flag lapel pin. Ever. He prefers a small golden pin of the Constitution, etched with the phrase 'We The People.' 'I don’t have to pledge my allegiance. I’m a Vietnam vet. I’ve already demonstrated it,' he says. 'None of these symbols of America mean anything to me any more.'... When he campaigns he wears a navy blue suit jacket and a blue name tag that reads: “Greg Sagan. Democrat for U.S. House. District 13.” Even though he had a column in the local newspaper for 14 years, he needs the name tag, because he hasn’t run any television ads. He hasn’t put up any billboards." He's been "driving around the district for the past year, holding town halls, asking people what they want. His driver is his wife Dianne, who is also his campaign manager. The fact that he is, statistically, the Democrat with the biggest uphill battle in the nation does not appear to bother him a bit."

Greg Sagan grew up in a military family. His dad moved them to Amarillo in 1960. In those pre-Southern Strategy days, it was a solidly Democratic city, though just as conservative as it is now. Sagan went and fought in Vietnam as a young man, did corporate work in the 1970s, then returned to the Navy in 1980, working as an HR consultant before leaving the military for good in 1984. He studied economics in graduate school. He did consulting for nuclear power plants. He moved back to Amarillo in 1996, got married, wrote weekly columns in the local paper, a rare (more or less) liberal voice around town. A few years ago, he retired. Then Donald Trump got elected.

Sagan had never thought of going into politics before. He is not exactly the activist type. He has the sort of strong but silent moral code that builds up in families that serve in the military for generation after generation. “The people I feel an affinity for are people like me who, out of the best intentions, went off to a terrible war, did their best in that war, and came off feeling guilty about it,” he says. His entire career path-- military, strategic consulting, economics-- has led him to value precision, competency, and dependability. It is not hard to see how a man like Donald Trump offends virtually every sensibility that he possesses. “There’s been nobody more dangerous in the White House in my lifetime,” he says. “And the Republican Party, as I feared they would, turned into a bunch of facilitators of his conduct.”

Sagan more or less unilaterally decided to run for Congress, informed the state Democratic Party, and was essentially told: great, good luck. Neither the state nor the national party are giving him money. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has offered nothing. The most outside support he’s gotten was from Joe Biden, who wished him well. This laissez-faire approach by the party is just fine with Sagan. He has a plan. He is ceding the political money and advertising fight to his opponent in favor of a grassroots (read: he and Dianne) effort to turn out the vote, by targeting young people and black people, LGBTQ people and Latinos and women and people who work hard and don’t make enough money. These are the people he sees as his base. They are not served by the Republican Party; they constitute a majority of the residents of the district; and, by and large, they do not vote. Sagan is encouraged by statewide polls that show Texans in general becoming more friendly to Democrats over the past year; but since no one has bothered to conduct real up-to-date polling in his hopelessly one-sided district, the efficacy of his bare-bones campaign strategy can only be judged when the votes are tallied.

It is not as though Mac Thornberry is an unassailable foe. He is a native Texan who has by now spent more time in Washington than in the family ranching business that features prominently in his biography. He was elected to Congress in 1994, in the “Contract With America” days, promising to serve no more than 12 years in office. That was 24 years ago. This fact is much grumbled about in the district. Still, Thornberry is comfortable in his seat. In 2016, running only against a Libertarian and a Green Party candidate, he won with nearly 90 percent of the vote. But Sagan points out that given the area’s low voter turnout, even that margin means that far less than half of the potential voters in the district actually voted for Thornberry. “If I can get half of the people who didn’t vote last time to come out and vote for me, I win,” Sagan says. It sounds so straightforward, in the same way that a pledge to climb Mount Everest does.

Notwithstanding the daunting party numbers in the district, there are things to be learned here. It’s not unreasonable to see Greg Sagan as a Frankenstein’s-monster type of Democratic candidate, assembled out of the ideal pieces of many different constituencies in the party. On one hand, he’s an old white man with a background in the corporate world; on the other, he uses that technical expertise to argue in detail for single-payer healthcare and leftist pro-worker economic policies to fight inequality. He carries a handgun, but he favors gun control. He’s a military veteran with a decorated family history, but he calls the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq “two magnificently myopic disastrous decisions.” He discusses the dangers of climate change with ranchers. He speaks Spanish. He dismisses Trump’s border wall as the idea of a “dope.” And he is zealous on the topic of good government, with specific plans to do away with gerrymandering, roll back Citizens United, and expand voter registration. He is not a California Democrat or a Chicago Democrat or a New York Democrat. He is an Amarillo Democrat. To a degree remarkable for an aspiring politician but unremarkable for a Texan, he truly seems to be guided only by his own logic and convictions to the stubborn exclusion of all other concerns. If the Democratic Party ever decided to really try and compete in the reddest part of this country, it might consider getting behind a man like him.

One remarkable thing about Republicans in Texas is that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, they believe they are the reasonable ones, and everyone else is crazy. Nowhere in the state is more sure of this fact than the 13th District. No one in Texas has put this psychic orientation to better use than Ted Cruz, a man who has a tight grip on the state’s Republican base even though he is the least Texan-seeming person you an imagine, a man who drips insincerity like a candle drips wax.

On a recent Friday evening, hundreds of people-- poor people, prosperous people, families dressed in church clothes, college girls in short skirts taking duckface Snapchat pics in front of the #MAGA shirt table-- filed into an outdoor amphitheater at the Amarillo Botanical Gardens, past the Cruz-branded #TexasCruzer RV, to rally behind Ted. “This is a battle between Texas and socialism!” Cruz thundered, to the hearty approval of the crowd.

The threat of socialism to the government of Amarillo seems scant at best. The amount that Americans fret about socialism is inversely proportional to the chance that they have ever met a socialist. Yet Cruz is a master at channeling the deep Republican conviction that they are a reasonable island in a world gone mad. His most effective refrain about his opponent’s policies (or at least, policies that O’Rourke has said he is “open to,” like abolishing ICE): “That’s just crazy talk!”

The reliability of this critique is interesting when you consider it is coming from the same organization that produced the official 2018 platform of the Republican Party of Texas. There may be no better document for pegging the current sanity level of the redder portions of America’s political spectrum. Among the illuminating sentences included in the platform: a commitment to “the traditional marriage of a natural man and a natural woman”; “We oppose all efforts to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant”; “No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to sexual orientation (change) counseling for self-motivated youth and adults”; “We support the defunding of ‘climate justice’ initiatives, the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency, and repeal of the Endangered Species Act”; “We believe the Minimum Wage Act should be repealed”; “We oppose mandates on personal firearms storage”; “we believe the Department of Education should be abolished”; “We demand the State Legislature pass a law prohibiting the teaching of sex education”; “The official position of the Texas schools with respect to transgenderism is that there are only two genders: male and female”; and much more along these lines. The Texas Republican Party platform outlines an ideal state that is just one vast, heavily armed oil field, punctuated by churches preaching that homosexuality is a sin.

“Having an educated population” is also one of the platform’s stated principles.

With 55,000 registered voters encompassing most of Amarillo, Potter County is the urban heart of TX-13. The man responsible for ensuring that all of these people turn out to keep Republicans in power is Daniel Rogers, the chairman of the Potter County Republican Party. I meet him in the office of the property management firm he runs in Amarillo. He sits behind a large, cluttered desk wearing a large, white cowboy hat with a Ted Cruz button on the front and explains why the people here are so heavily Republican.

“They believe in hard work and traditional American pride and values,” he says. “We believe in property rights, and we believe in individual liberty and responsibility. It’s ranching and farming and agriculture is our primary economic driver. Those things people understand when you’re in those businesses, it kinda gives you a good perspective and grounding to understand really what’s important in life. Honesty. You don’t take what’s not yours and give it to somebody else. That doesn’t make sense to us out here. To me, it’s theft. So you have one party that just believes in theft… it’s foreign to [people here]. They can’t understand why that makes sense. They’re logical.” He rattles off the reasons why he believes Trump’s support in the county is strong: tax cuts, draining the swamp, “standing up to foreign countries.” In general, he says, people care about property rights and limited government far more than they care about social issues like gay marriage. But immigration is a strong concern of his.

“I think it’s huge. Especially when you talk to the black community and the Hispanic community, they love Trump because he’s doing something about it. Because those are the two groups that are negatively affected most by pouring in the aliens,” he says. “We’re all one big family up here. And that’s the way it oughta be. But when you bring in people illegally, they don’t assimilate, they don’t learn the language, they congregate in the one area. It’s bad for them, and that’s what creates the conflict. Cause they’re not becoming Americans.”

Rogers, a direct and open man, shares his thoughts on Democrats with little prompting. He suspects that much illegal immigration is a plot by Democrats “to bring in criminal elements into this country, that they want to subvert it.” And their plans do not stop there.

“I believe personally that the left’s ultimate goal is a dictatorship. That’s what they want,” he says. Indeed, his own motivation for being involved in politics is primarily one of civic duty-- to see to it that the hard but necessary work of self-governance is done well. “You take the Middle East, they’ve had strong dictators, because those people don’t wanna mess with ruling themselves. Because it’s hard. Takes a lot of time. I don’t like to have to do it. It’s a lot of work. But what’s the alternative?”

Ensuring that the local population stays Republican for years to come is also the job of people like Brennan Leggett, the vice president of the Amarillo Young Republicans. Leggett, an excitable 33-year-old brimming with diffuse political enthusiasm, was born and raised in Amarillo and works for his family’s fur and leather business. He calls himself a “unicorn of politics.” He supported Barack Obama in 2008, and then swung to working to elect Trump in 2016—motivated, he says, by Trump’s personal magnetism and the conviction that he would be a “wrecking ball” that would upend the established political order. He is somewhat less enamored of Mac Thornberry. “When he first ran, he said ‘I’m just going for a few years and I’m gonna come back and be a rancher.’ That was decades ago,” he says.

Still, both Leggett and Rogers are so sure of Thornberry’s reelection that they seem to have only the haziest idea who Greg Sagan even is. The game plan is simple: Republicans here will turn out for Trump, and they will turn out for Ted Cruz. Mac Thornberry does not need any real enthusiasm behind him. He can plan to just coast to Congress over and over again on sheer numerical supremacy. (His office could not point me to any public campaign events in his district during the entire week I was there.) How confident is Thornberry? He hasn’t bothered to update his campaign website since the last election.

What is it about the Texas panhandle that makes it the reddest place from sea to shining sea? The region sits at the center of a conservative trifecta. It has a strong military presence, both in active duty soldiers and major defense contractors; it has a strong Christian presence; and its economy is largely driven by oil and gas and ranching, two industries that tend to see government regulation as an existential threat. Add to this a frontier ethic that many people described to me as “we don’t like being told what to do,” and you have an area that is driven by the flag, the gun, and the cross.

At the same time, the characteristic headstrong resistance to any dictates from above could just as easily plant the seeds of anger towards the governing party. Steve Land, the head of the Potter County Democratic Party, believes, like Greg Sagan, that increasing voter turnout among everyone who’s not a white Republican can lead to real political change in Amarillo. He holds what seems like a genuine conviction that the backlash against Trump combined with Beto O’Rourke-style, unapologetic progressive campaigns can begin to turn even the Texas panhandle purple. But he’s equally pessimistic that the Republicans who are already entrenched here can ever be persuaded to change. “People in Amarillo are not used to having a difference of opinion. It’s been so heavily Republican for so long,” Land says. “The identity politics are involved. Whatever the Democrats say, I don’t think makes any difference to a Republican. He will not listen.”

If that is true, the math for Greg Sagan-- and for the Greg Sagans of the foreseeable future-- is grim. The blue wave may not break on the prairies of Amarillo. To do what Greg Sagan is doing takes something more than optimism. It takes an irrational sense of duty. “I really do see congressional representatives as being servants of the people, and not their masters,” Sagan says. “I think whenever we lose sight of that, we lose our legitimacy. And right after that we lose our voters.”

If the Navy man who has volunteered to be the most hopeless candidate in America has something to teach the Democratic Party, it is that in a battle, every ship must be manned. Even if it is bound to sink.

Compared to Greg Sagan, Mike Siegel is practically a shoe-in. His R+9 Austin to Houston corridor district is suddenly popping up on electoral maps where it didn't exist even one month ago. The DCCC ignored it completely-- probably a good thing, since it allowed a progressive to win the nomination without their toxic interference. Now the anti-red wave is starting to lap at Trump enabler Michael McCaul's ankles. The week started for Siegel with a nice endorsement by living legend Dolores Huerta. Take a look-- and consider contributing to Mike's campaign here:

Happy 87th, Dolores Huerta

Most, but not all Republicans are getting the crap kicked out of them at town halls with their constituents the way Jeff Flake did last week. In fact, the conservative Republicans going to the town halls of the Freedom Caucus members-- who Trump has threatened to primary-- have been cheering their congressmen for standing up to Trump and Ryan. Town hall addict Justin Amash has been harvesting plaudits at Trump's expense all year. But now, according to a report by Matthew Rosza in Salon other Freedom Caucus members have been experiencing the applause most Republicans aren't seeing much of these days.

But you know who is seeing a lot of applause? Dolores Huerta, who turned 87 last week and is still fighting as if her life depended on it. She celebrated at the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival, which screened a new documentary about her life, Dolores.

Huerta is one of the great heroes of our time — a leader who, despite being eclipsed by her fellow warrior Cesar Chavez, deserves to be in the national pantheon alongside such legends as Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, with whom she made common cause.

When Huerta walked onstage after the film, a bolt shot through the sold-out Castro Theatre audience, as if an iconic figure had just stepped out of a history book. But as director Peter Bratt reminded the audience-- after leading a rousing version of “Happy Birthday” in honor of Huerta, who turned 87 the next day-- “there is nothing past tense about Dolores.”

This became immediately clear when I spoke with Huerta in the upstairs theater lounge before the film. She was eager to talk about the latest burning issues, including the battle to protect sanctuary cities. San Francisco’s pioneering role as a protector of immigrants is “very important,” she told me. “The city continues to send a message to the most vulnerable people that they are not alone. I want to thank the leaders and the people of San Francisco for setting a national example.”

Huerta doesn’t harbor resentment against the city where she nearly lost her life during a 1988 demonstration against presidential candidate George Bush after her spleen was ruptured by baton-jabbing riot police outside the St. Francis Hotel. Thanks to the legal settlement she made with San Francisco, Huerta continues to receive $2,000 a month from the city. “That’s what I live on, along with my Social Security-- you don’t get rich from being a union organizer,” she said, smiling. “So thanks to San Francisco, I can still do my political work.”

Luis Valdez, playwright and El Teatro Campesino founder, told me Huerta was roughed up more than once during her long service on the farmworker battlegrounds. Valdez recalled the time she was confronted by anti-UFW thugs at a Los Angeles produce market where she and other union activists had gone to block the unloading of scab-picked grapes.

“They picked her up and threw her off a loading dock onto a concrete floor several feet below. She landed on her back. We were furious and ready to fight. But she picked herself up and said, ‘No, I’m all right, don’t do anything.’ And then she got right back into the supervisor’s face. That sort of example gave all of us in the farmworkers’ movement the courage to be nonviolent. She will go down in our nation’s history as one of our greatest leaders.”

The only way to move history forward, Huerta says in the film, is “to have total commitment” to the cause. But her passionate dedication to “La Causa” came with a heavy personal price for Huerta and her 11 children, who often felt abandoned by their mother. The interviews with several of her grown sons and daughters give the film some of its most emotionally raw moments. “The movement became her most important child,” says one of her daughters. “I realize the importance of the work, but I was also very jealous of it. So there’s scars there.”

But Huerta has lived long enough to reconcile with her children, several of whom have followed her path of activism. Camila Chavez, her daughter by Cesar’s brother Richard, is executive director of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which trains community organizers. And Dolores’ son Emilio Huerta is running for Congress as a Democratic candidate in a Central Valley district.

Many relatives, friends and fellow activists poured into the Castro for the screening of Dolores, which had the feeling of a homecoming celebration. Director Bratt-- who has the lean good looks and charismatic smile of his brother, actor Benjamin Bratt-- is a hometown boy. “The Mission District was an epicenter of the farmworker struggle when I grew up here,” said Bratt, the son of a Peruvian immigrant mother who was a nurse and community activist. “We have a particular pride that this film came out of San Francisco.”

Dolores was the brainchild of another local hero, Carlos Santana, who financed the film out of his own pocket. “He came to me and said, ‘Dolores is not getting any younger-- it’s now or never,’” said Bratt. “Carlos calls the film the greatest song he’s ever written.”

In fact, “Dolores” is packed with more music-- including salsa, jazz and protest songs-- than you’d expect from a political documentary, since Huerta adores music and wanted to be a dancer when she was a girl. But it was one more thing she gave up for La Causa. “I decided that I loved people more than I loved to dance,” she said.

The exuberantly inspiring Dolores makes you want to march and dance. We need to do both these days. The film opens in theaters in September after making the festival circuit.

They're Bringing Drugs, They're Bringing Crime, They're Rapists

You might not know it from looking at him-- with the $60,000 weave, all the plastic surgery and the cosmetics-- but Wednesday old man Trump turned 70. It was also the first anniversary of his descent down the escalator at Trump Tower in NYC to make his ugly, racist speech against Hispanic-Americans, a speech which has wrecked the Republican brand (again) among the fastest-growing voter demagraphic in the country. In fact, what Trump's vicious speech did was accelerate that growth, as Hispanics flocked to registered to vote in greater numbers than anyone can recall.

Patricia Sullivan reported for the Washington Post that People for the American Way used the occasion to launch a new Spanish language ad (above) in 8 swing states-- Virginia, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. They kicked off their campaign in Virginia with a joint appearance of civil rights icon Dolores Huerta and the former 1966 Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, who Trump called "Miss Piggy" regarding her weight and "Miss Housekeeping" regarding her accent. Today the Venezuelan-born Machado is on the verge of her American citizenship with will become a reality in time for her to vote against Trump in November. "I hope," Machado told the media, "my testimonial will help everyone to make a good decision in November."

In Virginia, expected to be a key battleground state, Latinos make up 8.7 percent of the population and 4.6 percent of eligible voters, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Nationwide, Latinos account for 17 percent of the population but only about 11 percent of eligible voters, according to a 2014 study by Pew.

“In a tight election, the Latino community can decide who wins,” J. Walter Tejada, a former Arlington County Board member and the chairman of the Virginia Latino Advisory Commission, said at the news conference. “To Mr. Trump, we want to declare a message that hate will not win.”

Del. Alfonso H. Lopez (D-Arlington), the first Latino elected to Virginia’s House of Delegates, added “A career built on boorish behavior, xenophobia and division is not worthy of Virginia or the United States.”

At the news conference, a coalition of speakers whose families came from Mexico, Venezuela and El Salvador urged Latinos to unite against Trump.

“During his journey, he has attacked everyone: Muslims, women, disabled people and immigrants,” said Dolores Huerta, 86, who is co-founder with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

“This person is very dangerous to the United States of America,” Huerta said. “I’ve never seen any candidate for president who has so overtly attacked people with such gusto . . . and a portion of the people who follow him are really unstable.”

She made a connection between Trump’s statements about undocumented immigrants and Latinos and the massacre of 49 people-- including many gay Latinos-- at an Orlando nightclub Sunday morning. Trump’s rhetoric, she speculated, could inflame other acts of violence.

According to a poll released Wednesday by the Center for American Progress, the top concern of both Latinas and African American women in the United States remains economic security for their families. Among Latinas, 21 percent of those queried said immigration and deportation worries were the second-most important concern.

Machado, who has two daughters and works as an actress, said she loves the United States but still remembers how insulted she felt 20 years ago when, she says, Trump mocked her appearance and background.

Trump has confirmed pressing Machado to lose weight, and according to Business Insider, he called her “an eating machine” in an interview with radio personality Howard Stern.

Referring to the “Miss Housekeeping” moniker, Machado said, “That’s how he called me in front of his friends, to make fun of me.”

“Then, I thought it was an insult,” she said. “Now, I think it’s an honor” because of the hard work of immigrant housekeepers and nannies.

“Everybody in America needs to open their eyes,” Machado said. “We don’t need more divisions in this country.”

Alicia Machado sobrevivió al racismo y humillación de Donald Trump

The biggest population-center of Venezuelan-Americans in the U.S. lives in South Florida, more specifically in Doral near Miami International Airport in the 25th congressional district. FL-25 is currently represented by Trump supporter, Mario Diaz-Balart, the only Miami area congressmember to be backing Trump. Blue America has endorsed Dr. Alina Valdes in her bid to replace Diaz-Balart. This morning we asked her to comment on this effort by People for the American Way, Dolores Huerta and Alicia Machado. She didn't mince words, immediately making it clear she sees Trump as "a vile little man with delusions of grandeur and an exaggerated ego to go along with his insecurities. He belittles others to give himself a sense of superiority that could only come from a man with no moral compass. Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has taken advantage of people he finds inferior by calling them names and then saying how wonderful he treats the Hispanics because he has employed so many." Alina on a tear:

His hatred of anything not white, male and straight has been broadcast time after time for all to hear but yet he has his "uneducated" sheeple following him and believing he can do all that he says. His Trump Hotel in Doral, the very same city with a large population of Venezuelans, is now in foreclosure. He has also stiffed many workers and contractors by underpaying or not paying them at all. This is the very same man who claims to be worth $10 billion but refuses to show his tax returns. My suspicion is that if he does, it will show him to be the liar that we know he is and that he has probably never paid any taxes using loopholes to get out of his civic responsibility. This is one of the best examples of corporate welfare which continues to plague our American democracy. In spite of all this, the incumbent Republican in FL-25, a Cuban American representing a large Latino population, has stated that he will vote for Trump. The mere thought of supporting a man for President with such hateful rhetoric against your own people should be evidence enough that Mr. Diaz-Balart is part of the problem and I am the solution.

Have you contributed to Alina Valdes' campaign yet? Don't you think we need someone like her in Congress... instead of Mario Diaz-Balart?

Bernie Sanders, Integrity & the Nevada Caucus "English Only" Controversy

Dolores Huerta, one of the great Latina activists and a Hillary Clinton surrogate

by Gaius Publius

If Clinton wins, she'll need the Sanders supporters in November. Is the the way to woo them?

I hadn't planned to write about this, the dust-up raised by actress America Ferrara and Delores Huerta, one of the great Latina activists and long-time Clinton supporter, supposedly about Sanders voters yelling "English only" during one of the Nevada caucuses. But the story is just so ... well, you can supply the word after you read.

I'm going to give you three pieces of it — what was alleged to have happened, what really happened, and a bit from Democracy Now about the 2008 primary against Barack Obama. Then my thoughts about integrity and this election.

What Was Initially Alleged

The source of the dust-up is America Ferrara, followed quickly by Huerta herself. From Snopes.com:

CLAIM: Supporters of Bernie Sanders shouted "English only" at civil rights activist Dolores Huerta during one Nevada caucus event, ostensibly objecting to a translation of remarks into Spanish.

Snopes rates this claim "FALSE." More background via Snopes. It started, with a tweet from America Ferrara and a follow-on affirmation by Huerta:

Harrah's casino site- Bernie supporters chant "English-only" to stop civil rights leader @DoloresHuerta from providing Spanish translation.

— America Ferrera (@AmericaFerrera) February 20, 2016

Here's the affirmation:

I offered to translate & Bernie supporters chanted English only! We fought too long & hard to be silenced Si Se Puede! #ImwithHer #NVcaucus

— Dolores Huerta (@DoloresHuerta) February 20, 2016

Snopes again:

ORIGIN: On 20 February 2016, the Nevada Democratic caucuses ended in a victory for Hillary Clinton. Not long after that, actress America Ferrera tweeted that that supporters of Bernie Sanders shouted "English only!" at longtime civil rights activist Dolores Huerta (who had apparently offered to translate from English to Spanish at an event at Harrah's casino on the Las Vegas strip), objecting to a translation of remarks from English to Spanish ... Huerta initially didn't specify how she identified the chanters as Sanders supporters.

For the truth, let's go to the videotape.

What Actually Happened

The problem is that someone took a video of the whole caucus, which shows something different than claimed. That video is here — start listening at 53:30 and stop at about 55:30.

Note first, at about 53:30, that the audience expresses a need for Spanish translation, then that Huerta is put forward as the translator, but many object to her because she's so strongly pro-Clinton (the word "surrogate" is shouted). This is also clear from the moderator's response (54:18), who says (at 55:00) that there are enough Spanish speakers in the crowd that if Huerta slants the translation in a "pro-Clinton" direction, they will know it. By the way, note during the crowd reaction, a voice clearly saying, "Hey! You have to get up there now!" (at 54:25). It's unclear who the voice is addressing, but the urgency is unmistakable.

The crowd is not happy with that solution, so the moderator says "OK, we're going forward in English only" (55:18 and following), a decision which the crowd cheers. Only the moderator says the words "English only," and the context is entirely different that what was alleged by Ferrara and Huerta.

About this confrontation, there are a number of other eyewitnesses, including actors Susan Sarandon and Gaby Hoffmann, who affirm what the video shows.

Another commenter, Angus Johnston writing at StudentActivism.net, has this to say:

Rather than check on procedure, try to find a neutral translator, or pause the proceedings so that the two sides can come up with a joint plan, the chair is abdicating his responsibility to oversee the process, allowing whoever rushes the stage first to take a major role in the running of the vote. People start shouting “No!” and jeering him. Apparently referring to Huerta, someone yells out “She’s a surrogate!” Near the video mic, you hear someone say tensely, “You have to get up there now.” (On another video of the confrontation, you can hear someone shouting “Neutral! Neutral!” at this point.)

I don't think Huerta is the doer here. I think she, a civil rights icon and yes, a Clinton surrogate, was put forward by the crowd, and then the incident was spun, starting, it seems, with America Ferrara's tweet. Only then did Huerta agree with the characterization, both on twitter and later to a ThinkProgress reporter. I don't think it helps Huerta's good reputation, however, that she so easily fell into the Clinton-camp mischaracterization of these events.

Out of this, we know two things. One, that the non-event was immediately and falsely spun to taint Sanders voters. Second, that this opportunistic mischaracterization would have worked, absent a video tape or a cell phone recording that disproved it. Ask yourself, what would the news be like yesterday and today if this story were unchallengeable? A rush of Sanders spokespeople to apologize perhaps? 

Which tells you something about the ground on which this contest is being fought, and who primarily occupies that ground.

Delores Huerta, Speaking for Clinton in 2008

As a side note about that "ground on which this campaign is fought," I want to offer with this, a find by Daily Kos diarist VL Baker. This is a segment from a Democracy Now interview with Huerta, speaking on behalf of Clinton, and Federico Pena, former head of Transportation under Bill Clinton, now representing Barack Obama. The moderator is Amy Goodman. Remember the context; this is the 2008 Democratic primary.

From the transcript (my emphasis; I've added elisions, but feel free to read the whole segment at the link):

FEDERICO PENA: Well, Amy and Juan, good morning. Let me say good morning to my good friend, Dolores Huerta. We’ve been friends for many, many years.

Let me be very succinct in telling the audience why I’m supporting Barack Obama. [He then summarizes a stump-speech list] ... And I think it’s that kind of good judgment that the American people want, and I certainly want, in the next president.

DOLORES HUERTA: Well, I don’t know about his judgment. I just want to mention one thing in particular. ...

There was a big issue, if you will recall, where we had a woman who — in Chicago, Elvira Arellano, who refused to be deported, and she was undocumented. She was in sanctuary for twelve months, for an entire year, right there in Chicago, where Obama lives. The people who did that campaign, these were the same ones that organized the big marches in Chicago, went to see Obama to get some support for Elvira Arellano. He [Obama] not only refused to help them, but he didn’t even bother to go see Elvira. ... Obama never, never lifted a finger to help her, as he never did when we had two Latinos that had been unjustly incarcerated for a murder that they did not commit. Again, a big campaign to free these two young men from prison. They were ultimately freed. But when they went to see Senator Obama, he refused to help them.

I have been a civil rights activist like this all of my life, and I have been to Chicago many times for many different campaigns that the community there —- the Latino community was there. I have, to this day, to meet Mr. Obama. I have never encountered him in any of these big campaigns that we have done in Chicago on different issues. And, as I say, I have never yet to meet the man. And so, I don’t know about his -—

AMY GOODMAN: Did Senator Clinton weigh in — Dolores Huerta, did Senator Clinton weigh in in either of those cases?

DOLORES HUERTA: Well, let me — yeah, let me just say this, that this is a — we’re talking about Chicago. We’re talking about the third largest Latino area outside of Mexico City, right?

FEDERICO PENA: Can I —-

DOLORES HUERTA: But Hillary doesn’t live in Chicago. ...

That seems ... awkward ... but there's more:

FEDERICO PENA: ... let me interrupt and correct the misimpression that my good friend Dolores just left. I’ve spoken to the senator about this case and his staff. [Obama's] staff met with this woman twice. The reason she got special exemption years ago with Senator Durbin’s help was because she had a special medical condition. That special medical condition went away. She was no longer subject to a unique law that had to be passed specifically on her behalf, and that’s why it wasn’t done. So it’s clearly not the case.

"Misimpression" is indeed kind, but he's being kind for a reason.

This Is Not About Dolores Huerta; It's About the Campaign Style She's Supporting

Dolores Huerta, like John Lewis, has a greatness in her past that can never be erased. She co-founded the United Farm Workers union and led them until 1999. This is not about Ms. Heurta but the style of the campaign with which she has associated herself.

I'll be blunt. Among other things, this is an election about integrity, about whether one tells the truth. It's clear, agree or disagree on policy or implementation, that Sanders has integrity in spades. His "who do you most trust?" numbers are through the roof in every primary and caucus so far. Part of his appeal is his message, but a huge other part is the belief of his supporters that he means that message and is not just out to win by any means necessary.

Clinton may mean her message as well. But she faces a challenge in the eyes of Sanders supporters. The challenge — if Hillary Clinton wins the primary, she will have to pass the integrity test also if she wants their support. There are ways to demonstrate integrity, and ways to demonstrate otherwise. Not telling the truth is no way to demonstrate integrity; it's the opposite, in fact.

Time to course-correct? If she cares about her electoral chances in November, I hope so.

GP
 

Finally, A Democratic Candidate For The Blue Central Valley District Dave Valadao Occupies-- Emilio Huerta

I don't know Emilio Huerta yet, but I do know his mom, Dolores Huerta, a national treasure who I've been urging to run for Congress for years. She always smiles but I get the idea she knows her national activism is accomplishing more than anything she could do in Congress. I knew Emilio had been considering running for one of the Central Valley seats and over the weekend he announced he would be taking on Republican David Valadao in CA-21. The district, which covers all of Kings County and chunks or Kern and Fresno counties, practically surrounds Bakersfield and heads north to Delano, Cesar Chavez's old headquarters, and through Lost Hills, Coalinga and Hanford into the southern parts of Fresno. The district is nearly three-quarters Hispanic and Obama beat Romney 55-46%. The Democratic Party has a 16.4-point registration advantage over the GOP. So why do they have a Republican congressman? Meet Steve Israel, the infamous, highly destructive force behind DCCC atrophy.

A few weeks ago we reported on the growing anger among Central Valley Democrats towards the DCCC and their interference. Democrats throughout the Central Valley and in most of the country feel the DCCC is more a hindrance than a help in winning congressional races, recruiting congressional candidates with virtually no local input and then imposing corrupt out-of-state hacks as staffers to the candidates, who consistently make idiotic decisions and consistently lose races.

Emilio is 58, an attorney in Bakersfield with a name that speaks volumes to his fellow Valley residents. The other Democrat in the race, Fowler Mayor Pro-Tem Daniel Parra, hasn't been able to make any fundraising headway and if he's smart he'll bow out and endorse Huerta asap. Last week, the Bakersfield Californian speculated that Huerta might run and give Valadao a tough time.

[H]is pedigree-- he’s the son of United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta-- could give Valadao some trouble... [A] complicating factor for Valadao would be Donald Trump at the top of the ticket. That would bring out a huge Latino turnout and could be enough to simply swamp him."

Randy Borntrager is the Political Director of People For the American Way and his organization has spent time with Emilio discussing the issues that are motivating his campaign. This afternoon he told us that "If Democrats are serious about winning the House back anytime soon, we have to win Congressional seats like this one. By all accounts, Emilio Huerta's strong connection to the area, and his compelling life story should easily make this one of the best pick-up opportunities in the nation."

Who Would Make A Better Representative For Bakersfield, Civil Rights Leader Dolores Huerta Or Corporate Whore Kevin McCarthy?

Republican House Whip Kevin McCarthy used to be in a safe Central Valley red seat. CA-23 shares Bakersfield with Republican David Valadao, Lancaster with Republican Buck McKeon and Visalia with Republican Devin Nunes. Valadao and McKeon are likely to be serving their last terms as Members of Congress now and the demographic changes in their districts have already started changing McCarthy's as well. It's still a pretty red district (PVI is a daunting R+16 and Obama didn't crack 40% against McCain or Romney) but the Hispanic population in McCarthy's district is rapidly growing and is now a full 35%. He hasn't had a serious challenge since being elected in 2006. In fact, he hasn't had any challengers most of the time. The DCCC studiously ignores the district and hasn't even bothered making a case against McCarthy for the future. Last year McCarthy's opponent, Terry Phillips, was an independent and he managed to get 27% of the vote. Phillips spent $48,521 and McCarthy spent $4,027,748, the majority of it from PACs. Only 1% of McCarthy's contributions came from small contributors. McCarthy did worst in the Antelope Valley part of the district-- which McKeon lost in his battle to stave off defeat last year-- and that's a heavily Hispanic area where a great deal of voter registration work has been done by local Democrats and by national Hispanic organizations.

For years, I've been begging Dolores Huerta, beloved civil rights leader and co-founder of United Farm Workers who lives in the district, to run against McCarthy. I made my pitch today and promised to max out to her campaign if she did it. I have no reason to think she would but last week, a board we both serve on for People for the American Way released a powerful report on the battle over comprehensive immigration reform, Congressional Republicans' Clear Choice on Immigration: Stand With Pro-Reform Majorities or Cave to Anti-Immigrant Extremists. The report was aimed directly at Republicans like McCarthy, Valadao, McKeon, Nunes (and Jeff Denham). It wasn't something any of them were eager to hear, after spending their careers bashing Hispanic immigrants.

The voices of right-wing nativism, divisiveness, and extremism are still with us in 2013 even as the world has changed around them. Republican members of Congress face a defining question: will they stand with the majority of Americans, and majority of Republicans, who support comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented people living in the United States? Or will they stand with the extremists who are trying to block the new bipartisan momentum for reform?

While some GOP strategists have been warning for years that the Republican Party should not continue to alienate America’s fastest-growing demographic group, they had been largely shouted down by anti-immigrant hard-liners and Tea Party activists and the politicians they helped elect. During the 2012 Republican presidential primary, eventual GOP nominee Mitt Romney lashed himself to the anti-immigrant Tea Party base with his hard-line rhetoric and calls for “self-deportation” – so much so that even some conservative evangelical leaders denounced his proposals as immoral and un-American.

But the 2012 general election gave Republicans a hard dose of reality. Latino voters supported President Obama by an overwhelming 71-27 percent margin, and by even higher margins in some battleground states like Colorado. Supermajorities of Asian Americans also voted for Obama as did an overwhelming number of African Americans. Republican leaders began to view the immigration issue in a new light, accepting the evidence that most Latinos will not be open to voting for Republican candidates as long as the Party is widely seen as hostile to the rights and interests of immigrants.

The fact that most Republicans now support comprehensive reform should strengthen congressional Republicans’ resolve to stand up to the admittedly very vocal opponents of reform. Recent polling by the Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings Institution documents that a majority of Republicans and a majority of white working-class Americans agree that immigration reform should provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants now in the country. That polling also confirms the challenge facing reform-minded Republican leaders, something columnist E.J. Dionne calls a “coalition management problem.” Support for a path to citizenship drops to 44 percent among the “Teavangelicals”-- white evangelicals who are also Tea Party members-- a vocal part of the Republican base. In fact, Tea Party supporters are the only group expressing majority support for the kind of “self-deportation” strategy that was promoted by failed GOP candidate Mitt Romney.

This week Dolores explained the context of the report to HuffPo readers. "Senators and representatives," she wrote, "are well into their August recess, but some of them left behind pretty hateful words about Latino immigrants before they went. We have been told recently that many immigrants are drug-runners. We have heard them compared to dogs or even rats. While Latinos and Latinas have long fought against bigotry and lies about our communities, recent remarks from the far right fringe of the Republican party have reached a new pitch."

Those of us who have devoted our life's work to creating a better life for workers, for immigrants, for women, y para todos know the danger inherent in denying someone else's humanity. All communities deserve respect, and when our representatives smear entire communities as drug runners or compare them to animals, it diminishes both their humanity and the dignity of our civic discourse.

In reality, immigrants-- both documented and undocumented-- are a vital part of all American communities. Passing realistic and commonsense immigration reforms, like creating a roadmap to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the country today, makes our country better for everyone. Why? Because immigrants make immeasurable contributions to our country each day. They are building houses, running small businesses, caring for children and seniors, and so much more. Immigrants enrich our communities with the diversity of their backgrounds and experiences. And despite the lies the far right has been pushing, immigrants are good for our country's economy, adding billions to the economy and creating millions of jobs.

This August, we are not sitting on our hands and letting far right Republicans in Congress block immigration reform without a fight. Making the case for a common-sense immigration policy in the House is an uphill battle, no question. But we have faced uphill battles before - with strength and resolve. We have to educate our communities and representatives about the humanity of immigrants and the value they have always brought and continue to bring to our country. We have to organize and educate our communities about the work organizations like People For the American Way are doing to expose the lies that the right-wing fringe likes to tell about immigrants.

And while Republicans in Congress are home in their districts this recess, they have to think about whose side they are on in this fight. Are they with their party's extreme fringe, pushing bigoted lies about immigrant communities? Or are they with the majority of their party-- as well as the majority of their country-- in supporting a humane, commonsense immigration policy that would make this country better for everyone?

Imagine replacing McCarthy, who serves as a block to any progressive changes on any and all fields, with a woman like Dolores Huerta who had already done more for this country when McCarthy was still a teenager running the Bakersfield Kevin O's Deli he used gambling money to open, then he will ever accomplish in Congress!

George Orwell's Ministry Of Truth Can't Hold A Candle to The Texas Board Of Ed-- Which Has Just Made Dolores Huerta An Unperson

As much as I feel that going Inside-the-Beltway is like crossing enemy lines into territory wholly owned by corporate special interests hell-bent on destroying the essence of my country, I occasionally venture to DC for a day or two at a time, being on the boards of a couple of public interest groups. And one of the things I do enjoy about those meetings is getting to know extraordinary men and women who I might otherwise never have had a chance to interact with. One of those women is Dolores Huerta, a cofounder of the United Farm Workers of America, the group for which I gave up eating grapes for my entire time in college.

In 1988, when she was 58 years old and already a national treasure, she was demonstrating peacefully against the platform of George H.W. Bush when she attacked and severely beaten, nearly to death by out of control San Francisco policemen who gave the 58 year old women several broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. This week another kind of violence was perpetrated against Dolores. People For The American Way alerted their community about it:

The Texas State Board of Education voted to adopt new curriculum standards, which uses the state’s education system to push a conservative political agenda.  Among the changes the board agreed to were resolutions adding the study of Right Wing movements to the curriculum, and pushing strongly conservative viewpoints on issues ranging from the United Nations to Social Security and Medicare benefits.
 
In a 6-9 vote, the Board rejected a proposal to restore labor and civil rights leader and People For the American Way board member Dolores Huerta to the elementary school curriculum. Huerta was previously taught as an example of good citizenship in third grade history classes, but was removed from the curriculum in January.
 
Michael B. Keegan, President of People For the American Way, issued the following statement:
 
“The Texas Board of Education’s decision to remove Dolores Huerta from the state’s curriculum standards, while adding divisive Right Wing figures such as Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlafly is an insult to the millions of Americans whose lives Huerta has improved, and detrimental to the education of children in Texas and throughout the United States.
 
“The state’s previous curriculum included Huerta because she has played an important role in our nation’s history.  Erasing her from the curriculum not only denigrates her work; it belittles the invaluable contributions of generations of minority activists. That’s unacceptable and a disservice to Texas students.
 
“Dolores Huerta is a hero for all Americans who value a fair and just society and she shouldn’t be removed from our history. In her decades of work as a labor organizer and civil rights leader, she has helped millions of workers gain a voice at the bargaining table in order to earn fair wages; she has worked to ensure that people of all races and ethnicities are treated equally under the law; and she has been a role model for women in leadership.
 
“The removal of an important figure like Dolores Huerta from the Social Studies curriculum is emblematic of the School Board’s decision to force politics into the classroom.”