As all who care are aware, there are three elections of national interest occurring tomorrow: the mayoralty race in New York City and the gubernatorial contests taking place in the states of Virginia and New Jersey.
Unless pollsters are wildly inaccurate – manifestly not an uncommon occurrence – the outcomes of two of these races are foregone conclusions: NY State Rep. Zohran Mamdani, a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, will become New York mayor and former U.S. VA Rep. Abigail Spanberger will become Governor of Virginia. From a purely political handicapping perspective, liberal New York is obviously becoming ever more so in the Trump Era, giving Mr. Mamdani his opportunity, and although Ms. Spanberger is an impressive public servant, either you or I could win the state’s governorship as the Democratic nominee given the Trump Administration’s layoff of so many Virginia-based federal workers.
I would submit that the key race is in New Jersey. That said, I don’t consider the election’s outcome its most important factor from a national perspective, although MAGAs will trumpet any upset victory by Republican MAGA Trump-Sound-Alike Jack Ciattarelli, who is trailing his Democratic opponent, U.S. NJ Rep. Mikie Sherrill, in most polls. (I’ve heard liberal-leaning pundits opine that Ms. Sherrill hasn’t run a very effective campaign.)
It’s about the Latino vote. I’m going to be at least as interested in the relative percentage of NJ Latino citizens that vote, compared to Latino turnouts in recent NJ statewide elections, as in how they vote.
I have mentioned in previous posts that I engage in a volunteer activity that involves mostly immigrants at a facility in Madison, WI. Over the years that I have been involved, about half of the participants have been from Latin America. Since the early months of the Trump Administration, attendance has been WAY, WAY down. It is easy to see why; the activity I volunteer for isn’t life-sustaining, like a food bank. Although no immigrant participant has said so – they have just stopped showing up – it’s hard not to conclude that given the indiscriminate Trump Administration ICE activity, many have decided that no matter how legal their status, it’s simply not worth the risk of being swept up in an ICE raid to engage in a nonessential exercise. I can’t say that I blame them. Based upon my anecdotal understanding, many Latino citizens fear being swept up in an ICE raid.
For each citizen, voting is obviously a nonessential exercise.
By this time, one might suppose that a significant segment of Latino Trump voters who believed the President’s claims that he would only deport illegal immigrants if they were guilty of additional crimes have realized that they were had – that the entire Latino community is under attack simply for its hue and its accent. (If they don’t get it by now, they are seemingly beyond persuasion.) If Latino voter participation is significantly depressed in the New Jersey gubernatorial race – almost without regard to how Mr. Ciattarelli fares amongst the Latinos who do vote – Democrats nationwide had better recognize that the depressed turnout is the canary in the coalmine for the 2026 and 2028 elections (the 2026 midterms are exactly one year from today), and develop strategies to both encourage Latino citizens to turn out in the next federal elections and – equally important – to combat the overwhelming likelihood that ICE will establish a presence in the vicinity of heavily Latino polling places, purportedly to catch “illegals” seeking to commit voter fraud, but in reality to intimidate Latino citizens from casting ballots.
We’ll see what happens.
McCoy's Noise 