Ocañas: For Latinos, midterm turnout was about respect, rent
Latinos helped turn much of America blue
The pundits are already at it. Two years ago, from studios in New York and Washington, they told the country that Latinos had “realigned.” This week, they’re calling it a “homecoming,” or “volatility,” or a “swing bloc on probation.”
They read us like a spreadsheet. I have spent decades in campaign war rooms and corporate boardrooms, and both have taught me the same lesson: you cannot understand a community from a distance. What happened Tuesday wasn’t about messaging. It was about respect, and about the rent.
The numbers are historic. Preliminary Times estimates show Democrats winning about 69% of the Hispanic vote, a 29-point swing from 2024. Webb and Hidalgo counties, which shocked the nation by going Republican two years ago, backed James Talarico by roughly 50 points. Gina Hinojosa, a daughter of Brownsville, will be Texas’s first Latina governor. Republicans redrew five Texas districts assuming our votes were theirs to keep. They lost four.
Start with the kitchen table. Latino voters are younger than the country as a whole and more likely to work at the base of the economic ladder, in construction, child care, food processing, and service jobs. When the economy turns, we feel it first, and we are often the first let go. In 2024, many of our young men gave Donald Trump a chance. The Democratic Party had done more for our community than any other, but that trust had worn thin, and prices were crushing working families. Trump promised relief.
ICE raids ‘hollowed local economies’
Instead, gas prices climbed with the Iran war. Tariffs pushed grocery bills higher. And the immigration raids did something the pundits rarely mention: they hollowed out local economies. Contractors lost crews overnight. Farms and packing plants lost workers. Small businesses lost customers who were too afraid to leave home. In the meatpacking counties of western Kansas, where raids hit this fall, the vote swung about 50 points. Latinos without college degrees, the workers living closest to the margin, moved 33 points.
More from Our Esquina
Peter Rodriguez named Wake Forest University president
Gregory Rodriguez leaves legacy of service, devotion to others
Legendary Rice professor Richard Tapia, a tireless advocate for Latinos, dies
Then came the human cost. Agents raided job sites, detained teenagers in mariachi suits, and killed people. A 38-year-old cook and father of two was shot dead during a traffic stop in Chicago. By summer, at least nine deaths had been linked to the crackdown, including people with no criminal record and U.S. citizens. These were human beings working toward the American Dream for their American-born families.
Our families have seen this before. A century ago, Texas Rangers and vigilantes killed Mexican Americans along the border by the hundreds. In the 1930s, as many as a million people of Mexican descent were pushed out of this country, many of them citizens. In 1949, a Texas funeral home refused a wake for Private Felix Longoria, killed defending this nation. Through all of it, we kept working, believing, and raising American children.
So this time, the community made a vow: not again. Not to our parents, not to our neighbors, and never to our children. Young men came home to their mothers’ kitchen tables. Abuelas who had never volunteered knocked on doors.
Willie Velásquez led way
In 1974, Willie Velásquez founded the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project in San Antonio with a simple motto: “Su voto es su voz.”
Your vote is your voice. On Tuesday, that voice was unmistakable.
The message is for both parties. To Republicans: you cannot spend a century’s worth of goodwill in two years and expect forgiveness. To Democrats: this is not a blank check. It is a second chance to rebuild trust you let wear thin, and you rebuild it with lower costs, good jobs, and dignity.
And to the pundits: come to Brownsville, San Antonio, and the Valley. Sit at our tables. Understand that whoever disrespects us next will meet the same answer. Respect is not a messaging strategy. It is the whole thing.
Gilberto Ocañas
Our Esquina Board Member
Gilberto S. Ocañas, a member of Our Esquina Media\'s board of advisers, is a Texas-based public affairs strategist, entrepreneur and institutional builder with more than three decades of experience operating at the convergence of politics, business, and civic leadership. A native Texan, he has developed a trusted national network of corporate executives, elected officials, community leaders, political operatives and entrepreneurs.
Stay in the Loop
Get the Our Esquina Email Newsletter
By submitting your email, you are agreeing to receive additional communications and exclusive content from Our Esquina. You can unsubscribe at any time.