With control of the Senate on the line, organizers in Georgia are pulling out all the stops for the January 5 runoff elections. Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock are hoping to defeat Republican incumbents Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. The Senate currently has 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats. Should Democrats win the runoffs, the Senate would be tied at 50 senators apiece, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie breaker.
Resources from across the nation are pouring into Georgia in the hopes of taking back the Senate. While Latinos may not make up a large percentage of the state’s population, groups like Mijente and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) are working to mobilize the state’s Latino voters.
Tania Unzueta is the political director for Mijente, a nationwide Latino rights group. Unzueta spoke at this year’s RootsCamp about how Democrats could win in Georgia. She said a lot of people don’t realize that many Latinos live in Georgia. There are about 1 million Latinos living in the state, of whom an estimated 377,000 are eligible to vote.
According to the Associated Press Votecast survey, about 3% of Georgia’s 5 million voters were Latinos. Approximately 60% of these voters cast their ballots for Biden—in a state he won by just 12,670 votes.
So although Georgia’s Latino population isn’t big, it’s significant enough to impact the outcome on January 5. To tip what is sure to be another close contest, Mijente PAC and GLAHR have teamed up to launch a campaign called Georgia con Ganas (Georgia With Enthusiasm), with the goal of improving turnout and mobilizing 283,000 Georgia households to vote in the runoff elections.
Building on past mobilization work
This isn’t Mijente and GLAHR’s first partnership. “On election day, we made sure Georgia went against Trump, but we know our communities deserve more,” explained Mijente. “That’s why we’re continuing our work in Georgia for the Senate runoff races.” Mijente and GLAHR also worked together in 2018 to support Stacey Abrams’s gubernatorial campaign.
During the general election, Mijente focused its Georgia efforts on two counties—Cobb and Gwinnett, whose local sheriffs had enacted anti-immigrant policies. For its new campaign, Georgia con Ganas is working statewide.
“We have a goal of reaching every Latino voter in the state of Georgia at their doors,” Unzueta said on the public radio program The World. “That means having conversations with people in very diverse ways, given that the Latino community is not monolithic.”
As Mijente has pointed out many times, Latinos in the U.S. represent more than 20 diverse countries. If Democrats hope to mobilize Latino voters, they cannot treat Latinos as one uniform electorate.
“A number of Latinos in Georgia are of Mexican descent,” explained Unzueta, adding that many of them are the children of Latinos who immigrated to Georgia in the 1990s.
“There’s also a growing Puerto Rican community, particularly folks who have been here for a long time, but it grew after Hurricane Maria,” said Unzueta. “And so we have folks who are coming in and we do have pockets of Venezuelan communities, of Central American communities throughout the state. And again, as you said, they are very different in terms of where they’re coming from, in terms of their understanding about Georgia politics and Democrats.”
Convincing people to vote… again
Georgia con Ganas is targeting first-time voters, people who voted during the general election but don’t realize there’s another election next month, and people who voted Republican but might be persuaded to vote Democrat.
One of the biggest issues facing Georgia organizers, however, is convincing voters to show up to the polls again. Chuck Rocha, who served as a political advisor to Bernie Sanders and has since launched the progressive Nuestro PAC, spoke to NBC News about the issue.
“What the groups I’m coordinating with on the ground are finding is that Latinos are confused why they need to come back and vote again,” Rocha said. To remedy this, Nuestro PAC has been running a radio ad citing as the major reasons for voting in the runoff “[getting] COVID under control, a minimum wage hike and comprehensive immigration reform.”
The Georgia con Ganas campaign has also received help from other Latino mobilization groups, including Wisconsin’s Voces de la Frontera Action and Pennsylvania’s CASA in Action, both of which had members travel to Georgia to canvass.
In addition to traditional voter outreach methods like canvassing and phone banking, Georgia con Ganas has also employed some unique strategies to reach voters, including cartoon illustrations that address voter issues. Political cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz used luchadores (Mexican wrestlers) in his cartoons.
Other groups working with the Georgia con Ganas campaign include America Votes, SONG Power—the c4 arm of Southerners on New Ground (SONG) and UNITE HERE Local 23, Atlanta and Columbus’ hospital workers union.
“Georgia is a priority state for us,” wrote Mijente, “and we will continue making sure that Latinos there make their voices heard.”
