By NADIA LATHAN and VALERIE GONZÁLEZ, Associated Press/Report for America

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas (AP) — Jorge Bazán’s family has lived on the U.S.-Mexico border for generations and voted Democratic for as long as he can remember.

This year he broke family tradition and voted for Donald Trump because he doesn’t trust the Democratic Party’s economic policies.

“I think they forgot about the middle class,” said Bazán, who works for the utility company in Rio Grande City, seat of the most Hispanic county in the country. “People are suffering right now. “Everything is very expensive.”

The South Texas region, stretching from San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley, has long been a Democratic stronghold. A slide toward Trump in 2020 shook Democrats in the predominantly Hispanic region, where for decades Republicans had rarely even bothered to field candidates in local elections. But few Democrats expected the dramatic realignment that occurred Tuesday, when Trump completely flipped several counties along the border, including Hidalgo and Cameron counties, the two most populous in the Rio Grande Valley.

In Starr County, where Bazan lives, voters just backed a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in a century. The rural, predominantly Hispanic and working-class county, where the median household income of $36,000 is one of the lowest in the country, gave Trump a 16 percentage point margin of victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s victory revealed that working-class voters across the country are shifting toward Republicans, including those on the Texas border, where many Democrats have long argued that Trump’s promised immigration crackdown would discourage to the voters.

“I was always a lifelong Democrat, but I decided to switch to Republican with the political landscape now,” said Luis Meza, a 32-year-old voter from Starr County. “I felt like being a Republican was the best option, especially with the immigration issues and everything that’s going on.”

Meza said he was initially against Trump, but noted too few changes under the Biden administration to justify voting for Harris.

President Biden won Hidalgo County by less than half the margin Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Since then, Republicans have spent millions of dollars persuading predominantly Hispanic and working-class voters bitter about Democratic policies.

A similar scenario played out in the state’s three most competitive races in nearby counties. Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz won a decisive victory in the 15th Congressional District, and in the other two races, experienced Democratic incumbents barely held on to their seats.

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar narrowly escaped defeat to a political newcomer in the most competitive race of his two-decade career. Cuellar, whose district includes the city of Rio Grande, was charged this year with bribery for allegedly accepting $600,000 from a foreign company. His support for abortion restrictions makes him one of the most conservative Democrats in the House.

Democratic Rep. Vicente González also narrowly escaped defeat to an opponent he handily beat two years ago.

Nationally, Black and Latino voters appeared slightly less likely to support Harris than Biden four years ago, according to AP VoteCast data. More than half of Hispanic voters supported Harris, but that number was slightly lower than the roughly 6 in 10 who backed Biden in 2020. Support for Trump among those groups appeared to increase slightly compared to 2020.

In McAllen, Texas, José Luis Borrego said inflation and the promise of tougher border restrictions led him to vote for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time.

“I wanted to see change and that’s why I voted for Trump. I voted red. “I wouldn’t call myself a Republican,” Borrego, 37, said. He said he voted for Hillary Clinton and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders in previous elections.

Borrego’s entire family voted for Trump.

“We just made this decision because we had no other option that we felt comfortable with,” he said.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said he visited the region for months during his campaign against Democratic Rep. Colin Allred. In a victory speech on Election Day, he said immigration is the reason Hispanic voters are abandoning the Democratic Party.

“They are coming home with conservative values ​​that they never abandoned. “They understand something that liberal elites will never understand: there is nothing progressive about open borders,” Cruz said. “There is nothing Latin about letting criminals walk free.”

Michael Mireles believes that Democrats did not engage in enough dialogue with Hispanic voters about the issues that concerned them in these elections. Mireles is director of civic engagement for the labor rights group La Unión del Pueblo Entero.

“I think people on the Democratic side have been slow to have those conversations with Latino households and families.” Mireles said at a news conference in Hidalgo County after Election Day.

“We can’t wait until there’s a big election to have those conversations. At that point it is too late.”

Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Originally Posted: November 7, 2024 at 4:49 pm EST