| New reporting from The Wall Street Journal features Latino voters in Allentown who are pissed that Congressman Ryan Mackenzie and D.C. Republicans have done nothing to lower costs.
A three time Trump voter tells the WSJ they “will never vote Republican again,” and a resident who voted for Mackenzie in 2024 pledged to “vote for any Democrat because I don’t see any balance now.”
The WSJ adds that when a local radio host asked Lehigh Valley Latinos to call in with their thoughts, “calls immediately flooded the station from listeners who described difficulty paying for basics such as food.”
Read key excerpts on how Latino voters are souring on Mackenzie below:
- Both Evangelistas, immigrants from the Dominican Republic who became citizens after coming to the U.S. in the 1980s, voted for President Trump in 2024, partly because they hoped he would improve the economy. They expected deportations, the younger Evangelista said. But she thought the government would focus on people with criminal records.
- “I do not agree with what he’s doing now—the violence in the street,” Mariela Evangelista said.
- The Evangelistas were among thousands of Hispanic voters who backed Trump in 2024, largely for economic reasons. Now, some polls indicate they might be swinging back, just ahead of pivotal midterm elections that will determine control of the House and Senate for the rest of Trump’s term.
- Allentown, a majority-Hispanic city in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, sits at the center of a diverse, working-class congressional district that Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie won by a single percentage point—about 4,000 votes—in 2024. Democrats view the district as a prime opportunity to pick up a seat and as a bellwether for the nation overall.
- Mariela Evangelista’s father, a three-time Trump voter, is so fed up he said he will never vote Republican again.
- The race will likely hinge on whether the GOP can maintain its gains with Hispanic voters like the Evangelistas, an increasingly challenging proposition.
- A January survey by The Wall Street Journal found that 59% of Hispanic voters nationally disapprove of Trump, and 55% said they were likely to support a Democrat for Congress. Pew Research Center found that 71% of Hispanic adults disapprove of how Trump is handling his job as president.
- Amauris Almonte, an Allentown tax preparer, has seen his business fall more than 25% since 2024 and was forced to cut two of his five employees, he said.
- Almonte, a Democrat who said he had become unimpressed with his party and shifted to the right, voted for Mackenzie in 2024. But he has been disappointed by his lack of attention to small businesses, he said, and wants to see change in Congress to put a check on Trump, for whom he didn’t vote.
- “I’ll vote for any Democrat because I don’t see any balance now,” Almonte said.
- Victor Martinez, a Puerto Rican-born radio host, has gained prominence with colorful jokes about Trump during his popular wake-up show “El Circo de la Mañana”—The Morning Circus.
- […] Martinez turned the politics hour over to his listeners, telling them the world wants to know what Lehigh Valley Latinos think. Calls immediately flooded the station from listeners who described difficulty paying for basics such as food, being terrified for family members with Hispanic last names and anxieties over international conflicts.
- Real-estate agent Miguel Rincon, a Democrat who voted for Mackenzie, told the Journal he was recently followed and taunted with racial slurs—the first time he has experienced such a thing in his 30 years in the U.S. The Dominican native said he fears for his wife and daughters, though they are all native-born citizens, amid Republican rhetoric and aggressive immigration tactics.
- “By the time you prove you’re a citizen, you’ve spent a week in jail,” he said.
- Who will earn his vote in November? Whoever plans to change what is happening now, he said.
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