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Florida GOP Rep. Maria Salazar explained on Fox News on Sunday why the Hispanic community is increasingly trending towards Republicans after sticking with Democrats for decades.
Salazar, in an appearance on “Sunday Night in America” with former GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, was reacting to a recent survey published by The Wall Street Journal that shows Hispanics are now essentially split evenly between the GOP and Democrats, 37 percent each, with 22 percent saying that they were undecided.
Some political analysts have suggested that the polling is just a reaction to President Biden’s specific policies. But Salazar insists the shift is part of a quickening, spreading trend of Hispanics sharing more values with Republicans.
“We share the same values that are entrenched in the Republican party. God-fearing, law-abiding, tax-paying. Not only that, that we are Americans, we’re not socialists. We want to come into the country and we want to contribute,” Salazar told Gowdy.
“What do you think we come here for? Because we want to contribute,” she continued, harkening on Hispanic community pride. “It’s not because we want to go to Disney World or shop on Saks Fifth Avenue. We want to come here and contribute.
“We know that the American exceptionality is waiting for us, the promised land. And the economic policies that were established during the last administration helped everyone’s pockets,” she noted, reflecting on the economic and domestic policies pursued by former President Donald Trump.
As for Democrats, the Florida Republican said that Hispanics are finally beginning to see the failures of Democratic Party policies in terms of supporting their communities and helping them achieve the American Dream.
“We have realized after 30 years, after Ronald Reagan who was the last president who gave this community any type of legality. We have realized after 30 years the Democratic party has been playing political football,” she told Gowdy.
“So I said to my community that you got to be with whoever serves your values and whoever fixes your problems,” she added. “We come here for two things. We come because we know this is the promised land, we want to share those fruits. And we want to have a better economy. We want to be able to go from rags to riches which is what this American exceptionality promises.”
Using herself as an example, Salazar talked about how her parents were exiled from Cuba 60 years ago and how they raised a daughter who eventually became a state representative.
But she and Gowdy both noted that the GOP has also failed to adequately reach out to the Hispanic community with their policy proposals and successes as she called on Republicans to reach out to disenfranchised Latino voters.
“What we need to do is we need to send the message that we want to take care of those Hispanics. We’re going to seal the border because my community, we don’t want what’s happening, the disarray at the border. We want to be able to come in legally, contribute, and live the American dream,” Salazar told Gowdy.
The former Telemundo TV journalist closed by saying that Hispanics are increasingly pushing back on what she described as Democrats’ Marxist ideology.
“We know that unfortunately the Democratic party has been infiltrated by the Democratic socialists that at the end are Marxists,” she told Gowdy. So we are recognizing – from the Mexicans, to the Cubans, to the Hondurans, to Nicaraguans, to the Colombians – we have recognized what Marxism and socialism means and we do not want that.”
Jon has over 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
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