WASHINGTON (AP) — Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump see economic policy as their best chance to win Latino voters. But their approaches are very different.
In an interview with Telemundo on Tuesday afternoon, Vice President Harris plans to highlight how her agenda would create more opportunities for Latino men — a strategy born out of roughly a dozen focus groups and polling.
The Democratic nominee intends to show off her plans to double the number of registered apprenticeships. She wants to stress how she would remove college degree requirements for certain federal government jobs and encourage private employers to do likewise. And Harris wants to provide forgivable loans worth up to $20,000 each to 1 million small businesses.
Former President Trump, the Republican nominee, is making his own outreach to Latinos on Tuesday by holding a roundtable with them in Doral, a Miami suburb.
His campaign says he will make the case that employment, wages and home ownership increased for Latinos during his time in office. The campaign also says he will argue that Harris and President Joe Biden stuck Latinos with high inflation and that "Trump is the only candidate who can bring prosperity back to America."
The Trump and Harris campaigns see what could be an election-deciding opportunity with Latino men, who could swing the outcome in states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada if their traditional support for Democrats erodes. Trump believes he's made inroads among Latino men. Harris' team is seeking to shore up support within the same group with the election just two weeks away.
It sets up a question of whether memories of a Trump presidency or the promise of new policies under Harris will do more to energize Latino voters.
"We are very confident that these policies resonate because we've seen them resonate in speeches and focus groups," said Matt Barreto, a Harris campaign pollster. "It speaks to Latino men in particular about being successful and achieving the American dream."
In 2020, AP VoteCast found that 9% of voters nationwide identified as Latino and 63% of them backed Biden in the election. That race was defined broadly by the pandemic that shut down much of the country, whereas this year's race has issues such as the economy, immigration, abortion rights and democracy at the forefront.
Both campaigns are jockeying for an edge with the increasingly diverse electorate in the closing weeks of the campaign. Harris has also focused on Black men, to whom she also pitched the forgivable loans for small businesses. She's gone on the podcast "Call Her Daddy" to appeal to younger women, while Trump has appeared on podcasts to target younger men.
Trump participated in a town hall last week on Univision where his major pitch to Latinos was that the economy had been phenomenal during his White House term.
"We had the greatest economy in the history of our country," Trump said. "Now we have a lousy economy primarily because of inflation. So we're going to get rid of the inflation."
The former president's description of his own economic record typically excludes the mass job losses and recession caused by the pandemic in 2020. Inflation is now at a relatively healthy 2.4%, but frustration still lingers for voters from inflation spiking in June 2022 at 9.1% as gasoline, groceries and housing became much more expensive.
On Univision, Trump said increased oil production would bring down overall inflation if he was elected. He has also suggested his combination of tariff hikes and tax cuts will help growth, though his campaign lacks details compared to the policy guide released by Harris' team.
In a close race, the Harris campaign is betting that Latino men are getting more attuned to policy specifics as the election draws closer.
Based on focus groups, Barreto said the Harris campaign found that Latino men in particular wanted access to apprenticeships that could give people without college degrees access to a financially stable career.
The latest Labor Department figures show there are 641,044 registered apprenticeships, an increase from the Trump administration, when apprenticeships peaked in 2020 at 569,311. Doubling that figure as Harris has proposed would put the total number of apprenticeships at roughly 1.2 million over four years.
Latino men also expressed a need for access to capital and credit to start companies, as the Treasury Department reported on Oct. 10 that Latino business ownership is up 40% over pre-pandemic levels and could keep climbing with better financing options.
Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will be on Univision's El Bueno, La Mala, y El Feo, a syndicated radio show, this week, while Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, will be interviewed this week by Univision's nationally syndicated afternoon radio show, El Free-Guey Show. Emhoff will also be interviewed by Alex "El Genio" Lucas on Nueva Network Radio.
Trump hopes to convince Latinos that they can trust a fellow businessman such as himself, even as he's also called for the mass deportation of immigrants in the country illegally.
"Hispanic people — they say you can't generalize, but I think you can — they have wonderful entrepreneurship and they have — oh, do you have such energy. Just ease up a little bit, OK? Ease up," Trump said at an Oct. 12 event. "You have great ambition, you have great energy, very smart, and you really do like natural entrepreneurs."