The Political Realignment Has Arrived. Republicans Are in Danger of Blowing It.

Politico

2 days ago

On the hilly streets of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, tucked into the anthracite coal region that once powered America's industrial revolution, an expanding group of newcomers go about their daily lives in Dominican-inflected Spanish: running small enterprises, working in the region's booming logistics and warehousing industries, and sending WhatsApp messages to friends and relatives back in the Bronx and on the island. They're chasing their version of the American dream in this small, now-majority Hispanic city, as did the Italian, Irish and Slovak immigrants who came before them.
They are the voters who powered Republican victories up and down the ballot in the country's largest swing state in November. And our party is on the verge of losing them.
Since beginning my career as a Republican strategist in my home city of Philadelphia in 2016, I have been nearly alone among state Republicans in consistently advocating for outreach to this growing group of voters. My firm, which has worked on both local and national campaigns, has produced the only statewide outreach to Hispanic voters for three cycles in a row, putting boots on the ground and messages over the airwaves.
It's been a striking failure of vision. As a party, we have tended to think that reaching these voters directly would be nice, though not necessary for most campaigns. Now, in light of the 2024 results, it's clear that this outreach is essential.
Pennsylvania's 600,000 Latino voters helped send Donald Trump to the White House for a second term, played a key role in electing a GOP majority in the Senate, and kept the House in Republican hands by flipping two districts, including the ancestrally Democratic U.S. House seat that includes Hazleton.
But these voters, after turning sharply right in 2024, are strongly disapproving of the president's performance several months into office, if recent polls are to be believed. April surveys showed cratering approval ratings among Hispanic voters who had shifted so dramatically, with just 27 percent approving of Trump's job performance, according to the Pew Research Center. The New York Times/Siena College poll echoed these findings several weeks later, with just 26 percent of Hispanic voters approving of Trump's tenure.
It is tempting for Republicans to scoff at polls, but even if the topline voter approval is wrong, the significant drop in approval rating still matters. And both the polls and my conversations with would-be Hispanic Republicans in Pennsylvania show a clear drop-off. It should be a blaring alarm bell for the GOP as the 2026 midterms appear on the horizon.
The slide in support makes sense — it's because these voters aren't hearing any semblance of a positive message from the GOP. On immigration and the economy, two core issues for these mostly working-class voters, it's doom and gloom on English and Spanish media, even as Republicans notch successes in securing the border and lowering energy costs.
Immediately after the election, the GOP ceded the debate on the main messaging channels for Hispanic voters — radio, television, and digital — to the left. It's an enormous, unforced error. The deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, for example, has dominated the media over larger efforts to target criminal gangs and secure the border — initiatives that are broadly popular among Hispanic voters.
Republicans must show up in the places and on the platforms where our next voters are getting their information to push back on leftwing narratives and gain an advantage on the issues, from securing the border to lowering costs. A Spanish-language campaign on humane border enforcement, for example — particularly one elevating Hispanic voices who are benefitting from newfound border security — would do wonders for the GOP brand. But we've abandoned the playing field, failing to make these voters a central focus by sharing our message on Spanish-language media, booking even limited advertising in Hispanic communities, or developing our farm team of Latino elected officials and spokespeople.
A great number of Pennsylvania's Hispanic voters are moderate or conservative, came to America the right way, and do not share such far-left fantasies as dissolving our borders, defunding our police, or teaching elementary school children that gender is a construct — something I heard over and over again in my conversations with voters last year. They will be with us going forward if we reach them with openness and respect.
The political realignment has arrived, and with it a Republican Party that is more diverse and working-class than anybody alive has ever witnessed. In Pennsylvania, the Republican path to victory has meant increasing margins from a shrinking group of rural white voters, holding down Democrats' margins in the state's booming suburban communities, and making quiet inroads in diverse, urban areas like Allentown, Reading and North Philadelphia, where Latino voters turned out more Republican than the city as a whole last November. It's a combination that, if done right, can turn Pennsylvania red for years to come.
But if the new GOP majority was forged in Hazleton's modest streets, and in communities like it across Pennsylvania's ' Latino Belt,' there has been little recognition of it among the Republican political class. Since Trump's shock victory in 2016, and the 'Blue Wave' midterm that followed two years later, the operative phrase among GOP political operatives has been 'win back the suburbs.'
While Republicans clawed back some ground in the suburbs last year, the long-term trends in Pennsylvania's expanding, increasingly transient suburban communities are dire for the GOP: witness, for example, the recent Democratic flip of a wealthy, suburban state Senate district that Trump won handily in November. That means the Republican Party's future is instead a 'MAGA Plus' coalition that will be made — or broken — by Latino voters.
That was the formula for success in Pennsylvania, the only state where two Democratic House seats flipped to Republican in 2024 without the benefit of mid-cycle redistricting; both districts host significant, growing Hispanic voter populations, whose shifts accounted for all or most of the margin of victory for the GOP victors.
That down-ballot shift among Pennsylvania Hispanic voters also played a key role in the narrowest Republican Senate flip in the country — and the only one that happened in a swing state. Newly-elected GOP Sen. Dave McCormick gained his razor-tight margin of victory from those new voters, winning by just under 16,000 votes out of nearly seven million cast.
Democrats recognize all this. As the Philadelphia Inquirer has noted, Pennsylvania has the largest number of competitive races of any state on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee target list next year. The road to the House majority, in other words, runs through the Keystone State.
Republicans must understand that the fragile coalition that delivered us narrow congressional control is still nascent. Millions of first-time Republican voters, who are disproportionately from minority communities, are not base voters yet. They must be reached if Republicans wish to hold on to their gains, or even make further advances, in the 2026 congressional midterms.
Republicans in Pennsylvania and elsewhere will be tempted to wait until 2026, but damage is being done right now as potential voters sour on our agenda. We still have time to right the ship, but engagement on community outreach, Spanish-language surrogates, translated communications, and candidate recruitment must begin right now, because every day we don't show up we are losing ground. In the absence of robust, always-on effort, Democrats will fill the void, leading to spiraling discontent.
The first tests of where Hispanic voters stand will occur in November across the Delaware River in New Jersey, where Republicans hope to consolidate historic gains made last year in the off-year governor and Assembly races; in Virginia's statewide elections; and in local races like Pennsylvania's Lehigh County executive race.
Then comes the main event. In Pennsylvania, which will remain the must-win swing state for the indefinite future, the GOP's ability to reelect its two new Republican congressmen in 2026 will be pivotal in determining whether it can keep control of the House. This is also the year that our state's charismatic and ambitious Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, faces reelection before an all-but guaranteed presidential run.
Shapiro and national Democrats expect turbo-charged turnout from the state's booming, affluent suburban communities to power gains that will fuel them through 2028.
For now, the suburbs are not coming back to the GOP. Republican majorities in the cycles to come will be won and lost on the streets of Hazleton, North Philadelphia, Reading and Allentown, not in the leafy precincts of suburban Philadelphia. Whether Republican insiders understand this math and act on it is the open question that will determine who wins Congress in 2026 — and the durability of our burgeoning multiracial, multiethnic coalition.