Chuck Rocha, former senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign, discussed how the Biden campaign should be engaging with Latino voters.
Rocha, author of “Tío Bernie: The Inside Story of How Bernie Sanders Brought Latinos Into The Political Revolution,” said that while the COVID-19 pandemic makes it difficult for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden to engage in face-to-face campaign activities, his campaign needs to keep in constant communication with Latino voters.
“[Biden] can’t be doing grassroots right now,” he said. “That means you’ve got to spend a lot of money texting these voters and…telling them exactly what Joe Biden is going to do to make their lives better.”
Rocha also reflected on how the Sanders campaign succeeded with Latino voters.
“TV and reaching out to people like we did with Latinos… really does matter,” he said. “People want to talk about the Bernie campaign going back to the book, it wasn’t just the grassroots….but what made Bernie Sanders really different, and we almost won, is because we had a great paid communication on top of the grassroots.”
Entry polls and voting result analyses showed that Sanders won about two-thirds of the votes from majority-Latino caucus sites in Iowa and 51 percent of Latino voters in Nevada.
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