Trump campaign leans into Goya controversy in new Spanish ads

President Trump’s reelection campaign is leaning into the recent controversy over Goya Foods with a slate of Spanish-language television and radio advertisements as he seeks to cut Joe Biden’s margin with Hispanic voters.

The Trump campaign announced Wednesday that a television ad highlighting “Democrats’ shameful smear campaign against Goya Foods, a beloved Hispanic-owned family business” and two radio ads will begin airing in Florida, and a third radio ad will be released “in other regions.” 

The ads appears to cast Democrats as socialists and extremists, claiming that the party members are “too extreme for Hispanic Americans.” 

“From Democrats’ support for socialism, to cutting school choice and police funding, they are just too extreme for Hispanic Americans—and Joe Biden is too weak to stand up for us. Now, with the left’s assault on Goya, it’s clear that not even your abuela’s Sazón would be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” Latinos for Trump said in a statement in announcing the ads. 

The television ad seizes on recent threats by Democrats to boycott Goya Foods, a popular Hispanic food brand, after its chief praised Trump at a White House event earlier this month. 

“We sacrificed so much to be free and respected,” Cuban actress Susana Pérez says in the television ad over video of Cuban refugees being airlifted. “Now the left has launched a smear campaign against Goya, the brand we love, just because Goya is working with President Trump.” 

The ads also claim that Democrats are careening toward socialism and flashes images of Che Guevara, an ally of former Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro.  

“Oh man, all these leftists are the same. They’re so intolerant. Imagine if they get more power,” says one woman in one of the radio ads set to air in Florida. “I came here to be free. I’m voting for Trump.”

The ad campaign comes as Trump finds himself trailing Biden in national polls and in key swing states. Though Biden has garnered majority support in the country’s Hispanic communities, a significant amount of votes lost to the Trump campaign could make the difference in states like Florida, where Hispanics made up 18 percent of the electorate in 2016. 

Surveys have also suggested some vulnerability for Biden with Latino voters.

In a July survey by Latino Decisions, a group that specializes in gauging Latino voters, 46 percent of Latinos nationwide said they are extremely motivated and enthusiastic about the November election, and 59 percent said they are certain they will vote.

The same survey found 60 percent of Latinos said they’d vote for Biden over Trump.

An NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll from late June found that 59 percent of Latino voters back Biden over Trump. Those figures, if translated into November vote totals, would be less than the 66 percent Hillary Clinton achieved in 2016 and the 71 percent Barack Obama won in 2012.