Four of the nation’s most prominent Latino civil rights and political organizations are launching a strategic merger this month, seeking to stem the Republican Party’s recent gains among the Hispanic voters the groups aim to represent.
The coalition is composed of UnidosUS Action Fund; Mi Familia Vota; the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC; and the Latino Victory Project. It represents a pact of convenience among legacy organizations that have long operated on their own, often competing for the same donors.
By sharing their door-to-door canvassing operations, messaging and voter databases, the groups are hoping that a centralized “battleground map” can reverse a rightward shift that appeared to reshape the American electoral landscape in 2024 when President Trump saw a surge of Hispanic support.
That came despite a $50 million investment and a flurry of celebrity endorsements, and earlier outreach efforts, all aimed at persuading Latinos to vote for Kamala Harris. Instead, 46 percent of Latino men sided with Mr. Trump.
For older organizations like LULAC and UnidosUS, which grew out of past Latino civil rights movements, the new campaign signals a return to targeted messaging and door-to-door organizing from the ground up.
“We have to return to our roots,” said Rafael Collazo, the executive director of the UnidosUS Action Fund.
The coalition will focus on 39 House districts where Latino turnout could be decisive. These include three seats that Republicans won by less than one percentage point, in Colorado, Iowa and Pennsylvania, as well as toss-up contests in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
While the groups’ nonpartisan arms will focus on registering 250,000 new voters, their political action committees will coordinate on winning back the once-loyal Democrats who defected to Republicans in 2024.
The coalition is also eschewing Hollywood stars in favor of “trusted messengers” — business owners, coaches, pastors and other community leaders. One exception is the recruitment of Carlos Eduardo Espina, a Spanish-language influencer with millions of followers across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
In an interview, Mr. Espina said he has been calling for greater unity among Latino advocacy organizations since he started delving into politics in recent years. He joined the coalition in hopes of reaching Hispanic Democrats disillusioned with the political system. That distrust, he added, had helped fuel Mr. Trump’s popularity among his Latino audiences.
“It was not so much support for Trump as it was frustration with the Democratic Party,” he said. “We have to be careful about over-promising and under-delivering.”
The effort comes as the Democratic establishment faces renewed criticism for its approach to the demographic. Coalition leaders argued that the party often waits too long into the election cycle to engage Latino neighborhoods, treating the electorate as an afterthought rather than a cornerstone.
The challenges are steep. The Trump administration has made it harder for Latino immigrants to earn citizenship, a prerequisite to vote. Recent Supreme Court decisions have raised the bar on the creation or maintenance of majority-minority House districts. Republican-led states have also sought to penalize certain forms of ballot assistance.
And then there is the Latino electorate itself.
Mr. Trump began making inroads with Hispanic working-class voters in 2020 — particularly in South Florida and South Texas — and the 2024 election revealed breakthroughs for Republicans.Latino Republican groups and political strategists say they are confident the momentum Republicans have generated will not be reversed. Alfonso Aguilar, director of Hispanic engagement at America First Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank founded by former Trump administration officials, said he believed Latino voters were much more independent and open to conservative policies than they were in the past.
Daniel Garza, whose own center-right advocacy group has launched a Latino outreach campaign focused on affordability, argued that Democrats’ efforts kept repeating the same mistakes: bashing Mr. Trump without offering a new vision forward.
“For their sake, I hope it’s not Groundhog Day,” quipped Mr. Garza, president of the Libre Initiative.
More recent data suggests the rightward shift may not be permanent.
In general elections in New Jersey, New York and Virginia last year, and in this year’s Texas primaries, many Latino voters who swung toward Mr. Trump in 2024 returned to the Democratic column. Recent polling from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center has found that majorities of Latinos are critical of the Trump administration’s immigration and economic policies, the two key issues that drove Latinos to the polls in 2024.
Katherine Pichardo, the president and chief executive officer of the Latino Victory Project, said the next effort will ensure groups are engaging Latino voters at a scale no single organization can reach.
Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.
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