Hispanic voters in the Lehigh Valley have been ‘activated’ by Trump’s racism

The concentration of eligible Latino voters in and around Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton could be the key for Vice President Kamala Harris to capture Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is arguably the hardest fought of the battleground states and happens to have one of the fastest-growing Hispanic communities in the country, in what is known as the 222 Corridor, after the highway that connects small cities and towns west and north of Philadelphia.

One of the first voices members of these communities hear each weekday morning is that of Victor Martinez, on his morning radio show, El Relajo de la Mañana. The show is broadcast on stations he owns in Reading, York, Harrisburg, and Lancaster, and on his flagship signal in Allentown: La Mega 101.7 FM.  

On a recent show, Martinez told his listeners, “Señores, abran los ojos”—that’s Spanish for “Gentlemen, open your eyes”—after playing an interview in which former President Donald Trump suggested he could deploy the U.S. military to deal with his political opposition. “Before Election Day,” Martinez said, “this guy has the nerve to say that we should use the Army to put what he calls ‘crazy liberal Democrats’ in prison.”

Trump and his loyalists regularly rail against immigrants like those in Martinez’s audience, saying they are taking jobs and bringing violent crime to the U.S. At a Trump-hosted rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden Sunday, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico—a U.S. territory—a “floating island of garbage,” a racist comment that Trump’s campaign quickly tried to distance itself from.

If members of his audience weren’t paying much attention to the presidential race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris prior to Sunday, Martinez said they are definitely engaged now.

“They have now been activated,” said Martinez, who was born in New Jersey and raised in Puerto Rico. “I’ve spoken to people who said, ‘I wasn’t involved, I didn’t care, I’m not going to vote, I’ve had enough of politics. Now, I’m voting. Now, I care. You call me garbage? I’m going to show you what garbage is.’ I spoke with a listener who said he’s a Republican and he already voted for Trump last week with a mail-in ballot. Now, he’s regretting it. He said, ‘All I can do is compensate right now for my vote by telling my family and friends to please not to vote for him and vote for (Harris).’”

The political impact of Pennsylvania’s Hispanic stronghold

Martinez’s broadcast area stretches from Easton, just across the Delaware River from New Jersey in Northampton County, out to parts of Central Pa. It is fertile ground for both Democrats and Republicans to test their strength among Latinos in a state where small margins decide who gets 19 electoral votes. It’s a place where Democratic nominee Kamala Harris can prove that her party still commands a large share of the demographic’s support, and where Trump’s campaign has been working to gain ground.

“This is the epicenter for Latino voters in Pennsylvania,” said Martinez. “I like the fact that Kamala Harris has to keep sending people over here to listen to us and talk to us. I like it. I like the fact that JD Vance has to keep coming back. I like it, because that means that they have to pay attention to us.”

Pennsylvania’s Latino eligible voter population has more than doubled since 2000—from 206,000 to 620,000 in 2023, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. The population in cities like Allentown and Reading is now more than half Hispanic, with a majority being of Puerto Rican descent and a sizable portion of Dominican origin.

In Pennsylvania, more than half of all requested mail and absentee ballots had been cast by Wednesday, one day after the deadline to apply for a mail ballot. Democrats are returning more mail and absentee ballots in the two counties that concentrate the most Hispanics in the state, according to Associated Press election research. In Lehigh County, home to Allentown, Democrats accounted for about 62% of returned mail and absentee ballots with Republicans at 27%. In Berks County, home to Reading, Democrats accounted for about 60% of the total with Republicans at about 31%.

Trump lost Pennsylvania to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, after winning the state and the presidency in 2016. Nationwide, about 6 in 10 Hispanic voters supported Biden in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, a broad survey of the electorate.

Harris’ campaign is hoping their network of surrogates, including Martinez, Puerto Rican artists and other popular Latino figures, helps them hold Biden’s Latino lead, or at least stunts Trump’s efforts to make inroads within this group. On Tuesday, Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper, El Nuevo Día, endorsed Harris, noting that while “the three million American citizens who live in Puerto Rico cannot vote in the presidential elections… the other five million who live in the United States, whom (Trump’s surrogate) also labeled as trash, can vote.” 

The mayor of Allentown, Matt Tuerk, has been knocking on doors for the Democratic vice president and sees Harris’ campaign resonating deeply with older Latino voters and particularly women, who often tell him things like, “I will vote for ‘la mujer”—Spanish for “the woman.”

Tuerk, who is of Cuban descent, said whatever traction the Trump campaign believed it had been gaining with undecided members of the Hispanic community was halted by the racist comments directed at Puerto Ricans during Sunday’s rally.

“I think it might have shifted some people who were truly undecided and weighing a Vice President Harris choice versus a former President Trump choice,” said Tuerk. “I think that those comments will push people away from Trump and towards Harris. 

“Beyond that, the Dominican Americans that I’ve talked to here in Allentown have told me that they believe this is an indication of how (Trump) feels about Caribbean Latinos. And they might have been able to shrug off some of the racist hatred in previous comments or previous statements by the campaign. But now this feels very close to home and it feels like they’re indicating exactly how they feel about Latinos, and I think that it might activate folks beyond the Puerto Rican community.”

Along Allentown’s Seventh Street, or what locals call Calle Siete, there is a mix of Latino-owned restaurants and grocery stores and Dominican beauty salons.

Franklin Encarnacion, 58, of the Dominican Republic, says he sees a lot of support for Harris in this neighborhood.

“She is a woman. She knows what we need in our homes. She knows that things are getting expensive,” Encarnacion said, adding he felt Trump has focused too much on saying he wants to deport immigrants.

Dominican American voter Franklin Encarnacion, 58, who plans to vote for Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, poses in Allentown, Pa., Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Ryan Collerd)

An outsider’s view

Just prior to Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, Robin (who requested that her last name not be published), canvassed for 10 days in the Lehigh Valley on behalf of the Progressive Turnout Project, an organization aimed at increasing participation among registered Democrats and Independents in competitive areas where people don’t vote consistently.

Robin said there was a palpable sense of enthusiasm for the Harris campaign among the Hispanic voters she spoke with while knocking on doors in and around Bethlehem and Easton.

“One family told me, ‘We are a Harris family household, our whole family, all our cousins, all our friends, are going to vote for Harris,’” Robin said. 

“When I was leaving town on Sunday, I went to the Harris office in Easton. And in the parking lot, I saw a row of jeeps all decked out with signs that said ‘Latinos for Harris.’ There might have been 12 in a row. I said to the leader, ‘This is fantastic, what are you guys doing?’ He said they were going parading through communities, and holding small rallies in each community, to promote Latinos for Harris.”

In the wake of the racism and sexism Trump and his surrogates aired at Sunday’s rally, Robin said she thinks voters like the ones she spoke with in the Lehigh Valley are seeing Trump for who he really is.

“I think everything that was said at that Trump rally in New York should help Latinos understand how that campaign feels about them.”

Keystone political reporter Sean Kitchen contributed to this report. Information from the Associated Press was also used in this report.