In hard-fought Pennsylvania, fast-growing Hispanic communities present a test for Harris and Trump

The sun was creeping over the horizon on a recent morning in Pennsylvania’s erstwhile steel country, but inside a house next to two radio towers, Victor Martinez stood with a microphone, ready to broadcast his views to thousands of Spanish-speaking listeners.

“Señores, abran los ojos,” Spanish for “Gentlemen, open your eyes,” he said, after playing a recent interview where former President Donald Trump suggested he could deploy the U.S. military to deal with the opposition. “Three weeks before Election Day, this guy has the nerve to say that we should use the army to put what he calls ‘crazy liberal Democrats’ in prison.”

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. It’s 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, who is of Puerto Rican descent and lives in and broadcasts his show from Allentown. “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.

Martinez also streams his show on YouTube and Facebook, using a large screen with an image of the White House as a backdrop for his segment on politics, which has become the highest-rated portion of his four-hour radio show.

Despite his public stance against Trump, Martinez says he simply wants more Latinos to get out and vote to start building more of an influential bloc, the same way Cubans have done in Florida, where he used to live and where he shaped his political views. He says he liked former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, both Republicans.

“I don’t want politicians to think that they have us in the bag. No, they should be fighting for us,” he said. “I’m from Florida, so I’m very well aware of the power the Cubans cultivated in South Florida. They got that power because they vote.”

In Pennsylvania, roughly half of all requested mail and absentee ballots had been cast by Monday. Of those, 63% had been returned by Democrats with about 27% returned by Republicans, according to Associated Press election research. In recent elections, Democrats have been more likely to participate in advance voting, while Republicans have favored voting in-person on Election Day.

Democrats also are returning more mail and absentee ballots in the two counties that concentrate the most Hispanics in the state. In Lehigh, 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%.

The Trump campaign opened a Latino outreach office in the region and won the endorsements of popular Puerto Rican reggaeton artists such as Anuel AA and Nicky Jam.

“President Trump has always been about trying to influence the Latino population. It’s not the usual ‘oh we need Latinos.’ He appreciates our work and sees our potential,” said Marcela Diaz-Myers, a Colombian immigrant who heads a new task force the Pennsylvania GOP formed to do Hispanic outreach.

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.

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, says the Trump campaign believes it has some traction with younger Latino men, and he warned the Harris campaign that he was hearing more of Trump’s digital ads airing at the city’s barbershops where they play Bachata and merengue, musical genres from the Dominican Republic.

One of Trump’s most popular Hispanic surrogates is Robert Unanue, the CEO of Goya, which produces many food products considered staples in Latino homes. Unanue has been courting Latino voters in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina.

Unanue says some Latinos are against high arrivals of immigrants because many have struggled for years to legalize their status and have spent effort and money to become U.S. citizens. He said many do not think Trump would deport those who have been here a long time and have no criminal record, even though the GOP nominee has vowed to conduct the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.

“Trump is not going to deport la tia, or la sobrina or la prima,” Unanue said, using the Spanish words for aunt, niece and cousin. “He is going to focus first on the criminals and second on the deadbeats, people coming to this country to take from us who work hard.”

Trump regularly rails against immigrants, saying they are taking jobs and bringing violent crime to the U.S. He has said those accused of murder have “bad genes.” He has suggested he would use the National Guard, and possibly the military, to target between 15 million and 20 million people for deportation, though the government estimated in 2022 there were 11 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal permission.

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.

On the same commercial strip, Miguel Cleto, a pastor from the Dominican Republic, said he thinks Democrats have handled immigration poorly, and they are on the wrong side of the abortion issue.

“Donald Trump is the only solution for this country to go back to where it was,” he said.