Can Warren Petersen win over Latino voters with his Spanish-speaking pitch?

Filed 57m ago · Via Arizona Mirror · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Maple Leaf Rag

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Dan McCue · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Republican Warren Petersen, running for Arizona attorney general against incumbent Democrat Kris Mayes, released a Spanish-language digital ad featuring his Mexican-born wife, state Rep. Lydia Hernandez, and other Latino supporters. Petersen trails in polling and is trying to close a race Mayes won by just 280 votes in 2022.

Hernandez, a self-described conservative Democrat censured by her own party for repeatedly voting with Republicans, endorsed Petersen after losing her July primary badly. A recent NBC News/Telemundo poll found 69% of Latinos who once supported Trump now disapprove of him, and two-thirds think his deportation crackdown has gone too far.

Petersen backs Prop. 314, criminalizing illegal border crossing at the state level, and previously pushed the Senate's Cyber Ninjas audit of the 2020 election. Mayes has sued the Trump administration repeatedly, helping block the administration's effort to end birthright citizenship and pausing an ICE facility pending environmental review.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Running a Spanish-language ad while backing the same deportation agenda that's souring Latino voters nationwide is a bit like advertising fresh bait on a hook everybody's already been snagged on once. Hernandez may bring in a few hundred votes, and in a race this close that could matter, but borrowing credibility from someone who just lost her own primary is a thin rope to cross a canyon on. Petersen's betting Latino voters aren't a monolith, which is true, but it's also true plenty of them have already seen this particular pitch before.

Source: Read the original at Arizona Mirror → Scored: Maple Leaf Rag · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0