HOUSTON – Donald Trump descended the golden escalators of Trump Tower in New York City and launched his bid for the White House in 2015 with a nativist, “America First” approach to immigration, trade, and the economy, along with claims that Mexico was sending “rapists” to the United States.
That message was a major part of the reason that Veronica Juarez, 39, a longtime Republican of Mexican heritage born and raised in Houston, for the first time in 2016 declined to vote for president. She did not like Trump, who frustrated her with his arrogance and his inflammatory rhetoric maligning Mexican immigrants, and didn’t find Democrat Hillary Clinton an acceptable option. But after much deliberation just before this Election Day, Juarez, 39, a stay-at-home mother, had made up her mind: “I am going to go vote for Trump,” she said.
She wasn’t “too happy” with him, she admitted. She didn’t like his character. But as a Christian, Juarez believed the Republican Party’s stances fell in line with her “biblical point of view,” and she admired Vice President Mike Pence for his strong Christian values. “I am mainly focused on who is around him, who walks with him, who guides him, I am looking at all that,” she said of Trump.
Since Election Day, Democratic political analysts and strategists have been trying to understand the decisions of Latino voters like Juarez as they dig into preliminary data that appear to show diametrically opposed trends: Both Trump and Biden won big with Latino voters.
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