WASHINGTON — Dinah Vargas grew up knowing that in her native New Mexico “you are born Democrat and Catholic.”
But in late 2019, as she renewed her driver’s license at a kiosk in a drab Department of Motor Vehicles office in Albuquerque’s South Valley, a question on the machine about her voter status sparked an inner wrestling match.
You are registered as a Democrat. Is this correct?
No, she thought, it wasn’t any more. She had become a staunch opponent of abortion and an admirer of Donald Trump, and in recent years it seemed, to her at least, that Democrats no longer stood for the values she most cared about: “family, faith, and freedom.”
“I was holding up the line,” recalled Vargas, a former political campaign photographer who is now a conservative radio talk show host. “And I said, ‘You have to give me a minute, this is a big deal for me.’ I had been a Democrat my whole life — and then, I changed my party affiliation.”
The relationship between Trump and men — including Latino men — has been closely studied. The former president’s embrace of an unapologetically blunt ”made-in-the-USA” brand of masculinity drew support from white men and some men of color and was seen as a significant reason for his political success. Some analysts even predicted it could produce the largest gender gap ever in the 2020 election as women voters opted in droves for Joe Biden.
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