Trump campaign aims to use immigration, trade to win Hispanic vote in 2020

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – President Trump’s campaign team thinks he has a shot at winning New Mexico with a message on immigration and trade.

At a rally in Rio Rancho on Monday, the president hammered home the point that his administration has done more to reverse what he called “calamitous” trade policies than any other administration in history.

“Your state lost 33 percent of its manufacturing jobs after NAFTA was signed,” Trump told the crowd on Monday. “This was one of the great catastrophes and now we're replacing NAFTA with the brand new U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement: USMCA.”

New Mexico’s economy has depended heavily on the energy sector and has experienced a boom in recent months. This year, state lawmakers already have been revising the budget to factor in the additional resources, according to a recent Associated Press report.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said data points like this were part of what brought New Mexico to his attention.

“The Chinese tariff fight is bringing jobs back here and oil and gas industry exploding,” Parscale said. He spoke to Fox News before a “Vamos to Victory” Latino outreach event in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque in New Mexico -- one of many they’ve planned to hold in the months ahead.

But, why come to a state the president lost by eight points just four years ago? That answer may be found in the El Paso, Texas, rally the team hosted earlier this year.

“At the El Paso rally, we noticed that a significant number of those who were registering were actually New Mexico voters,” Trump 2020 campaign press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said. “We saw 50 percent of the registrants were Democrats [and] 25 percent were swung, voters. That’s 75 percent who were not Republican.”

McEnany said Trump’s immigration policy has been one of the biggest misunderstandings of the Hispanic electorate.

“It is a complete falsehood to suggest that Hispanic voters do not care about immigration,” she said. “On the contrary, Latino voters care about border security.”

Many Democrats, however, rejected this notion wholeheartedly, calling Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants “hateful” and “toxic.”
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