It’s not just ‘Bernie Bros’: Sanders banks on young Latino voters in Nevada — and beyond

Ulises Romero likes what Bernie Sanders says about immigration, health care, and the “school-to-prison pipeline” that has put his former classmates in jail.

But ask the 18-year-old Latino student directly why he’s a loyal Sanders supporter, and he recounts how the presidential candidate reacts when regular people hug him.

At a rally over the weekend, Sanders marched shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of Latino voters, most of them eager to offer a hand-shake or embrace of the Vermont senator. Most candidates would recoil at the close physical contact, in Romero’s view, but Sanders — smiling and eager to hug back — looked comfortable.

“Some politicians, not to be dissing them, feel like they think they’re a little bit more than other people,” Romero said. “He’s like more of a people guy.”

Sanders has risen to the top of the Democratic presidential field after winning the most votes in the overwhelmingly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire. But the reason he is expected to perform well in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses — and why he’s generally now considered the favorite to win the party’s nomination — is because of the devoted following and support of young voters of color like Romero.

It’s not the type of support usually associated with Sanders, who lost the 2016 Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton in large part because of her overwhelming support among black and Latino voters. But in 2020, younger voters of color are a critical part of Sanders’ coalition, providing him with a unique advantage as the primary fight moves to more diverse states like Nevada, California and Texas.

Top Sanders campaign officials bristle at any suggestion the campaign attracts only white supporters.

“We find that most of the people who make those arguments are white themselves and really have no ties to our community,” said Chuck Rocha, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign.

A Telemundo poll released this week showed Sanders winning almost half of Nevada Latinos under 50. He still narrowly trails Joe Biden overall among Latino voters in the state.

Sanders has made similar inroads among black voters nationally, winning 28 percent of them in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.

Sanders’ support among voters of color was evident during a rally last Saturday, where he spoke in a high school cafeteria before leading the march down a quiet suburban street. The rally featured a Mariachi band and speeches delivered in Spanish. Most of the 1,200 people who attended were Latino — in stark contrast to the mostly white audiences that gathered for some Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg events held this past weekend in Las Vegas.

It also evident the next day, at a suburban strip mall, where an exclusively Latino group of voters gathered at the headquarters of Make the Road Action Nevada, an immigrant advocacy group that has endorsed Sanders. Women and men of all ages danced to Spanish-language pop music and got to know one another before fanning out into local neighborhoods to campaign on behalf of Sanders. Romero, a member of Make The Road Action, was among those on hand.

“They think ‘Bernie Bros’ are the only base he has,” said Ana Maria Archila, gesturing to the gathered Sanders supporters. “But this is the most multi-racial base there is.”

Archila is co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, which is partnered with Make the Road.

Sanders performed well among young voters of color in 2016, winning them in many states against Clinton even as he lost those groups overall because of his weak support with older nonwhite voters. While his support from other demographic groups, like liberal whites, has declined since 2016, he’s retained much of his support among younger voters of color.

That’s important in a state like Nevada, where roughly 20% percent of the Democratic electorate in 2016 was Latino, according to entrance polls.

And it’s not just Nevada where Latinos matter. His campaign has also worked aggressively to boost Latino turnout in California, particularly among those who are registered without party preference and may be less likely to participate in the state’s March 3 Democratic primary.

A poll released earlier this week from the Public Policy Institute of California found Sanders with 53 percent support among likely Latino primary voters. By comparison, Biden recorded 18 percent, while Bloomberg and Warren trailed with 7 percent.

Members of Make the Road said they support Sanders because of his policies on health care, immigration and housing. Anthony Giron, for instance, attended Sanders’ rally Saturday and said he and his family of eight people had lived in at least four places in the last five years, with many members of the family having to double up in rooms.

But the 24-year-old Las Vegas resident added that while he liked when Sanders talked about rent control, he didn’t think the candidate tailored his message specifically to the Latino community.

“Bernie supports everybody. It’s like equality for all, you know,” Giron said. “I’ve had someone else ask me, ‘why do you think he supports the Latino community very well?’ And I don’t think it’s just the Latinos community he supports, but it’s everyone who is struggling. And that just doesn’t stick to one race, it goes out toward everybody.”

Another member of Make the Road, 32-year-old Erika Marquez, said younger voters of color respond to Sanders because he offers them more.

“Our parents … they’re very closed minded, and they’re just like, you just gotta work, you just gotta work, you just gotta work,” said Marquez, who spoke at Sanders’ rally on Saturday. “But it’s not just about working. It’s about fighting for your rights as well. And we understand that. And I think Bernie understands that. It’s not just working it’s being able to fight for what you deserve, what you’ve been working so had for, it’s not just getting the crumbs. You’re supposed to get what you’re working for.”

Top Sanders aides say they made a more concerted effort to win over voters of color after their failed 2016 bid, conscious that they didn’t run the kind of campaign necessary to reach out to them.

It’s why, this time around, officials say their top two field staffers in Nevada are Latino, why the their first ad in the state was in Spanish, and why their first field office was opened in a primarily Latino area in east Las Vegas.

“The model we’re running is absolutely the opposite of what the other campaigns are running to talk to people of color,” said Rocha, the Sanders senior adviser.

Sanders is using a similar approach in South Carolina, where a majority of his staff is African-American and from the state, unlike in 2016. The campaign there has toured barbershops, held private meetings with local black leaders, and run ads focused on African-Americans.

Rocha predicted that Sanders would win more support among all nonwhite voters than any other candidate in both Nevada and South Carolina, where about 60 percent of the Democratic primary vote was black in 2016. That remains to be seen, but the campaign’s effort hasn’t gone unnoticed by some Latino advocates.

“They’re gone to the community early,” said Mayra Macias, executive director of the Latino Victory Fund. “They’ve been not only investing in infrastructure in the community, but also putting money behind Spanish-language ads.”

Michael Bloomberg is the only candidate that has had a similar level of outreach, she added.

Sanders, of course, hasn’t extinguished all of his problems with nonwhite voters. Some older voters of color in particular remain skeptical of Sanders.

Janet McClendone-Brown is a 68-year-old U.S. Navy veteran who says she grew up in a Chicago housing project. She also has an 18-year-old and 25-year-old grandson who both support Sanders.

But to McClendone-Brown, Sanders’s agenda amounts to nothing more than away for “free, free, free.”

And she says she’s not alone: McCledone-Brown said none of the 14 members of her book club, all black women over 65, plan to support Sanders.

“None of us like what he did to Hillary Clinton,” said McClendone-Brown, a Warren supporter who attended an event here for the Massachusetts senator here on Saturday. “We just don’t trust him. That’s the biggest issue: We don’t trust Bernie.”

Even Romero said that when he walks door-to-door advocating for Sanders, many older voters don’t back him.

“A lot of older people go for Biden,” he said, “because he was Obama’s vice president.”

Macias said the inter-generational dispute often rests on younger voters who see an opportunity to forge a whole new system versus older voters who are fixated only on installing a new president.

She added that Sanders’ support isn’t uniform among all Latinos, either. For some who fled socialist states like Cuba or Venezuela, Sanders has less popularity regardless of age, she said.

“You have voters who are the young voters who have been coming of age in this time of instability, compared to older parents, like my parents, who just want to beat Trump, who just want to go back to a more peaceful time,” Macias said.

This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 1:01 PM.