Nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group accounts for 15% of eligible voters.
By Alfredo Ortiz – – Friday, April 12, 2024
OPINION:
Because of their growing, positive impact on American culture and the economy, how Hispanics choose to vote will determine the outcome of the 2024 election.
Leading up to this important decision, I believe Hispanic voters deserve to be engaged in an honest conversation about the positive role they play in the economy and culture.
We also need to talk about the hard economic fact that Washington’s current policymaking has led to high inflation, high taxes and overregulation. These bad policies have disproportionately hurt Hispanics, their families and their businesses.
Why do Washington’s bad policies hurt Hispanics? Because we work. Because we have traditional family values. And because we start and run small businesses at a higher proportion than any group in the United States today, accounting for 44% of new small businesses.
My organization, the Job Creators Network, is setting out to engage in an honest conversation with the Hispanic community where they live, work and worship. We are aiming to secure the Hispanic support necessary to ensure that new pro-growth, pro-small-business and pro-family policies are made in Washington.
In other words, we are looking to galvanize the Hispanic community to use its voting power to make a positive change in Washington. All Americans, and especially small-business owners, will benefit from a change in direction in Washington. Hispanics can deliver that change. Hispanics account for 15% of eligible voters, and they are the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group.
In key swing states, Hispanics are poised to make history. “Given how close states like Arizona and Nevada were in 2020, a seven-point shift in vote share among Latinos in 2024 … would likely be enough to flip both states into the red column,” the Cook Political Report writes.
For the past several years, I’ve chronicled Hispanics’ movement to the political right. I’ve pointed out how Hispanics’ emphasis on faith, family and entrepreneurship makes them far more politically aligned with Republicans. Democrats’ obsession with abortion, gender fluidity, and tax, spend and regulate economic policies are increasingly repugnant to Hispanic voters.
Many Hispanic families, including my own, long for the America we once knew or that we once dreamed of. The America that protected faith, defended the family, and rewarded hard work and entrepreneurship.
Hispanics are overcoming America’s racial economic gaps through entrepreneurship. Federal Reserve data indicates that Hispanics are 70% more likely to become entrepreneurs than non-Hispanic Americans. They want to succeed through their own hard work and merit. Only free market policies will help them achieve, live, and fulfill the promise of the American dream.
As the 2024 general election campaign gets underway, these conversations should be happening across the country. Not the divisive rhetoric that is so commonly used to divide us by ethnicity and pit American against American. This is the year of the Hispanic voter. We have pride in ourselves and in our country, and we have the numbers to make the changes necessary at the ballot box so that all Americans can prosper together.
• Alfredo Ortiz is chief executive officer of the Job Creators Network.
