The country’s largest Hispanic-oriented super PAC on Thursday released a Spanish-language ad linking Republicans to gun violence.
The ad released by Nuestro PAC, a group that promotes increased outreach to Hispanic voters, will air exclusively in Spanish, with a six-figure investment by the PAC.
“The frustration in the community started with the local Uvalde community not even being able to get information about the shooting in Spanish,” said Chuck Rocha, the Democratic political consultant who started Nuestro PAC.
“It made me think that if they can’t even get information about who’s to blame and what happened — on the shortcomings — in Spanish, then they don’t even know that they should be blaming Republicans for the lack of action on curtailing assault rifles,” Rocha added.
Rocha’s hope is that the investment will serve both to educate Spanish-speaking voters and to attract donors interested in running the ad in key congressional districts.
Hispanic voters will play a key role in several competitive districts in 2022, a novelty for a community that’s traditionally held most of its political power in safe Democratic districts.
Among the potential targets for Nuestro PAC’s ad are the South Florida district where state Sen. Annette Taddeo (D) is challenging Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R); the California district where Democrat Rudy Salas is challenging Rep. David Valadao (R); the New Mexico district where Democrat Gabe Vasquez is challenging GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell; and the Texas district where Democrat Michelle Vallejo is facing off against Republican Monica De La Cruz.
“We bought a six figure National Digital buy to target Latino voters and donors, to see if we can raise enough money to run this into individual congressional districts that have large Latino populations,” said Rocha.
“For the first time in American history, there’s a whole bunch of [districts] that are actually marginal and have a ton of Latinos,” he added.
Many of those districts are relatively near to sites of mass killings that shook entire communities.
In the ad, the narrator asks, “How many more children do we need to bury?” while the names of Columbine, Colo.; Newtown, Conn.; Parkland, Fla., and Uvalde, Texas, are displayed on screen.
“All of this is very localized where the shootings have happened. There’s large constituencies of Latino voters, who a lot of them consume information in Spanish where they’re not hearing anything from Democrats,” said Rocha.
“Latinos who consume MSNBC, Latinos that consume Fox News, they’ve already picked a corner. They’re already going to be with one party or the other. Right? Because they’re getting information in English. There’s just not a lot of information getting to our community in Spanish,” he added.