Biden campaign pressed on Latina VP prospects

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told allies in recent days that Joe Biden’s campaign has begun vetting her for vice president, according to a source familiar with the conversations.

Harry Reid, the influential former Senate majority leader, has encouraged Biden, a friend, to consider Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

But as Latino lawmakers and donors step up their lobbying on behalf of both women, the two most prominent Latina prospects for vice president have been overshadowed by other contenders — another sign, some worry, of the stubborn disconnect between a critical segment of the electorate and the Biden campaign.

Biden’s campaign has been slow to diversify its staff, and after critics say it paid little attention to Latino voters in the primary, the campaign has work to do to make up ground in reaching the group — a problem that pollsters say could result in persuadable Latinos moving toward President Donald Trump or sitting out the election.

“I’m concerned Biden still doesn’t have strong Latino advisers that are his peers,” said Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “The Latinos [in the campaign], they’re like on the little kids’ table. They’re not at the grown-ups table.”

Cortez Masto and Lujan Grisham were never considered the most likely candidates for vice president, with several higher-profile and better-connected Democrats in consideration. Cortez Masto told CBS News in November that she would decline to be a running mate if she was offered the position, though Democrats close to her have said it would be difficult — if not impossible — for her to pass. Neither contender is actively promoting herself.

But many Latino advocates are searching for inroads into the campaign to press their case for Cortez Masto and Lujan Grisham, arguing that either represents a critical opportunity to increase Latino turnout in swing states.

Mayra Macías, executive director of Latino Victory Project, an organization that endorsed Biden ahead of the Nevada caucuses and is dedicated to electing Latinos, said she is aware of at least one lawmaker advocating for Lujan Grisham inside the Biden campaign, while Cortez Masto has “great allies like Sen. Harry Reid.”

Henry Muñoz, a former finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is involved in lobbying to promote a Latina for vice president, according to multiple Democrats familiar with the effort. Garcia said his organization has communicated to the Biden campaign repeatedly that “a Latina as a VP would increase the ticket and allow it to win states like Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Florida and put Texas into play.”

Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) said she has been texting with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a Biden campaign co-chair and member of his four-person running-mate selection committee, who she said asked for her input on the selection process.

Rep. Garcia named Cortez Masto, Lujan Grisham and former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis as Latinas at the top of a list she’s crafting who should be considered.

“It’s time to make sure that Latinas are part of the conversation,” she said. “I certainly don’t want us to be overlooked, especially when we’ve got such a great caliber of women to look at.”

Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Calif.), head of the campaign arm for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said, “I’m looking to see Joe Biden have a quality vice presidential running mate on a winning ticket. The first name that comes to mind, head and shoulders above almost anybody else is Catherine Cortez Masto from Nevada,” adding that Lujan Grisham and Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard of California would also be good picks.

“If you really like somebody and you’d like them to be considered then speak up, and I think that Latino organizations should be speaking up for having a Latina vice presidential candidate,” Cardenas said. “I personally have spoken up and I’ll continue to do that.”

A source familiar with the Biden campaign’s vice presidential selection process said that “with respect to almost every single thing people read or hear about this effort, those who talk don’t know and those who know don’t talk. Engagement with these groups, which we hold in the best esteem, as well as with the Latino community, is at the heart of our campaign. Anything people think they know about frontrunners they can be assured has no truth to it. This is a broad, exhaustive process that involves over a dozen women, including Latinas.”

Several Latino strategists acknowledge that their vice presidential lobbying efforts so far have lacked cohesion. Externally, it has been sidetracked, Macías said, by the coronavirus pandemic. She said her organization is now planning “both a public facing and internal campaign” to encourage Biden to select a Latina as a running mate.

After Biden in late April named his running mate selection committee, Macías said: “We have a stronger sense of who the folks that we should be talking to are.”

Internally, Cristóbal Alex, a senior Biden adviser, had once been viewed by Latino donors and activists as a potential conduit to Biden in the search for a running mate. But he has little influence over decision-making on that issue, according to multiple people familiar with the campaign.

“There’s just a small little group of people who make the decisions on the campaign, and Latinos are not in the room where it happens, as [the play] ‘Hamilton’ says,” said Chuck Rocha, who was a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders and architect of his Latino outreach effort.

Asked specifically whether Alex is being listened to, Rocha responded, “I don’t think so.”

“If they were listening to Cristóbal, there would already be a Latino on the ticket, and there would already be a couple hundred Latinos hired,” he said.

As Latinos within the Democratic Party attempt to organize their push, many Latino lawmakers, political operatives and activists are warning the Biden campaign that it needs to improve its strategy to court the growing Hispanic electorate.

A Latina vice president, some Latino operatives and mobilization groups say, could spur an electorate that is so substantial even small shifts in turnout or voting preference could alter the November outcome.

But Latinas are competing with concerns about a vice presidential candidate energizing black voters, progressives or moderate Democrats in the Midwest.

For Latinas, said Colin Rogero, a Washington-based Latino media consultant, “part of the challenge is there’s not a history of a fundraising network that exists for these candidates. … Latinos aren’t there in collective power, and I think one thing that is difficult for folks who aren’t from the Hispanic community to understand is it’s not a unified voting bloc in the same way that people look at the African American vote in the country.”

He said, “It’s not like there’s a bench for the Biden campaign or Democrats nationwide to look at,” adding that with many Latinos in Congress still relatively junior, “it’s not like they have a whole bunch of swag yet.”

The presidential primary was the latest example. In a historically large field of Democrats, only one candidate, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, was Latino. He dropped out before the Iowa caucuses and has yet to formally endorse Biden. And Cortez Masto and Lujan Grisham are examples of how recently Latinos have begun to capture the levers of power. Cortez Masto is the first Latina member of the U.S. Senate. In 2018, Lujan Grisham became the first female Democratic governor of New Mexico and the first Democratic Latina governor nationwide.

Henry Cisneros, who was mayor of San Antonio when, in 1984, he was interviewed to be Walter Mondale’s presidential running mate, said Cortez Masto or Lujan Grisham would be “great” choices. But he added, “I personally would cut the vice president some slack if he picked the person he thought would absolutely help him with the election, and I don’t want to put any extra pressure on him myself.”

“The African American community, it could be said, is the reason he will win the nomination, because of what happened in South Carolina and points thereafter in the South,” said Cisneros, who was HUD secretary under President Bill Clinton. “So that’s an important consideration for him. And then bringing someone who can excite people along the lines of Sen. Warren, I can understand that kind of selection. And bringing someone who can bring along those Midwestern states and speak to the center … I can understand that selection.”

As to which concern is most important, he said, “I think it will be a decision that can be calculated the closer we get to the election.”

Biden is widely expected to make a decision based primarily on personal chemistry and on his running mate’s perceived ability to govern. Biden campaigned for Cortez Masto in Nevada in 2016 and told a crowd there that his late son Beau, the former Delaware attorney general, admired Cortez Masto and shared “the same values set” as her.

For Lujan Grisham’s part, when asked on CNN about the potential position last month, she said, “I want to be the governor of New Mexico.”

However, she added that she would “do whatever it takes to support a Biden administration.”