Voters in multiple Latino-majority cities in Massachusetts swung to the right in the 2024 presidential election, fueling Republican gains and presenting this year’s GOP gubernatorial nominee, Michael Minogue, with an opportunity to tap a voting bloc experts say has been overlooked by both sides of the aisle.
But turning that opening into votes may prove to be harder. As Minogue and Governor Maura Healey both court Latino voters, the new politics of immigration — and Healey’s aggressive messaging on the issue — could help pull some voters back into Democrats’ camp, activists and political watchers say.
“Healey dominates Spanish-language media,” said Alex Veras, a Republican activist who has served on the Haverhill Republican City Committee. When he asks people if they’ve heard of Minogue, he said he often gets a similar response. “‘Oh, the wealthy guy who doesn’t care about me?’ That’s what they hear and see.”
In 2024, President Trump increased his vote share significantly in majority-Latino communities in Massachusetts, including Lawrence, where he earned 40 percent of the vote after getting 25 percent in 2020. In Chelsea, 30 percent of voters backed Trump in 2024, up from 21 percent in 2020. And he saw smaller gains in Holyoke, where his vote share jumped from 30 to 33 percent.
Trump, of course, still lost by wide margins in those cities and across Massachusetts. But his gains in these deep-blue pockets embodied his ability to tap into voters’ frustration, including over the economy.
With those results still relatively fresh, both Healey and Minogue have made overtures to Latino voters. Minogue’s campaign said he has hosted roundtables and meet-and-greets with Latino voters and elected officials, run ad campaigns in Spanish and Portuguese, and conducted interviews with local influencers and Nossa Rádio USA, a Portuguese-language radio network.
Healey and Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll have also hit the Spanish-language media circuit and collaborated with Latino influencers, while putting roughly $300,000 behind a media campaign targeting Black and Latino voters, according to their campaign. It also launched a “Latinos con Maura” coalition over the summer.
All that seems to be paying dividends more for the Democratic incumbent than her Republican challenger. About 73 percent of Hispanic voters surveyed in a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll said they planned to vote for Healey, compared with 20 percent for Minogue.
In his ads and interviews, Minogue has sold himself as a savvy businessman who would help lower the state’s high cost of living by cutting taxes.
That’s a message that might have resonated more strongly in 2024, said Rafael M. Pérez Medina, the Latino Policy Analyst at the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy at UMass Boston.
“Most of the gateway cities have a high Latino population, and that Latino population is often attached to or aligned with small businesses,” Pérez Medina said. While Latino voters are far from a monolith, he said that anecdotally, Trump’s appeal in those neighborhoods was tied in part to the message that he was a shrewd entrepreneur who could fix the nation’s economic problems and help small businesses thrive.
As inflation sent prices soaring, “that,” Pérez Medina said, “became very appealing.”
But the political calculus may be changing. Amid an increasingly aggressive, and at times, deadly crackdown on immigration across the country, what was once an issue that pervaded GOP campaign messaging has become a potential liability for Republicans. A New York Times/Siena poll from September found that across the country, voters trust Democrats more than Republicans on immigration.
For Latino voters who took a chance on the Republican ticket in 2024 specifically because of immigration, Pérez Medina said, “the return on investment hasn’t been there.”
Healey’s campaign is trying to capitalize on that discontent. One Spanish-language ad her campaign has circulated on social media juxtaposes footage of Minogue talking about ICE and immigration with shots of ICE officers, including one incident where officers attempted to take a young child from the arms of a Fitchburg man who appeared to be having a seizure.
Minogue has said he would not have signed the PROTECT Act, the sweeping immigration package aimed at keeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from detaining people in schools, daycares, and health care centers, and, in some cases, courthouses. He has also indicated he supports keeping ICE out of daycare centers, hospitals, and schools, while calling for greater coordination between ICE and local officials.
“I would make sure that we target and cooperate with local, state, and federal authorities, so we truly can target the people who are terrorizing everyone in the community,” he said during his second debate with Healey earlier this month.
Regardless of his actual stances on the issue, Healey’s spots have grabbed voters’ attention.
Some Latino voters have “mixed feelings,” about the GOP nominee, said John Rigal, the chair of the Lawrence Republican City Committee, because the ads paint him as someone who is “going to be allowing ICE to come into the towns and cities.”
“A lot of people don’t love Governor Healey,” the Republican added, “but at the same time, the Latino community is very scared because of everything that’s going on right now.”
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POLITICAL MIGRATION: Speaking of the role of immigration in the governor’s race, the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition, long a figure in the immigration advocacy space, is wading more directly into state politics.
The group has a new social welfare arm, MIRA Forward New England, that will support “values-aligned candidates and policies,” according to its website. The first order of business for the organization? Endorsing Healey, Driscoll and Attorney General Andrea Campbell.
Advocacy organizations playing directly in the state’s politics is nothing new — the Environmental League of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Teachers Association, for example, both have super PACs that regularly spend big to help get their preferred candidates elected.
MIRA’s move to form an associated 501(c)4 is somewhat unique. While social welfare organizations “may engage in some political activities,” that can’t be their primary focus, according to IRS regulations.
And unlike a super PAC, they don’t have to regularly disclose their donors. The influence of so-called dark money groups was already on the rise in Massachusetts politics, with organizations spending cash to boost Healey, attack US Senator Ed Markey, and bankroll the ballot question to repeal the law that legalized recreational marijuana.
TRAIL MIX: On the campaign trail, Healey and Minogue find a fed-up electorate. Just with whom is the difference. by Chris Van Buskirk and Anjali Huynh, The Boston Globe: Roughly a week before voters decide the Massachusetts governor’s race, the two candidates are locked in a classic battle — the underdog Minogue attacking Healey, and the governor trying to look past him to a larger foe in Trump.
RELATED: ‘The check on Donald Trump’: Democrats frame deep-blue Mass. as crest of Democratic wave in closing midterms message by Anjali Huynh, The Boston Globe:
MAJOR INFLUENCER: From her Instagram grid, Renee Minogue is shaping her husband’s campaign for governor by Emma Platoff, The Boston Globe: As Michael Minogue campaigns on his Catholic faith and family values, his wife, Renee Minogue, is exemplifying both on her social media grid, complete with prayers, cowboy boots, and a signature drugstore lip combo.
SPOTLIGHT REPORT: Last campaign, Joanna Lydgate was behind the scenes. As first lady, she’s stepped into a growing spotlight. by Samantha J. Gross, The Boston Globe: As Healey’s partner for five-plus years, Joanna Lydgate has grown into a new identity as a first lady while simultaneously crafting what that title means.
PAC ATTACK: A super PAC funded by a donor to Sixth Congressional District GOP nominee Micah Q. Jones is injecting some last-minute cash into the race to replace Representative Seth Moulton.
The so-called United Future PAC spent nearly $35,000 on anti-Dan Koh mailers accusing the former White House aide and Sixth District Democratic nominee of cashing in on “insider information” while he served in the Biden administration, referencing reporting about Koh’s investment portfolio. Koh’s campaign has said he didn’t buy or sell any individual stocks while working in the White House.
The PAC reported raising at least $20,000 this year, including $10,000 from Steven Rosenthal, the chairman of the Boston-based private equity firm West Shore who donated $7,000 to Jones’s campaign earlier this year.
BLUE CHIP: The Democratic Governors Association poured nearly $600,000 into a super PAC backing Healey’s reelection bid in October, new campaign finance filings show, even as a pair of recent polls show the Democratic incumbent leading her well-funded GOP opponent by 20-plus percentage points.
The DGA dumped $585,000 into the Commonwealth for Tomorrow Independent Expenditure PAC, which turned around and spent $333,500 on digital ads, polling, and opposition research on Minogue earlier this month.
FEDERAL SUBSIDIES: Mass. has no competitive federal races in November. See where its lawmakers are spending their time and money, instead. by Tal Kopan, The Boston Globe: In solidly blue Massachusetts, the incumbent federal lawmakers who had a competitive race for reelection dispensed with their challengers in the Sept. 1 primaries. So as November’s midterm elections draw near, they’ve been spending their time — and money — elsewhere.
THE HIGH ROAD: The campaign to ban cannabis says legalization has made driving more dangerous. The science is very unclear. by Diti Kohli, The Boston Globe: The campaign behind a ballot question to overturn legal marijuana sales in Massachusetts is leaning heavily on research out of Ohio, and other questionable claims about road safety, in its bid to dismantle the state’s adult-use weed market through the November ballot measure.
CHANGING CLIMATE: As energy costs soar, Healey has embraced an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach — alienating some climate activists by Anjali Huynh, The Boston Globe: In the midst of a contentious reelection campaign, Healey has distanced herself from the uncompromising environmental warrior she was four years ago, embracing an “all-of-the-above” approach on energy, as skyrocketing electric and gas bills have become a major political talking point for her Republican opponent, who has pledged to expand the natural gas supply and do away with some of the state’s most ambitious climate goals.
‘An absolute nightmare’: Reports, interviews detail new problems at Hopkinton assisted living home where resident died in overheated room by Jason Laughlin and Bryan Hecht, The Boston Globe.
New ‘rumble strips’ on this bike path are a warning to speeding e-bikers. Is it enough? by Spencer Buell, The Boston Globe.
Meet the clown who regularly speaks at Quincy City Council by Peter Blandino, The Patriot Ledger.
Lang, Choquette call for Oliver’s resignation from City Council by Kevin G. Andrade, The New Bedford Light.
Vivek Ramaswamy built up his political career in New Hampshire. It’s faltering in Ohio. by Julian E.J. Sorapuru, The Boston Globe.
State Police union calls for apology from Minogue campaign after endorsement deal ‘corruption’ claims by Grace Zokovitch, Boston Herald.
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This newsletter was edited and produced by Matt Stout.
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Kelly Garrity can be reached at kelly.garrity@globe.com.