How Trump won over more Latino voters in Lawrence

Editor's note: Interviews for this story were conducted in Spanish and translated into English.

For Henry Reynoso, supporting Donald Trump isn't about being Latino, or about embracing Trump's vision for deporting millions of immigrants. It's simply because he thinks things were better during Trump's first presidency.

“For me, the economy, which is very important, was very good,” he said.

Reynoso is from the Dominican Republic — a Latino like eight in 10 Lawrence residents. As a barber, he said he’s doing fine under the current economy. But he lives in one of the poorest cities in the state, and has watched people around him struggle with inflation and the high cost of housing. He said that's driven the majority of Dominicans he knows to support the president-elect.

“In Biden, I didn't see a president who knew what he was doing,” Reynoso said. “I saw a president who didn't focus on what matters here.”

Across the nation, Trump made big gains with Latinos in the election. Exit polls suggest he won among Latino men, driven by worries over the economy, violent crime and unchecked immigration. While those concerns did not carry the day in Lawrence — Vice President Kamala Harris won the city handily — support for Trump nearly tripled since his first run, landing him 40% of the city’s vote.

For Trump supporters, an example of Biden's shortcomings is his handling of the U.S. migrant crisis. And for some Dominicans in Lawrence, the arrival of thousands of Haitians to Massachusetts has stirred memories of their home country, where for decades Haitians have migrated in large numbers. Reynoso said that on the island, Dominican kids had to compete with Haitian students for spots in schools. In Lawrence, he said, some Dominicans complain of losing out on jobs to Haitians.

“We have a double burden,” he said of some Dominicans’ view of their experience with Haitian migrants. “Maybe they affected us there, we ran here, and here we continue to be affected by the same people.”

Reynoso said he doesn’t personally feel resentment toward Haitians. And he is not a fan of Trump’s talk about deporting millions of undocumented people. But he writes off the deportation threats as campaign bluster aimed at currying favor with white voters. He pointed to Trump’s first term as evidence.

“I didn't see any persecution here, immigration police chasing people down,” he said. “What I saw here were a lot of jobs and a very stable economy — and a little more respect for this country.”

Immigration advocates say the reality is more complicated. While the Obama and Biden administrations prioritized criminals and recent arrivals for deportation, Trump in his first term considered every undocumented person a deportation priority, according to the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force.

As a candidate this time, Trump struck an even more aggressive tone on immigration, promising the largest deportation effort in the country’s history. And since being elected he's floated plans to declare a national emergency and mobilize the military to round up immigrants.

Reynoso said he doesn’t want to see anyone he cares about get in trouble with immigration police. But he offered a simple solution for people worried about deportation.

“If you don't want any problems, don't do anything illegal,” he said.

Lawrence City Council President Jeovanny Rodriguez is a staunch Democrat, but he said the party has taken Latinos for granted. He said political analysts examine white voters by education, gender, and class, but fail to apply the same nuance to the country’s 36 million Latino voters.

“Behind that ‘Latino’ there is a professional, there is a homeowner, there is a taxpayer,” Rodriguez said. “There is a person who is dedicated to their family. There are people who break the law. There are people who respect the law.

“To just call us ‘Latinos’ doesn’t consider any of that,” he said.

Post-election analysis has focused on another generalization, blaming Latino machismo for Trump's return to power.

Rodriguez doubts that was a big factor in Lawrence, where six of nine elected city councilors are women. In 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Trump by a 5-to-1 margin in the city, and Rodriguez said no one called out machismo in that case.

“You can't blame the Latino voter,” he said of Trump’s win. “You have to blame the campaigns that didn't do the work to get Latinos to vote for a particular party.”

While Rodriguez doesn't think Kamala Harris’ gender was a key issue in Lawrence, he said the prominence of gender identity politics doesn’t sit well with many voters, whom he considers conservative, even if Democratic.

The Trump camp — and Republicans across the country — spent tens of millions on ads to paint Democrats as too focused on trans issues, for instance. Following the election, some critics within the Democratic party said the Harris campaign didn’t do enough to counter those attacks.

The issue resonated with Pedro Julio Bastardo, another barber in Lawrence. He said Trump should not have run for president, given the array of legal entanglements he faced. Still, he found himself aligning more with Republican messaging this year, largely because he’s uncomfortable with the direction Democrats have taken on LGBT issues.

“This thing about homosexuality, I'm not against that, but I don't agree that in a school, my kids should receive that type of education,” Bastardo said.

Where Democrats failed to convince enough people of their vision for the country, Trump filled the void. His vision — often depicting a nation in economic ruin and a world at war — filtered down through social media networks to cell phones across the country.

Hair stylist Carmen Báez said she gets most of her news on TikTok and WhatsApp. The current state of U.S. affairs reminds her of the problems she left behind in the Dominican Republic, she said, and summons an appetite for a strongman in Washington D.C.

“I am one of those people who say that where there is not a little bit of dictatorship, there is no government,” she said.

Baez is among those with nostalgia for the military regime that ran the DR until 1961. Since then, she said, her home country has fallen into lawlessness. And she fears the same is happening in the United States.

“And that's why they say we need dictatorship,” she said.

But many Latinos feel dread over the threat of authoritarianism, especially those from places ruled by dictators. Larry Villalobos, a Venezuelan immigrant and owner of Cachapas y Más restaurant in Lawrence, emphasized the importance of the democratic process in the United States, where citizens can hold leaders accountable.

“The authoritarian right, like the left, is bad,” Villalobos said. “There has to be a balance, and the politics of this country is about that balance.”

Villalobos said if you don’t like the president, you vote them out in four years.

“Adiós,” he said. “Let someone else take over.”

Following the election, people have debated whether this was a turn toward Trump or a rejection of the status quo. But with a second Trump presidency on tap — and Republican majorities in Congress and on the Supreme Court — many Massachusetts Democrats hold out hope that the state will resist Trump’s most extreme policies.

Whether or not the 2024 election represents some kind of sea change, Lawrence City Councilor Rodriguez said the message from voters is clear. “As elected officials, we have to consider the tendency of people's thinking in order to have policies that represent the people,” he said.

Rodriguez said it will be in the city’s economic interest to cooperate with the new administration.

“We have a new president, and I think one way or another, we must work together,” he said. “The city is open and ready.”