THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020 A
YPHOENIX — They packed into the
room to cheer their heroes.
The crowd of more than 100 hollered
enthusiastically at Henry Cejudo, a local
hero and Olympic gold medalist, the son
of undocumented immigrants from Mex-
ico who had gone on to become a mixed
martial arts superstar.
But they were really there to celebrate
President Trump.
Wearing red Make America Great
Again hats, several men held giant
American flags and stood in front of sev-
eral campaign signs: “Latinos for
Trump,” “Cops for Trump” and another
imploring them to text “WOKE” to get
the latest information on the campaign.
In the words of Eric Trump, the presi-
dent’s son and the headliner of the event,
the battle is simple. It’s right versus
wrong, he said, to a loud round of cheers.
“They are trying to cancel our voice,
guys.”
Men are the core of President Trump’s
base. In polling, gender gaps exist in
nearly every demographic: among
white voters, among senior citizens,
among voters without a college degree,
men are far more likely than women to
support his re-election. And little of that
support has shifted in the days since Mr.
Trump announced he had tested positive
for the coronavirus. Polls suggest that
this presidential election could result in
the largest gender gap since the passage
of the 19th Amendment a century ago.
Then there is one of the most enduring
questions of the Trump appeal: Who are
the nearly 30 percent of Hispanic voters
who say they support him, despite his
anti-immigration rhetoric and policies?
There is no one simple answer. Mr.
Trump has strong backing from Cuban
and Venezuelan exiles in South Florida,
who like his stance against communism.
And his campaign has heavily courted
evangelical Latinos throughout the
country. But no other group worries
Democrats more than American-born
Hispanic men, particularly those under
the age 45, who polls show are highly
skeptical of former Vice President Jo-
seph R. Biden Jr.
Yet what has alienated so many older,
female and suburban voters is a key part
of Mr. Trump’s appeal to these men, in-
terviews with dozens of Mexican-Ameri-
can men supporting Mr. Trump shows:
To them, the macho allure of Mr. Trump
is undeniable. He is forceful, wealthy
and, most important, unapologetic. In a
world where at any moment someone
might be attacked for saying the wrong
thing, he says the wrong thing all the
time and does not bother with self-flagel-
lation.
“I feel so powerful,” the president de-
clared at a rally in Florida on Monday,
standing in front of Air Force One. Lest
anyone miss the message, the rally
ended with “Macho Man” by the Village
People blasting on the speakers.
Paul Ollarsaba Jr., a 41-year-old Ma-
rine veteran, voted for a Republican for
the first time in 2016, won over by what
he saw as Mr. Trump’s commitment to
the military.
“I am Mexican,” Mr. Ollarsaba said,
adding that for years he thought that
meant he had to vote for Democrats.
When he began supporting Mr. Trump in
2016, his family ostracized him. “My par-
ents say: ‘Why are you supporting a rac-
ist? You’re Mexican, you have to vote
this way,’ ” he said. “No, it’s my country.
It’s fear, people are afraid of saying they
support the president.”
Mr. Cejudo clearly had no such fear.
When President Trump hosted large ral-
lies in Nevada last month, Mr. Cejudo
joined several other M.M.A. fighters who
backed his campaign.
“I’ve been the biggest fan of him,” said
Mr. Cejudo, 33, recalling watching “The
Apprentice” in a high school class. “We
need a businessman, we need somebody
like this to run our country.”
Other attendees at the event with Mr.
Cejudo and Eric Trump spoke of watch-
ing Mr. Trump on “The Apprentice,” say-
ing they liked his strong style, his appar-
ent confidence in his own opinions. In in-
terviews, they said they viewed his ac-
tions as president much in the same
way: Even those they do not wholeheart-
edly agree with, they see as further evi-
dence of his strength.They said they saw his defiance of
widely accepted medical guidance in the
face of his own illness not as a sign of
poor leadership, but one of a man who
does his own research to reach his own
conclusion. They see his disdain for
masks as an example of his toughness,
his incessant interruptions during the
debate with Mr. Biden as an effective use
of his power.
“We saw him being a boss,” said Edwin
Gonzales, 31, who held a large American
flag outside the Trump campaign office.
“And for him to go down the escalator is
basically the same thing — it’s like,
‘Dang, the boss has stepped down and
he’s putting himself out there to be the
president.’ That’s what’s exciting.”
Mr. Gonzales added that for him, and
many other Trump supporters, the presi-
dent represented the best of capitalism,
adding, “He’s a boss and they wanted to
be him, they idolize him.”
At the event, voters said they admired
President Trump and also criticized Mr.
Biden, whom many of these supporters
described as weak and deserving of the
derogatory label coined by the Trumpcampaign: “Basement Biden.”
Indeed, many of these men dismiss the
need for masks themselves. After being
screened with temperature checks at the
event with Eric Trump and Mr. Cejudo,
almost none of the audience members
wore a mask, nor did any of the speakers.
Mr. Biden has mocked President
Trump’s reluctance over masks. “What is
this macho thing, ‘I’m not going to wear a
mask’?” he said during one town hall
event this month. The comment
prompted a commentator on Fox to re-
tort that Mr. Biden “might as well carry a
purse with that mask.”
“We’re at a turning point in this coun-
try where we can either be afraid or
move forward,” said Ricco Rossi, 40. “I
think what they have done in the last few
months, they have damaged their party
more. They try to scare us.”
Though Hispanic women overwhelm-
ingly support Mr. Biden, Hispanic men
appear to have a persistent discomfort,
with polls showing him struggling to
maintain more than 60 percent of the
group, far below his average among non-
white voters. (Polls show him still well
ahead of Mr. Trump’s roughly 30 percent
support from Hispanic voters.) Mr. Bi-
den has not done enough to directly
reach out to these young Latino men, Re-
publican and Democratic strategists say.
“You have these U.S.-born Hispanic
males under 40 who are pretty Trumpy,
the question is why?” said Mike Madrid,
a Republican consultant involved with
the Lincoln Project, which is working to
get Mr. Trump out of the White House.
Both parties have often focused their
outreach efforts on white, working-class
voters, though many Hispanic men
share the same basic priorities. “They’re
English dominant, they are facing very
similar economic situations, listening to
the same media,” Mr. Madrid said.
After facing months of persistent criti-
cism that it was not doing enough to
reach out to Latino voters, the Biden
campaign has released several Spanish
language advertisements in the last few
weeks, including one featuring Bad
Bunny, a pop star known for his gender-
fluid style. Other advertisements focus
heavily on the way Trump administra-
tion has targeted Latinos, a message that
simply does not resonate among men
who do not want to see themselves pit-
ied.
Some Democrats argue that the sup-
port for Mr. Trump is an example of ma-
chismo culture, venerating traditional
gender roles and a kind of hyper-mascu-
linity. But the enthusiasm hints at some
of the underlying trends among U.S.-
born Latinos. More Hispanic women
than men attend and graduate from col-
lege, while Hispanic men tend to be over-
represented in law enforcement institu-
tions, including the military, the Border
Patrol and Immigration and Customs
Enforcement.
Yet the admiration of Mr. Trump re-
veals something deeper as well. Demo-
cratic pollsters who have closely tracked
Hispanic men say they are more likely to
prioritize jobs and the economy and less
likely to be concerned about immigration
and racism. Many Hispanic men are sin-
gularly focused on earning a living, gain-
ing an economic edge that they can passon to their children. There is a deep belief
in an up-by-your-bootstraps mentality —
and that Mr. Trump did no such thing
seems utterly beside the point.
Joshua Tapia, a 35-year-old cashier,
said that before the pandemic, he be-
lieved he was much better off economi-
cally, because he started investing in the
stock market. And now?
“A lot of jobs are suffering right now,
and I don’t blame Trump, I just blame cir-
cumstances, unfortunately,” he said.
“Nobody could have seen how this
played out.”
Even devoted Democrats have criti-
cized Mr. Biden for offering a somewhat
fuzzy economic message, at a time when
the pandemic has left more than 10 per-
cent of Latinos unemployed and many
more with a reduction in wages.
“In the Latino community, you are de-
fined by your ability to provide,” said
Tomás Robles Jr., an executive director
of Lucha, a progressive group that iscampaigning for Mr. Biden and other
Democrats in Arizona. “Folks who live in
a perpetual state of economic insecurity
want to look around and at least believe
that you can do great in this economy. Bi-
den needs to have a message that they
matter, that he is going to create an eco-
nomic reality they have the ability to
make it.”
In interviews with scores of Hispanic
Trump supporters at events in Florida,
New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona over
the last year, nearly everyone said their
politics angered some friends and family,
and rejected any suggestion that their
support was based on anti-immigrant at-
titudes.
And it is not quite assimilation either:
These men are proud to be Latino, chil-
dren and grandchildren of Mexican im-
migrants specifically, and many have
made an effort to continue speaking
Spanish.
Many say there is some appeal in be-
ing a political curiosity and voting differ-
ently than the vast majority of Latinos.
Even Mr. Cejudo, the M.M.A. star, told
the enthusiastic crowd in South Phoenix
that he had been shunned for his views,
which had made him only more outspo-
ken.
“Getting backlash as a Latino, you
know what that tells me,” he said. “That
there’s a lot of ignorance in this game.”
He told the group — supporters of a
president whose first campaign was
largely built on opposing illegal immigra-
tion — that his own mother came from
Mexico “in a politically incorrect way.”
He said his father was later deported,
while his mother helped him nurture his
dreams of becoming an Olympian.
Then he posed for pictures with a
flashy bicep flex.Supporters surrounded Eric Trump, the president’s son, for selfies at an event organized by Latinos for Trump in Arizona last month. About 30 percent of Hispanic voters say they support the president.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADRIANA ZEHBRAUSKAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESTrump’s Appeal to Some Hispanics: ‘We Saw Him Being a Boss’
By JENNIFER MEDINAEric Trump told the crowd in Phoenix, “They are trying to cancel our voice.”
Some of the people who attended the rally said they had long been fans of
President Trump and that their support of him caused tension at home.An image of strength and
wealth takes precedence
over issues like racism
and immigration.