The Spanish-language station Univision has announced it will no longer air ads telling Latinos to stay home on Election Day.
“Don’t vote this November,” the English version of the ads says, while playing images of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats. “This is the only way to send them a clear message: ‘You can no longer take us for granted.’ Don’t vote.”
A group called Latinos for Reform, led by Robert de Posada, a former Republican National Committee official, is behind the ads.
The decision to pull the ads came after a wave of outrage from Latino leaders.
“I think there’s nothing more cynical than to encourage people to make themselves irrelevant,” Arturo Vargas, director of the nonpartisan National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, told The Upshot. “I hope Univision makes the decision not to run the ads.”
Vargas joins a slew of Latino leaders in Nevada who asked the Univision network to refrain from running the ad. Fernando Romero, president of Hispanics in Politics, told KTNV-TV in Las Vegas that the message must be “denounced.”
Univision confirmed to The Upshot that it will no longer run the ads.
“Univision will not be running any spots from Latinos for Reform related to voting,” the statement said. “Univision prides itself on promoting civic engagement and our extensive national campaigns encourage Hispanics to vote.”
You can watch the ad below:
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De Posada tells The Upshot he is “totally shocked” that Univision has rejected the ads and that he is considering taking legal action. He says the network approved the ad Friday and ran five spots Tuesday morning.
De Posada says it’s “absurd” to accuse the ads of encouraging disenfranchisement. “Disenfranchisement is happening right now,” he said. “One party is taking us for granted while another is writing us off.”
The ads, which De Posada says are funded by individual donations of less than $5,000 each, were intended to run in Nevada, California, Florida and maybe Colorado, depending on the group’s finances. He says he doesn’t know where they will air now because Univision has a “monopoly” on the market.
De Posada, who has appeared on Univision before to offer political commentary, denied charges that the ads are designed to help Republican candidates, since Latinos overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. For example, Nevada’s GOP Senate nominee, Sharron Angle, has made cracking down on illegal immigration a centerpiece of her campaign, and on Monday told a group of Latino high schoolers that some of them looked Asian when defending her use of stock images of Hispanics in anti-illegal-immigration ads. Reid supports immigration reform, but has not brought the matter to a vote after losing the support of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
De Posada argues that for the Latino community, either candidate is equally bad.
“If Sharron Angle wins, it would be very similar to if Harry Reid wins reelection: Nothing is going to happen,” he says. “We are the ones allowing people to take us for granted. If she gets in there, she’s not someone we can count on, but it sends a message to future politicians and politicians in Congress that they need to be taking us seriously. We don’t benefit from either one of them.”
De Posada says he wishes that he could advise Latinos to vote Republican, but that GOP opposition to reform and GOP anti-illegal-immigration rhetoric make that impossible. He says Latino voters should still participate in local election balloting.
“We’re angry at the rhetoric from some of the more conservative members of the party. We’re simply very disappointed with what they’re doing. We could not reward that kind of rhetoric” by asking people to vote for Republicans, he said.
Vargas says he thinks the plea will fall on deaf ears. “We’re going to do anything we can to surpass projections that 6.5 million Latinos will vote on Nov. 2,” he says. “That’s a million more than voted in 2006.”
De Posada’s group existed as a 527 group in the 2008 election, when it drew attention for radio ads claiming that Barack Obama put the needs of African-Americans over those of Hispanics.
