Growing up, Dora Chavez Anaya sometimes felt like the only dark-skinned girl in all of Mesa. As the Mexican American daughter of a copper miner, she recalled, the Anglo children on her block were forbidden by their parents from playing with her. Peers at school sometimes called her the n-word. She felt powerless. She was powerless.But from her quaint suburban street in Maricopa County, Ariz., where she has lived all of her 60 years, Chavez has witnessed a dramatic change. Gone are the desert-defying agricultural fields of the East Salt River Valley, replaced by the boom of housing developments. Gone, too, is her sense of being a lone Latina in a White world. Most of her neighbors today are Mexican Americans like her.
Now, Chavez hopes that the changes will translate to more political power for Arizona Latinos, many of whom have felt alienated by the Republican Party’s rhetoric on racial justice and immigration. Although these voters have historically been written off by national campaign strategists, Democrats increasingly believe they could provide crucial voting margins for Joe Biden in November. A victory in populous Maricopa for the presumptive Democratic nominee would likely mean a statewide victory in Arizona, which in turn could be decisive in a close national election.
Sensing an opportunity, Biden has hired a litany of respected political hands to build what they say will be a competitive campaign in Arizona, part of a broader effort to shore up support in presidential battleground states across the country. A high-profile U.S. Senate race and anger over the Republican Party’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, which has ravaged Arizona and disproportionately affected Latino communities, have given those efforts an additional sense of momentum and urgency.
But longtime organizers in the state remain skeptical that Biden and national Democrats will invest the right resources to court Latinos — a diverse group that includes first-time voters, liberals and also many with socially conservative and moderate inclinations. Meanwhile, Latino Decisions, a Democratic polling firm, recently found that Biden is winning among Arizona Latinos but lags in support compared to Hillary Clinton at this point in the 2016 election.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/29/latinos-transformed-arizona-do-campaigns-see-them
