During the Democratic National Convention last month, a sign at Chicago’s McCormick Place drew attention: “Evangélicos John Harris.”
The group is part of a national effort to rally evangelical voters around Vice President Kamala Harris and signals Democrats’ intent to try to wrest away Latino evangelicals, a growing and coveted voting bloc from former President Donald Trump’s base.
“This is a community we need to reach out to,” Evangelikos Con Harris organizer and Milwaukee community leader Patricia Ruiz-Cantu told NBC News.
It is the fastest growing group of Latin American evangelicals 15% of Latinos known as evangelical Protestants.
While Latino evangelicals have traditionally sided with Democratic presidential candidates, including Latino evangelicals, who expressed more support for President Barack Obama than Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, supported Trump in 2016 and 2020.
According to Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, the influential president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the Latino evangelical community “is the most independent constituency in America—we can’t be married to any party, we have to be married to the lamb’s agenda,” pointing to Christ. “Donkeys and elephants can never rule us or define us.”
Rodriguez has advised Presidents George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump, and has witnessed firsthand the political growth and evolution of Latino evangelicals.
A look at Rodriguez’s New Season megachurch in Sacramento, California, highlights the power that pastors like him can hold in this election cycle.
Originally from the Mexican border town of Tijuana, Claudia Martinez has been participating in the New Season for more than ten years. There he found community, purpose and even love. Ten years ago, she met her now-husband, Dominican Edickson Martinez, through church. Both are part of a growing group of Latino evangelicals who attend weekly, largely thanks to Rodriguez, a charismatic leader on his way to becoming one of the most influential figures in American politics today.
During a recent Sunday morning service, Rodriguez, originally from Puerto Rico, dressed casually and preached in English and Spanish. He joked, sang and preached to the churchgoers — mostly first- and second-generation immigrants — and his audience seemed captivated, many breaking down in tears as he spoke.
While Rodriguez didn’t tell her followers who they’d vote for, it’s clear her main message stuck with them. Edickson Martinez said Rodriguez always told them to vote their conscience “regardless of the candidate.”
But Rodriguez is not shy about expressing his current disillusionment with the Democratic Party, the party he idolized under Obama. In his view, Democrats have gone “too far to the left,” especially when it comes to immigration, transgender rights and abortion.
Rodriguez predicts that more than 70% of Latino evangelicals will vote for Trump. He believes they are ready to see past Trump’s moral character, legal troubles and anti-immigrant rhetoric, instead seeing him as a vehicle through which Judeo-Christian values can be advanced. “This is socialism. Communism,” Rodriguez said, referring to the Democratic Party platform, an imprecise line of attack often used by the GOP to demonize Democrats.
But Ruiz-Cantu of Evangélicos John Harris said it was the Democratic Party and the Harris campaign that best represented evangelical Christian values.
“I think evangelical Christianity should embody the basic teachings of Jesus Christ, which emphasize love, compassion, acceptance and justice,” Ruiz-Cantu said.
“I believe Kamala Harris resonates with the Latino evangelical community more than Donald Trump because of her strong advocacy for social justice, equality and inclusive immigration reform,” he said. “His support for pathways to citizenship and understanding of the complexities immigrant families face align with the values of many Latino evangelicals. I appreciate his commitment to addressing systemic disparities in education, health care and economic opportunity.”
At the New Season megachurch, Claudia Martinez said that while she is undecided between Democrats or Republicans, her choice in this presidential election will come down to the candidate who can best provide “justice for immigrants and Latinos.”
Perhaps 10 years ago this sentiment would have translated into direct voting for Democrats, but not today.
“Christ is above all,” Claudia Martinez quickly added after listing her main concerns with the vote.
Edickson Martinez, who doesn’t always identify as a Republican, is clear about his decision to vote for Trump. “I think Trump will be the closest candidate to the values we support as Christians.”
He went so far as to predict that most of Rodriguez’s followers are hesitant to say publicly that they will vote for Trump this November. “They fear rejection,” he said.
It seems that Rodriguez’s words matter. Today, its sphere of influence is greater than ever. Claudia and Edickson Martinez not only attend his Sunday services, but follow Rodriguez on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and more recently on Daystar Television, a popular national Christian television network founded in 1997 by televangelists Joni and Marcus Lamb. Over the years, Daystar has reached a predominantly white evangelical audience, but as of November 2022, the network created a Hispanic spinoff to reach Latinos.
The move to position itself in a Spanish-speaking audience reflects a desire to adapt to rapidly changing evangelical demographics. Today, Rodriguez is one of Daystar’s biggest stars, reaching millions of families in the United States and Central and South America.
“Latin America is the future of Christianity,” Rodriguez said.
What remains to be seen is whether this important voting bloc will swing back toward the Democrats or become part of a more durable Republican base.