The Texas border county has supported Democrats for generations. Trump won a decisive victory

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas (AP) — Jorge Bazan’s family has lived along the U.S.-Mexico border for generations and voted Democratic for as long as he can remember.

This year, he broke family tradition and voted for Donald Trump because he doesn’t trust the Democratic Party’s economic policies.

“I think they’ve forgotten about the middle class,” said Bazan, who works for a utility company in Rio Grande City, the county seat of the most Latino county in the country. “People are suffering now. Everything is very expensive.”

The South Texas region, stretching from San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley, has long been a Democratic stronghold. The slide toward Trump in 2020 has alarmed Democrats in a predominantly Latino region where for decades Republicans rarely bothered to field candidates in local elections. But few Democrats expected the dramatic shakeup that occurred Tuesday, when Trump flipped several counties along the border, including Hidalgo and Cameron, two of the most populous counties in the Rio Grande Valley.

In Bazan’s hometown of Starr County, voters backed a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in a century. The rural, heavily Latino and working-class district, with a median household income of $36,000, one of the lowest in the country, gave Trump a 16 percentage point lead over Vice President Kamala Harris. Roughly 2 million residents live at the southernmost point of Texas, amid vast tracts of farmland, and the border is patrolled by numerous state and federal agents.

Trump’s victories in the Rio Grande Valley illustrated how working-class voters across the country are shifting toward Republicans. That includes voters along the Texas border, where many Democrats have long argued that Trump’s promised immigration crackdown will turn off voters.

“I have always been a lifelong Democrat, but I have decided to switch to the Republican position given the current political landscape,” said Louis Meza, a 32-year-old Starr County voter. “I felt like becoming a Republican was the best choice, especially with immigration issues and everything that was going on.”

Meza said he was initially against Trump but saw too little change under President Joe Biden to justify voting for Harris.

Biden won Hidalgo County by less than half of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Since then, Republicans have poured millions of dollars into winning over Latino and working-class voters frustrated by Democratic Party policies.

A similar scenario played out in three of the state’s most competitive races in nearby counties. Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz claimed a decisive victory in the 15th Congressional District. In two other races, seasoned Democratic incumbents barely held on to their seats.

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar narrowly avoided defeat by a political newcomer in the most competitive race of his two-decade career. Cuellar, whose district includes Rio Grande City, was indicted this year on bribery and other charges for allegedly accepting $600,000 from companies in Mexico and Azerbaijan. His support for abortion restrictions makes him one of the most conservative Democrats in the House.

Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez also narrowly avoided defeat by an opponent he easily defeated two years ago.

Nationally, Black and Latino voters appear slightly less likely to support Harris than they did Biden four years ago, according to AP VoteCast. More than half of Latino voters backed Harris, but that was slightly less than the roughly 6 in 10 who backed Biden in 2020. Trump’s support among these groups appears to be up slightly from 2020.

In McAllen, Texas, Jose Luis Borrego said inflation and the promise of tighter border restrictions led him to vote for the Republican presidential candidate for the first time.

“I wanted to see change and that’s why I voted for Trump. I voted for red. I wouldn’t call myself a Republican,” Borrego, 37, said. He said he voted for Hillary Clinton and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders in previous elections.

The entire Borrego family voted for Trump.

“We just (made) this choice because we didn’t have any other choice that suited us,” he said.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said he had months of visits to the region during his race against Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred. In a victory speech on Election Day, Cruz said Latino voters were leaving the Democratic Party because of immigration.

“They are coming home to the conservative values ​​they never abandoned. They understand what the liberal elites will never understand: there is nothing progressive about open borders,” Cruz said. “There’s nothing Latino about letting criminals roam free.”

Michael Mireles, director of civic engagement for the labor rights group La Unión del Pueblo Entero, said Democrats haven’t done enough to engage Latino voters on the issues they care about.

“I think people on the Democratic side have been very slow to have these conversations with Latino families and families.” Mireles said this in Hidalgo County after Election Day.

“We can’t wait until the big election to have these conversations. By then it will be too late.”

___ Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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This story has been amended to correct the spelling of Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez’s name and Jose Luis Borrego’s age.