Conversation
-
The Salazar Swing
source
It has been forgotten, amidst the uproar over this ad, that Congresswoman María Salazar has tried to call out Trump’s immigration dragnet before.A similar uproar broke out in June 2025 after Salazar and Latinas for Trump founder Ileana Garcia called out Stephen Miller for specific tactics he was using, specifically snatching people at courthouses while they were legally pursuing due process for immigration claims.
And when I wrote a long post threading through the extent that Cuban-Americans allowed themselves to ignore the gutter racism on which Trump was running (Salazar’s district includes a good number of the Haitians Trump targeted with his dog-eating smear), I noted that Democrats need not call out their delusions, because the effect would split Trump’s base in any case.
Don’t get in their way! At this point, any pushback on Miller’s gulag, any focus on him and his lies, is welcome.
We will not make it through this unless we exploit every single break that Republicans make with Trump. We will not make it through this unless we convince a significant number of Trump voters to push back or better yet disavow their vote.
Salazar’s earlier complaints didn’t work, at least not sustainably. Cubans were on the flight to South Sudan for which SCOTUS sanctioned third country removal and their third country deportations have stepped up in recent months.
So once again, Salazar attempted to make a nuanced appeal to Trump, reminding him pointedly of the coalition that put him in the White House in 2024. The move came just a day after Karl Rove, the last prominent Republican who attempted to be a Reagan on immigration, publicly backed a Democrat after the GOP candidate for Texas Railroad Commission celebrated a Texas football win with what Rove described as “raw, uncut bigotry.”
As happened in June 2025, the backlash to Salazar’s public criticism of Trump’s worst immigration excesses will create even more problems for Republicans’ ability to get Latinos to the polls. It likely won’t significantly reverse momentum in Salazar’s race, and it’ll create a toxic discussion nationally, as the fascists within the party attack Salazar as a Latina.
Salazar’s video has apparently been in the works for several weeks. Newsmax’s Marisela Ramirez posted a picture of Salazar filming the ad on September 3.
Since then, at least one ratings outlet has moved Salazar’s race closer to flipping, though still Lean Republican; the more cautious Cook Report hasn’t moved her race since April, and so may be due.
But Marc Caputo (in a post which he said he’d been “been picking away at … for a few days because I’ve been really surprised by the broad-based angst in the GOP” in Florida) said a Republican pollster from Miami found Salazar’s race (and that of Byron Donalds) to be tied.
Zoom in: A bellwether, Miami-Dade is Florida’s most-populous county, which Trump flipped to the Republican column in 2020 and 2024 thanks to strong Latino support, especially among Cuban Americans.
- “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar says in her ad. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
- Trump carried her district by 15 points two years ago. Today, she’s tied in polls with newscaster Eliot Rodriguez, a fellow Cuban American, who said her new ad was a sign of desperation.
- A Trump adviser told Axios: “I’m getting the Trumpiest Cubans sending me videos from Miami of guys getting busted at places like the gas station, for no apparent reason.”
By the numbers: In Miami-Dade, 62% of the county’s 1.3 million registered voters are Hispanic. They account for 76% of the registered Republicans.
- 63% of Hispanic voters said they supported “deporting illegal immigrants” while 34% were opposed to them, according to a poll conducted last month by a GOP pollster and shared with Axios
- But those numbers switched when it came to how deportations were being carried out: Just 29% were in favor; 58% were opposed.
- “The support is just evaporating. The economy sucks and ICE is just out of control,” said the pollster, who’s from Miami. “People feel they didn’t sign up for this.”
[snip]
- Republicans say they’re not too worried about conservative Hispanic voters switching to vote for Democrats, but they all believe turnout for the GOP will be low, which could affect legislative and congressional contests, and perhaps the race for governor.
Caputo describes that these polls showing a tie race were taken last month, so before Salazar shot the ad. Since then, prices just keep getting worse, and generic ballot support for Democrats has accelerated along with those prices.
Perhaps more important, given the district, around about then, Trump declared that he was stealing Venezuela’s oil, with Delcy Rodriguez’ help, which led Salazar to post, then delete, a tweet lambasting the theft.
Florida Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar did a quick about-face on President Trump’s massive Venezuela oil deal Saturday — deleting a social media post blasting the pact before returning to declare it was “a great deal” for America and the Venezuelan people
Salazar, who has been outspoken of communist Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, took to X to declare that the pact would come to an end once President Trump’s term ends.
“Any oil “deal” with Venezuela’s interim regime has an expiration date: the day President Trump leaves the White House,” Salazar wrote on the site.
Joaquin Castro made Salazar’s Venezuela equivocations worse on Tuesday, the day before she posted her video, by forcing her to vote on — after delaying for some time, she voted against — subpoenas to learn more about the corrupt oil theft.
U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar staved off Democrats’ subpoenas seeking details of dealings with Venezuela over an oil deal. But she also held a lengthy conversation with Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging total transparency over the economic arrangements.
A party-line vote closed an otherwise largely bipartisan hearing of the House Western Hemisphere Subcommittee. There, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat and the panel’s ranking member, moved to issue subpoenas to the State Department and War Department for any agreement between the U.S. and North American Blue Energy Partners, a private oil company run by Venezuelan billionaire Alejandro Betancourt, as well as between that corporate entity and acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez.
“For nine months, we haven’t received any information about funds regarding Venezuela or how oil money is being made or spent,” Cast[ro] said after the hearing. “Yesterday was the first time the State Department sent anybody over to even brief Congress about us, and that wasn’t even a hearing. It was an informal briefing, and so I thought it’s important to break through all of that noise and get some answers for people.”
Salazar held an extended recess of the Subcommittee while she called Rubio. “He is my constituent, and he’s Cuban American just like I am,” she said at the hearing.
It is famously difficult to poll Latino voters, especially in a community, like Miami’s, where there’s a degree of diversity built into that Latino community. But whatever else Marc Caputo is, he’s an astute reader of Florida politics.
And I suspect the most immediate effect of this uproar will be to exacerbate the same dynamics going on in Texas (where Rove is disavowing the more fascist part of his the party he helped build), which is far closer to flipping blue.
Trump has left Latino district members of Congress with no good choice between loyalty to him and distance from his bigotry. And in Salazar’s attempt, and not the first attempt, to find such a path, she likely will create waves well beyond Miami.
The post The Salazar Swing appeared first on emptywheel.