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Veronica Diaz is just the kind of Latina voter whose support was crucial to President Donald Trump’s success last November. Democrats hope voters like her are turning against him now — and they may get a chance to test that thesis next week when Diaz’s native Wisconsin holds America’s first electoral test of the new Trump era: an April 1 poll to determine whether liberals or conservatives will control the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Heavy electoral spending on both sides — including from rival donors like Elon Musk and George Soros — has turned this into a proxy battle between those who love and hate Trump, nationally. Wisconsin’s Democratic party calls it “The People v Elon Musk” and the state party chair has cast it as a test of whether Democrats, who “went into the foetal position” after Trump won, are ready to “get up off the mat”. One recent poll showed that the candidates for the race were tied.
So is Trump doing what his voters — including the crucial swing electorate of Latinos here in Wisconsin — want? Or have two months of brutal anti-immigrant rhetoric, Musk-driven cuts to government services and inconsistency from the White House been enough to turn them sour on the president?
Diaz is categorical: “I think he’s a rock star. He’s doing everything that he said he was going to do. He’s not doing anything crazy. This is what he ran on,” she tells me, over Oaxacan pastries at a Milwaukee Mexican bakery. Another Latina dining nearby, Candy Trevigne, chimes in to express her agreement.
Later that night, at a Supreme Court debate-watching party at the local GOP Hispanic community centre, Latino voters Pastor Marty Calderon and Angelica Galicia are also fulsome in their praise and short on Trump criticism, even of immigrant detentions and tariffs that are likely to hit this working-class town hard.
“Some people are very frustrated because they were hoping that he would fail, but he’s not, he’s standing his ground,” Calderon tells me. Galicia, a small-business owner whose Mexican grandfather migrated to Milwaukee in the 1950s, praises Trump’s strength and “the respect he commanded as soon as he entered office”.
“Latinos are the fastest-growing group of Republicans in the country, it’s the new Republican party,” Mike Madrid, veteran political strategist and co-host of The Latino Vote podcast, tells me.
Is there any blowback among Latino Republicans to Trump’s deportation policy and immigration raids, I ask Hilario Deleon, chair of the Milwaukee county Republican party? Quite the contrary: “They want more raids,” he says.
Diaz explains this apparent conundrum as “not really a brown thing, it’s a border thing”. Trump is “trying to make the point that all countries have borders and if you . . . just let anybody in, that’s why we have problems in our country”.
Madrid thinks it’s a fallacy to believe immigration is driving the Latino vote — either towards or away from Trump. Bread and butter — or maybe bread and eggs — issues dominate, he says.
There are already signs of trouble on that front: at the local El Rey supermarket, a manager tells me business is down 70 per cent since Trump took office.
He thinks that this is because some shoppers are “self-deporting”. Spanish language media carries chilling political adverts telling them to do just that: “Leave now: if you don’t we will find you and we will deport you.”
So immigration policy won’t move the needle on Trump with Latinos, but tariffs might, says Madrid. Still, “if Trump is right” and the economy rebounds “then the opposite will happen”. Sixty days after the inauguration is too soon to tell. “Maybe another 60, we’ll start to see what change looks like,” Madrid says.
I’m not sure he’s right about that: Trump support has held up far better than I would have predicted, on the Latino south side of Milwaukee, and in Wisconsin more broadly. I’m not sure calling it “The People v Elon Musk” will be enough to give Democrats a decisive victory in next week’s proxy poll. Trump, and even Musk, might stand their ground in Wisconsin for some time to come.
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