To the editor:
The Democrats had better be ready for a tough fight in 2020, because Latinos in Virginia and other battleground states are working overtime to give President Donald Trump four more years in the White House.
Virginia Democrats are giddy about the recent state-wide elections, but their confidence is misplaced. An off-year General Assembly election is very different from a presidential election, and the factors that helped Democrats prevail in 2019 will not be there to bail them out in 2020. For one thing, wealthy liberal activists such as George Soros were able to funnel massive campaign contributions to Virginia Democrats because there were no competitive contests competing for donor dollars in other states. For another thing, Trump wasn’t on the ballot.
Virginia Latinos recently hosted a Trump Victory Leadership Initiative training event to start laying the groundwork for 2020. The Trump campaign has built the largest field operation in the history of presidential politics, and initiatives like these are how we will mobilize that support.
As an immigrant and a small business owner in Alexandria, I attended the event along with dozens of other passionate Latino entrepreneurs who are thriving thanks to Trump’s liberating economic policies. The economy has finally recovered from the Great Recession and the economic stagnation that followed under President Barack Obama, and Latinos have made the most of that miraculous turnaround.
The Old Dominion has added around 1000,000 new jobs since the 2016 election, including 13,000 new manufacturing jobs. By contrast, we lost 17,000 manufacturing jobs under Obama, whose big-government agenda stifled business growth and prevented a genuine economic recovery.
Thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Virginians saved an average of more than $1,200 on their federal income taxes last year, and the President’s tax cuts are projected to directly create an additional 32,000 new jobs in Virginia during the next decade, in addition to all the jobs already being created in this strong and grow- ing economy.
President Trump’s pro-growth policies have had a positive effect on Virginia’s unemployment rate, which has declined by 1.3 percentage points since January 2017. Our current unemployment rate of just 2.7 percent, in fact, is lower than it’s been at any point since 2001. Virginia Latinos have prospered right alongside our neighbors, achieving a 3.1 percent jobless rate that is also significantly lower than the national average, even as the overall Hispanic unemployment rate has fallen to all time lows.
If Latinos are going to keep building on that progress in the coming years, we need to do our part to ensure that Trump gets another four years in the White House. Events such as the recent Trump Victory Leadership Initiative training in NOVA will play a major role in securing the President’s reelection next year.
I couldn’t be prouder to support this President, which is why I’m working with Latinos across the country to secure another four years of the historic success we’re enjoying today.
-Fernando Torrez, Alexandria
