Donald Trump launched his campaign for the White House by descending a golden escalator before promising to build a wall with Mexico to defend America from “rapists” and criminals.
Fast-forward three years and the campaign for re-election has a startlingly different tone.
“We’re working night and day to deliver a future of limitless opportunity for our nation’s Hispanic American citizens,” he told a raucous audience in New Mexico last week, “including many extraordinary Mexican Americans.”
The appearance in Rio Rancho, suburban Albuquerque, marks a distinct shift in strategy for a campaign that has so far focused largely on bolstering support in states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan that delivered him victory last time around. In contrast, New Mexico has not backed a Republican candidate in 15 years. Trump managed only 40% of the vote there in 2016, but now his team believes they can win it.
“We’re here because we really think we’re going to turn this state and make it a Republican state,” said Trump.
Officials say the push is backed by data. A week before the rally, Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 campaign manager, told reporters on a conference call that the idea for targeting New Mexico came after organizers recorded a surge in Hispanic supporters attending a rally in El Paso, Texas.
“We saw in the data thousands of voters who did not vote for the president in 2016 show up to a rally, come listen to the president, and register,” he said. “As we started doing polling there, we saw a dramatic increase from 2016, and I went over this with the president and he said, ‘Let’s go straight into Albuquerque.’”
The result was a typical Trump stump speech — riffing on everything from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faces renewed allegations of sexual misconduct, to his favorite targets in the media — tailored for a New Mexico audience. So, in came the appeals to Hispanic voters, as well as boasts about the surge in oil and gas production on his watch.
That matters in this part of the world, where the introduction of fracking technology has produced a surge in output from the Permian Basin, which extends through the southeast of the state and into Texas.
The revenues have brought record surpluses, which this past year ran to more than $1.3 billion. Things are only going to get better, according to forecasts that predict production will increase from $17 billion in 2017 to more than $72.6 billion in 2030.
Unless, that is, the United States elects a Democratic president committed to cutting the production of fossil fuels, said Trump.
“Under the Green New Deal, that all goes away,” he said, referring to the environmental policy that has become something of a litmus test for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. “It all goes away. You can forget it.”
Such arguments will go over well in the southern part of the state, where the oil and gas industry is based, according to Lonna Atkeson, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico, but less well in northern cities such as Albuquerque.
She said it is hard to imagine Trump winning enough independents to build on his 2016 showing and claim the state.
“Our state budget comes from oil and gas,” she said. “Nevertheless, Democrat activists and the governor are very much on the side of moving the economy to something else. So, while the jobs are important and I think Trump will win the southern part of the state — and he did win that part in 2016 — oil does not dominate the whole state.”
But if the Trump 2020 strategy is on display in the president’s itinerary, deploying its most effective weapon to the states where he can make a difference, then the campaign clearly senses an upset.
