Juan Rodriguez wants Democrats across the country to take heed of how the California’s redistricting campaign embraced the issue and won.
Juan Rodriguez knows the conventional wisdom that Democrats should steer clear of talking about immigration — and he thinks it’s dead wrong.
The longtime adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom and former top Kamala Harris aide wants Democrats across the country to take heed of how the California redistricting campaign embraced the issue and won.
Rodriguez oversaw paid media for the redistricting ballot measure, and under his watch, the campaign rolled out ads that prominently featured footage of President Donald Trump’s militarized immigration raids.
The result: an emphatic win for the ballot measure and a notable swing left by Latino voters, whose drift rightward in 2024 has caused significant Democratic agita. He spoke to Playbook about how the party’s immigration hawks inadvertently enabled Trump’s deportation crackdown and the idea that Democrats should emphasize the economy, not immigration, to win Latino voters is a “false choice.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What can you tell me now about how Prop 50 played with Latino voters?
It’s clear from the outcome that we flipped the Latino vote in a way that has consequences, not just for this election that happened last Tuesday, but for what the potential [is] for the turnout to be heading into the midterms.
Have you seen data showing not only that the Latinos who did vote voted yes, but that you were actually able to drive Latino voters to the polls?
I would say we definitely saw reversion compared to 2024. You saw that across counties, and in particular, counties where that turnout was either depressed or/and had moved over to Trump. And not just with Latino voters. We also saw that with API voters.
This holds true for counties like San Bernardino, Imperial, Riverside — areas where we had seen either increased Republican turnout or that reversion that we saw in 2024. Part of the overall Republican thesis heading into the midterms is that they were going to be able to maintain that coalition. And we’re seeing evidence that that, in fact, is not true.
You leaned into messaging about immigration enforcement in your ads. Some analysts say Democrats rely too much on immigration as a way to appeal to Latino voters and that to get them back, the party should be laser-focused on the economy. It seems from the advertising in this campaign that you don’t believe that theory.
It’s a false choice, and false choices, unfortunately, have real world implications. The truth is, Latino voters expect their leaders to deliver not just on economic opportunities and messaging related to the economy, but also on safety, also on fairness, also on opportunities that create acceptance as Americans. And failure to do so — we’ve seen time and time again how it ultimately leads to harsher, discriminatory immigration policies that alienate voters and miss out the opportunities for both trust and trust converting into turnout and engagement. Which is why as opposed to accepting that false choice, we ran through it.
Conventional wisdom holds that immigration is a weak issue for Democrats and the party is better off not talking about it. Given that immigration enforcement was such a big theme in your ads — and not just the Spanish language ones — and Prop 50 succeeded, do you think that should send a message to Democrats in 2026 about how to run on this issue?
I don’t think you can run away from this issue when you look around in cities across America, it is front and center in terms of what people are actually experiencing in their communities. I think accepting and amplifying that false choice related to avoiding the topic — it does nothing to neutralize hard line critics. Republicans are going to continue to try to enforce eliminating due process.
I think that the opposite is more likely true — that if you don’t do anything or if you don’t talk about it, you’re legitimizing, and perhaps may even be responsible for, the actions that this administration is allowed to get away with.
Back in March, there was a lot of focus on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man living in Maryland illegally who was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador. Democrats were initially hesitant to talk about his case, and I know you were troubled by that. Was that on your mind when you were advising Newsom on how to approach these issues for Prop 50?
Before the Abrego Garcia case, you had the Laken Riley [Act] that ultimately got supported by some Democratic senators. Part of their argument was we needed to be stronger on the border. While that may be true to some degree, and we need to be talking about safety, the other thing the bill contained was a provision to eliminate due process, which I think was a precursor to this administration believing they could get away with harder immigration policies and the raids you saw across California.
To the point about Kilmar Abrego Garcia — if you accept the premise that immigration is a subject we should just avoid, because Republicans have been successful in winning the hard line enforcement argument, and we give up terrain, we give up terrain on substantive policy that has real-world implications.
Did these ads also resonate with white Democratic base voters?
They definitely did. There is real evidence in this election that we moved numbers in areas that have large numbers of Republicans and independents, and the independents being the key part of the story. That’s going to be critical for flipping some of these seats heading into the midterms.
So you’re saying with this messaging, you don’t have to choose between appealing to Latinos and appealing to independent voters who aren’t Latino?
For sure. And another way to drill down on the topic — if families are living in fear of raids and separation, you can make the argument that they are also concerned about their ability to work, which also leads to their ability to invest in their communities. So immigration reform is also an economic issue, and it is also a public safety issue. It is important for us to be able to understand the differences and the nuance that is required on the topic, and not accept the premise that it is an unpopular issue for us, and therefore we should just avoid it.