Cook shifts Salazar district; Hispanic voters drift leftward on economy, immigration
President Trump has encouraged his supporters to act as though his name is on the ballot in the midterms and has said he would campaign for Republican candidates, treating the election as a referendum on his record. The recent Republican breaks suggest not all in the party are on board with that strategy. Earlier this week, two Iowa Republican lawmakers voted with Democrats on a measure to rein in Trump’s military powers in Iran, saying the war was dragging on too long and was driving up energy prices.
Salazar, a Cuban-American and former Spanish-language broadcast journalist, has aired one of the most direct public breaks with the president by a Republican House candidate in this cycle. In the ad, she says: “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.” Her campaign said the ad will air throughout South Florida on broadcast television, digital and streaming platforms in English and Spanish. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Salazar represents a red-leaning South Florida district that she flipped in 2020 by fewer than three points after losing her first bid in 2018. She won a third term in 2024 by roughly 20 points, and Trump carried her district comfortably. The Cook Political Report shifted the district from “solid R” to “likely R” in April, and Democrats in South Florida have identified the district — one of the most Hispanic in the country — as one to watch in November.
Trump’s approval ratings have sunk in his second term, with the decline more pronounced among Hispanic voters, a group where Trump and Republicans had made major gains in recent election cycles. Polls show Latinos are moving back left as frustrations grow over the economy and Trump’s immigration policies. A recent New York Times/Siena poll found voters trust Democrats on immigration more than Republicans.
Salazar’s break is complicated by her earlier support for parts of Trump’s immigration agenda. She voted for Trump’s sweeping tax package, which included about $75 billion in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She visited the controversial immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz last year and described it as “well presented” and meeting “the highest standards for any federal detention center.”
That detention center closed this summer, and a recent report released by the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdog found it failed to comply with multiple federal detention standards.
At the same time, Salazar has been one of the few House Republicans publicly saying the Trump administration is mishandling immigration by pursuing a mass-deportation agenda that extends beyond removing criminals. She has pushed for a bipartisan immigration bill that would create a pathway to a form of legal status for some immigrants who entered or are living in the United States illegally.
Her opponent, Eliott Rodriguez — also a Cuban-American and former broadcast journalist — has campaigned against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement approach and has sought to tie Salazar to the president. Rodriguez dismissed the ad as political opportunism, saying Salazar “now wants to cry alligator tears to her boss because his immigration policy is political poison in her re-election campaign.”
The Trump administration has faced broader political backlash over its aggressive interior immigration enforcement, particularly earlier this year when federal immigration officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin vowed to keep his agency out of the headlines, though ICE officers remain under pressure to carry out arrests.
Trump has long seen immigration as one of his strongest political issues, and Republicans often attribute his 2024 victory in part to the record-high number of illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden.