Dem
51
GOP
49
Several surveys have shown that Latinos are moving toward the Republicans. Why? The Republicans' positions on most items hasn't changed for years and are not what Latinos want. How has this happened? One possible explanation is that Univision, the most influential Spanish-language television network in the country, has historically been for the Democrats as much as Fox News has been for the Republicans. It is a major news source for many Latinos. Its biggest star, Jorge Ramos, used to work at Grupo Televisa, a major Spanish-language media company based in Mexico, but left when management objected to his holding powerful people's feet to the fire. He came to the U.S., joined Univision, and continued to hold powerful people's feet to the fire. He's very good at it and is as big a star at his network as Walter Cronkite once was at CBS. One time in the 2016 presidential campaign, he confronted Donald Trump about Latino concerns over his immigration rhetoric. Trump's reaction was to order security to remove Ramos from the room.
At the time, the Univision chairman was Haim Saban, a wealthy Egyptian-born Israeli-American Jew who was a good friend of—and major donor to—Bill Clinton. He also gave millions of dollars to the DNC. Under his leadership, Univision was pro-Democratic Party and Ramos was free to grill anybody he wanted to, but it was mostly Republicans he wanted to grill.
In April 2021, Univision merged with Televisa and Saban left the company. The new management is much more Trump-friendly than Saban was. Jared Kushner is being treated like a long-lost friend who has been suddenly found. All of a sudden, ads the Biden campaign had placed for Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania were canceled on some pretext. On Oct. 19, when Biden gave a prime-time address on Israel and Ukraine, Univision cut away part-way through his (short) address. Maria Cardona, a member of the DNC, said of the new Univision: "It is going to mask the pernicious and dangerous politics that Donald Trump is going to implement if he becomes president again." Democrats are now afraid that the biggest pro-Democratic Spanish-language voice has not only been lost, but turned against them. (V)