Julian Castro lags in fundraising, but debate spot seems secure

[TexasTowelie]

Julián Castro raised $1.1 million for his presidential campaign in the first three months of 2019, placing him well back in the pack of Democratic contenders. But a new national poll places him in eighth place in the large Democratic field, with 3 percent support, and he appears a likely lock on a spot in the first two Democratic debates in June and July.

“We’re just getting started and are rapidly building momentum,” campaign manager Maya Rupert said in a statement Monday, the deadline for filing fundraising reports for the first quarter of 2019 with the Federal Election Commission. “We met our internal goals for the first quarter, and in the first two weeks of April have smashed our fundraising goal for the month. In the process, the campaign released a policy proposal for immigration that fearlessly presents a progressive vision for immigration reform. We’re building a sustainable, impactful campaign for the long term that respects its staff, volunteers and supporters.”

Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and member of former President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, launched his campaign in January.

Fundraising is one of the yardsticks by which the Democratic National Committee will determine which candidates get to participate in the first two debates. To qualify, a candidate must either receive at least 1 percent in three approved polls or raise money from at least 65,000 donors in 20 states, with at least 200 unique donors in each state.

Read more: https://www.statesman.com/news/20190415/julixe1n-castro-lags-in-fundraising-but-debate-spot-seems-secure
(Austin American-Statesman)

[Hortensis]

1. Good! 538 has: "Can Julian Castro Rally Latino Voters?"

I'm wondering if the poll numbers don't suggest yes. He'd not exactly gotten a large play in the MSM.

... The Latino vote, in contrast, has tended to be less unified, regardless of whether a Latino candidate was on the ballot. ... The overall Latino vote is much smaller on the GOP side, but neither Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas nor Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida did particularly well in 2016 with Latino voters in any of the three states where we have detailed exit poll results — each won a plurality of the Latino vote in their home states, but President Trump won at least a quarter of Hispanic voters in both Florida and Texas and a plurality in Nevada. The candidate who has done best with Latino voters in recent primaries is Hillary Clinton, but even her performance was not dominant. In 2008, Clinton won more than 60 percent of the Latino vote in the Democratic primary. ...

... For Castro, then, the ideal scenario is that he is a viable candidate when the primaries start in February, so he can galvanize Latinos behind him in three key states in particular: California, Nevada and Texas. Nevada (where about 20 percent of Democratic primary voters are likely to be Latino) is currently scheduled to be the third state to vote. California and Texas, the two states with the largest Latino populations, hold their primaries along with several other states on Super Tuesday, on March 3, but both states allow early voting, so lots of voters in both states will cast ballots in February. In short, Castro will have less time, post-Iowa, to show Latino voters he has a real chance. That means he’ll need to use Iowa and New Hampshire as a springboard as much as possible, while also trying to rally Latino voters for strong showings in Nevada, California and Texas regardless of what happens in the first two contests.

And it’s entirely possible that he will succeed in mobilizing Latino voters. Some research has shown Latino voters are more likely to vote if a Latino candidate is on the ballot and more likely to back the Latino candidate than a white one, even in an intra-party race. But that research largely looked at state- and city-level races — we haven’t had a major Latino presidential candidate on the Democratic side, where appeals to shared racial identity are easier to make than in the GOP.

“If Latinos think that Castro has a reasonable chance of winning, they will come out in large numbers to support him,” said Melissa Michelson, a political science professor at Menlo College and an expert on Latino political activism.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-julian-castro-rally-latino-voters/

Perhaps the pollsters would get better data on Latino voters if they didn't poll white and Americas-indigenous "Latinos" as one group. Latino voters who consider themselves of European heritages are every bit as aware that they're "white" as others of European heritages, and Latinos indigenous to the Americas have very different heritages and, often, cultural experiences to this day.