Screen Capture / Google Maps
This South Side RNC minority-outreach center opened in 2021 has closed its doors.
The Republican National Committee has shuttered a South San Antonio office it opened in 2021 as part of its much-trumpeted effort to court Latinx voters after Donald Trump's unexpectedly strong 2020 performance in South Texas, according to the San Antonio Report.
The Alamo City site is one of 10 minority outreach facilities the party began closing as it shifts gears going into the 2024 campaign season, the New York Times reports. The closures, started last month, came as the RNC laid off 60 party officials.
The centers' dissolution will disproportionately affect people of color since the RNC chose staffers with cultural connections to the groups they targeted, according to theTimes.
The San Antonio center, along with other shuttered offices in California, New York and North Carolina, were part of the RNC's lengthy effort to bring non-white voters into the fold. In 2022, RNC officials told the Current their outreach to South Texas' Latinx population was a multi-million-dollar effort that also included two other outreach centers closer to the border.
At the time, Aimee Villarreal — then the head of Our Lady of the Lake University's Center for Mexican American Studies — said Republicans misread Trump's strong performance in select South Texas counties. The GOP's continued vilification of immigrants would work counter to its efforts to build recruitment, she added.
“The Republican Party is completely misguided, and they’ve completely overplayed their hand,” Villarreal said.
Indeed, even as Latinx residents recently overtook non-Hispanic whites as the largest share of Texas' population, Republican politicians including Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott have seized on anti-immigrant rhetoric and conspiracy theories popular in white supremacist circles.
While Trump is banking on more support from Black voters this year, the Times notes that he's tried to win them over with "heavy reliance on stereotypes and insults."
For example, Trump last month told a crowd in South Carolina that his multiple criminal indictments increase his appealing to Black voters because they see him as a victim of discrimination. The statement was an apparent attempt to liken his legal woes to those of Black Americans who have historically faced unfair treatment in the U.S. justice system.
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