MERCED — At first, Marlyn Huesgew Mendoza registered as a Democrat. In 2020, she re-registered as a Republican and voted for Donald Trump for president, as she did this election.
The reason is simple: It was in 2018 — when he was in office — that her family was finally able to buy a house in Merced. The same year, the Trump administration approved her Guatemalan mother’s citizenship application — one that had been rejected under President Barack Obama, she said. The approval letter had Trump’s signature on it.
“She’s like: ‘Look who adopted me,’” said Huesgew Mendoza, a 25-year-old graduate from University of California Merced and an administrative assistant at the Merced County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
“Once he came in and it was just so easy for us, I was like, ‘Huh, he might not be as scary as people may think.’”
Most — if not all — of California’s 12 Latino-majority counties gave a larger share of their vote to Trump compared to 2020, and counties with a higher share of Latino population swung further toward Trump, according to a CalMatters analysis of state voting data. Trump also expanded his vote share in most other counties in California.
But does that signal a rightward shift among Latinos and a departure from the Democratic Party in California?
The answer is complicated.
CalMattersSource: California Secretary of State
Absent conclusive…
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