在驱逐行动和特朗普声望下滑之际，一个科赫支持的团体招募了密歇根州拉美裔选民，为迈克·罗杰斯争取超过十万张选票。
The Lede Amid deportations and Trump’s lagging popularity, one Koch-backed group has recruited Michigan Latinos to reach more than a hundred thousand voters for Mike Rogers.
八月下旬的一个周六早晨，来自萨尔瓦多的移民里卡多·阿尔法罗走近了密歇根州霍兰德市一栋矮平的白色房子。这地方看起来像刚办过派对：车道上的火坑还散发着烟味，科罗娜啤酒罐散落在水泥地上。一位名叫维罗尼卡·克鲁兹的住户抱着婴儿、手里拿着一根拉丝奶酪出现在门口。阿尔法罗说，他来这里是为迈克·罗杰斯拉票——这位前共和党众议员正在竞选密歇根州联邦参议员，对手是阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德。
One Saturday morning in late August, Ricardo Alfaro, an immigrant from El Salvador, approached a low-slung white house in Holland, Michigan. The place looked as if it had been the site of a party: a fire pit in the driveway still smelled of smoke, and cans of Modelo were strewn across the concrete. A resident named Veronica Cruz appeared at the door holding a baby and a stick of string cheese. Alfaro said that he was there to stump for Mike Rogers, a former Republican congressman now running for Senate in Michigan, against Abdul El-Sayed“He’s focussed on the American Dream—I think that’s something that we share, as Latinos,” Alfaro told Cruz, in Spanish.
“他专注于美国梦——我觉得这是我们拉丁裔共同的追求，”阿尔法罗用西班牙语对克鲁兹说。当阿尔法罗滔滔不绝地讲罗杰斯将如何削减监管、减少政府干预、改革美国移民制度时，克鲁兹仔细看着他递来的门挂宣传单，婴儿正咬着奶酪棒。“所以，”她说，“还有选举？是这个十一月吗？”
As Alfaro gave his spiel about how Rogers would slash regulations, reduce government interference, and reform the American immigration system, Cruz studied a door hanger that he’d given her as the baby bit into the cheese stick. “So,” she said, “there’s more elections? This November?”
在德克萨斯州米申市的家中书房里，加尔萨收藏着一排皮面精装书——《伊利亚特》《奥德赛》、莎士比亚剧作选集、关于罗马帝国衰落的书籍。一本插图版《堂吉诃德》摊开在书架上。八月的一个周四，在大急流城利伯雷办公室，加尔萨戴着厚框眼镜、把头发向后梳得整整齐齐，站在十六名身穿黄衫的志愿者面前，引用墨西哥革命领袖埃米利亚诺·萨帕塔的话：“土地与自由。”
In his study at home in Mission, Texas, Garza keeps a collection of leather-bound volumes—the Iliad the Odyssey an assortment of Shakespeare plays, books on the fall of the Roman Empire. An illustrated version of “Don Quixote” sits open on a stand. At Libre’s office in Grand Rapids one Thursday in August, Garza, who wears thick-rimmed glasses and slicks back his hair, stood in front of some sixteen volunteers wearing yellow shirts and quoted Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary: “,” or “Land and liberty.”
他说，这些正是美国宪法所体现的原则。“当其他拉丁裔在推行我们需要更多政府、应该更依赖国家、财富应集中掌握、更多权力应掌握在政客手中的观点时，我们不能保持沉默，”他用西班牙语说。“”志愿者们围坐在圆桌旁，其中许多人是移民，打开手机上的一个应用程序，上面有呼叫名单和话术脚本。
They were the same principles, he said, that the U.S. Constitution reflected. “We can’t stay quiet while other Latinos are pushing the idea that we need more government, that we should be more dependent on the state, that our money should be centralized, and that more power should be in the hands of politicians,” he said in Spanish. “.”Sitting at round tables, the volunteers, many of them immigrants, opened an app on their phones that gave them a call list and a script.
“我想问问您是否认识迈克·罗杰斯？”一位女子对着电话说道。“您的通话已结束，”系统回应道。
“I wanted to know if you knew Mike Rogers?” one woman said into her phone. “Your call has ended,” the program replied.
长期以来，拉丁裔民主党人一直抱怨称，各类竞选团队和政治行动委员会总是等到选举前几周才开始动员这一群体。前民主党全国委员会官员莫拉莱斯告诉我，Libre能够取得成功，部分原因在于加尔萨懂得如何说服捐赠者年复一年地持续提供资金，无论当年是否有选举。霍兰德市议会中唯一的拉丁裔议员蒂姆·马罗奎因表示，他担心Libre拥有的资源是埃尔-赛义德的竞选团队难以企及的：8月份时，他给我看了一个名为“支持阿卜杜勒的拉丁裔”的WhatsApp群组，当时只有11名成员，消息也寥寥无几。
Latino Democrats have long complained that campaigns and political-action committees wait until just a few weeks before the election to begin persuading and turning out the community. Morales, the former D.N.C. official, told me that Libre has been successful, in part, because Garza knows how to persuade donors to provide a steady stream of funding year after year, regardless of whether there are elections happening. Tim Marroquin, the only Latino member of Holland’s city council, said he worried that Libre had resources that El-Sayed’s campaign would not be able to match: in August, he showed me a WhatsApp group called “Latinos for Abdul” that had eleven members and a scant few messages. (The group, now housed on Slack, has grown to a hundred and fourteen members.)
（如今该群组已转移至Slack平台，成员人数增至114人。）9月15日，Libre在华盛顿市中心的安德鲁·W·梅隆礼堂举办了一场庆祝活动。约300人前来为这一拉丁裔保守派运动庆生，其中包括来自密歇根州的阿尔法罗与科恩。不过现场仍弥漫着一丝不安的气息。当晚，Libre协助当选的两名国会议员也受到了表彰——分别是来自亚利桑那州的胡安·西斯科马尼与来自德克萨斯州的莫妮卡·德·拉·克鲁兹，两人今年秋季都将面临艰难的竞选。
On September 15th, Libre threw a quinceañera for itself at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, in downtown D.C. About three hundred people were there to fête the Latino conservative movement, including Alfaro and Coen from Michigan, but there was an edge of precarity in the room. Two members of Congress whom Libre had helped elect were honored at the party—Juan Ciscomani, of Arizona, and Monica De La Cruz, of Texas, both of whom face challenging races this fall.
在庆功宴上，当加尔萨向德·拉·克鲁兹致意时，后者在桌旁抹去了眼角的泪水。交通部长肖恩·达菲坐在前排的桌旁，他的妻子、福克斯新闻主持人雷切尔·坎波斯-达菲则担任活动主持。活动尾声，查尔斯·科赫出现在舞台两侧的屏幕上，向加尔萨表示祝贺，随后加尔萨获颁终身成就奖。坎波斯-达菲称，Libre堪称保守派运动中的“保罗·里维尔”。“我们Libre一直都在呼喊：‘共产主义者要来了！共产主义者要来了！’”她说道。
At her table, De La Cruz swiped away tears from her eyes when Garza acknowledged her. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy sat at a table near the front, as his wife, the Fox News personality Rachel Campos-Duffy, m.c.’d. At the end, Charles Koch appeared on screens at either side of the stage to congratulate Garza, before he was presented with a legacy award. Libre was the “Paul Revere of the conservative movement,” Campos-Duffy said. “We at Libre have been saying, ‘The Commies are coming! The Commies are coming!’ ” she said.