The League of United Latin American Citizens, a 95-year-old Latino civil rights group, announced its first-ever presidential endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, marking a dramatic break from the group’s history of neutrality, NBC reported.
The leaders of LULAC, a group formed in 1929 to protect the rights of Americans of Mexican descent, announced their endorsement through the group’s political action committee. LULAC Adelante PAC, and said that they plan to join Harris and Walz at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday.
“We are proud to endorse Kamala Harris and Tim Walz because of the real issues facing Latino communities and all Americans across the nation; we can trust them to do what is right for our community and the country,” chairman of LULAC Adelante PAC and LULAC’s immediate past president, Domingo Garcia, said Friday.
“The politics of hate-mongering and scapegoating Latinos and immigrants must be stopped,” Garcia continued. “Latinos understand how much is at stake in this election, for not only our community but our democracy.”
The news of this endorsement comes just a couple of days after Harris-Walz released their debut ad, “Determination,” targeted at Latino voters in battleground states. The ad, which is scheduled to run in both English and Spanish, highlights Harris’s own background as a child of immigrants — her mother is originally from India and her father was born in Jamaica — and highlights how she made it to the White House “in only one generation.”