Talk radio rises as a new battleground for Latino voters

“Buenos Dias Americanos!” Nelson Rubio leans into the microphone. It’s 6 a.m. and the sun has yet to rise on this metro area of 6 million, but Mr. Rubio – wearing a blue shirt under a gray checked jacket with a red pocket square – is already raring to go. Over the next three hours, as Miami’s highways start to congeal with commuters, the right-wing radio host will sound off on everything from the fitful election in Washington of new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy – “There is no Congress! It’s not getting done” – to the Biden administration’s regional diplomacy – “These are people who negotiate with dictators.” 

Mr. Rubio’s show used to be one of the signature programs on Miami’s Radio Mambí, a popular station and enduring symbol of identity among Cuban exiles. Mambí has been broadcasting here since the days of the Reagan administration and was for years a fixture for Republican candidates seeking Cuban-American votes in South Florida.

But last summer, Mambí was sold to an unlikely buyer: Latino Media Network (LMN), a startup run by two Democratic operatives with financing from mega-donor George Soros. The sale set off a political firestorm in Florida, where Republicans warned of left-wing censorship and propaganda. 

And it wasn’t just Mambí that changed hands. In all, LMN bought 18 Spanish-language stations in Florida, New York, Illinois, Arizona, California, Texas, and Nevada. 

The $60 million takeover – and the reactions it has sparked – is another flashpoint in the national battle to win over Latino voters, a fast-growing demographic that has long leaned Democratic but has lately grown more receptive to Republicans. So far, most Spanish-language radio in the U.S. has been focused on music and entertainment, not news or commentary. Which in the eyes of many makes it an untapped and lucrative means of political persuasion.

“Both sides are trying to capitalize on an audience that’s growing in numbers and being decisive on candidates’ future,” says Christian Ulvert, a strategic adviser to the Biden campaign in Florida in 2020.

Buying these radio stations is both capitalism and politics, says Mr. Ulvert. “It’s the new electorate. But it’s also a business enterprise,” he says. 

“It’s the epicenter”

In November’s midterms, Gov. Ron DeSantis led Florida’s GOP to victory with majority statewide support from Latinos, and flipped Miami-Dade County, where more than half the population is foreign born. Some Florida Democrats, though certainly not all, blame these defeats in part on “misinformation” aired on Mambí and other Spanish-language stations. They have welcomed LMN’s takeover as a way to fight back.

“Miami is to Hispanic media what New York is to English media. It’s the epicenter,” says Joe Garcia, a former Democratic U.S. representative for Miami-Dade. “What you want to do is have balanced coverage... [and] not be called a Marxist.” 

LMN’s co-founders, Stephanie Valencia and Jess Morales Rocketto, say they want radio stations to reflect the diverse culture of Latinos. In a statement, they said they would uphold the longstanding “spirit of liberty” at Mambí, but noted that they believed in “a free press which values verifiable facts and balance. All points of view will be welcomed and encouraged to debate in the free marketplace of ideas.” 

Mr. Rubio wasn’t convinced. 

Last July, he and two colleagues walked out at Mambí after a tense first meeting with its new owners. He says that Ms. Valencia, who worked in the Obama White House, had previously accused the station of spreading misinformation, which he denies that he personally did. 

“There was no room for people who think like us in that new company,” he says. 

But Mr. Rubio was soon back on the airwaves. In politics, as in physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. 

His new employer, Americano Media, is another media startup in Miami that has already raised $18 million to create Spanish-language news content for radio and TV, this time from a conservative standpoint with a laser focus on a national audience. 

“Hispanics are conservative. We just don’t admit this,” says Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo, founder and CEO of Americano Media, whose desk has a plastic model of a semi-automatic rifle in red, white, and blue among other objects. 

A former Trump surrogate, Mr. Garcia-Hidalgo says he first pitched the concept of a Spanish-language version of Fox News to national GOP officials and party donors. He pointed out that former President Donald Trump increased his share of Latino votes nationally in 2020 despite four years of mostly negative coverage of his presidency in Spanish-language media. 

“Imagine if we actually had an outlet, a media network, that he [Mr. Trump] could come on and we could get the message out. And everyone said, wow, you know what? It’s never been done. It’s never going to happen. Forget about it,” he says. 

Wilfredo Lee/AP/File

Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, left, speaks at a news conference along with Cuban exiles, of their concern about the sale of two local Spanish-language radio stations, on June 8, 2022, at the Bay of Pigs Museum and Brigade 2506 headquarters in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.

Eventually Mr. Garcia-Hidalgo found “individual patriots” who shared his politics and wanted to invest in a Hispanic network. Last March, Americano began broadcasting on satellite radio before adding a Miami AM station that now airs Mr. Rubio’s morning show, going head-to-head with his former station, Mambí.

But winning in Miami isn’t Americano’s mission. It’s in talks with radio stations across the country to carry its right-leaning daily news and opinion so it can become a force multiplier for Republicans in the next presidential election. “In 2024, we’re going to be everywhere. We’re going to be making sure that the message gets to everyone in the Spanish language,” he says. 

iHeart radio has agreed to carry Americano’s content on AM stations in Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville, and stream it digitally on its app. The iHeart announcement, expected later this week, comes as Americano celebrates its first year in business.

It also continues to build out its TV operation. From a refitted commercial TV studio in Miami, the company’s plan is to move from a test phase to streaming live news digitally, eventually adding bureaus in Washington and Las Vegas. 

The enduring power of radio

While TV is the top source of news for most Americans, radio continues to hold its own, and is even bigger for Latinos than for the general population, according to industry surveys and ratings. 

On the AM dial, English-language talk radio dominates. And of the top 10 national talkers, eight are steadfast conservatives, led by Fox’s Sean Hannity with a weekly audience of over 16 million. For years, Democrats have tried and failed to counter this right-wing radio tilt, most notably with the ill-fated Air America Radio in the early 2000s, leading some to conclude that liberal talkers simply can’t compete.

Most Spanish-language radio stations in the U.S. carry music, religious, or sports programming, not news and opinion. A 2019 study found only 31 news stations in Spanish, of which a third were in Florida. The news stations had seen declining revenues. 

Media executives say the ethnic and political diversity of the Latino population makes it harder to build a national audience for a talk show, which is why there is no Rush Limbaugh in Spanish. Station owners also prefer music to talk that might upset some listeners, says Fernando Espuelas, who hosted a popular left-leaning national talk show that was canceled by Univision in 2015. 

“For talk radio to be successful it has to have some zip to it. It has to have a point of view,” he says. 

All of which makes Miami’s vibrant radio culture unusual. “People still like to hear radio jocks,” says Alejandro Alvarado, a Mexican-born professor who directs the Spanish-language journalism program at Florida International University. “They want to have conversations with these hosts. It’s something that’s rooted in Miami.” 

Most of those conversations are among diehard conservatives, including Cubans and Venezuelans who despise the left in their native countries and apply the same lens to U.S. politics. 

Giancarlo Sopo, a GOP media consultant, grew up in Miami hearing Radio Mambí’s jingle. As a child, he recalls his father, a Cuban-born politician, taking him to the station when he was appearing on air. Cuba “had a very strong radio culture and the exiles brought it with them to South Florida,” he says.

But he’s perplexed that Democrats think that purchasing this or any other Spanish-language radio station can reverse an electoral slide. For one thing, the largest swing to Republicans among Latinos in Florida has come not from voters who currently get their news from Hispanic radio but from those who speak mostly English and skew younger. 

Democrats buying Mambí “has symbolic importance,” he says. “I don’t know that it’s going to move the needle for them in South Florida.” 

Yet despite skepticism about radio’s influence, Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi argues that the amount of misinformation spread by Hispanic stations is problematic and should be better regulated. 

A 2021 report by local nonprofits found that Mr. Rubio and other Mambí hosts had repeatedly spread false or misleading claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and about the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol. 

A radio monitoring project by the Miami Herald ahead of the 2022 midterms, which Professor Alvarado helped run, found examples of misinformation on Mambí and other stations. But it also found balanced Spanish-language news coverage, including correction of false claims by partisan actors.

Free-speech principles – and a business model

So far, Mambí hasn’t changed its stripes. Under a leasing agreement with the former owners, the station has kept on the same management and its conservative hosts are speaking their minds, even criticizing Mr. Soros and the new owners on air.

Still, Ninoska Perez Castellon, a 26-year host on Mambí who declined to join Mr. Rubio’s walkout last year, recently resigned. “They’re trying to determine what is right and what is wrong,” she says, denying that her show spreads falsehoods.

Mr. Garcia-Hidalgo says that his new conservative-leaning network wants to air a range of views, including from Democrats, and let the audience decide. “We’re not in the convincing business. Political parties do that. That’s their job. We’re going to present both sides. I think that’s fair to Hispanics.” 

This also makes business sense, says Jose Aristimuño, a former spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee who co-hosts a nightly talk show on Americano. He’s happy to go to bat for Democrats on conservative media, whether in English or Spanish. “We need to be in the places where there is debate,” he says.

He says that Mr. Garcia-Hidalgo, whom he knows personally, also recognizes that hard-right opinion may hold limited appeal for America’s diverse Latino population outside Miami. 

Mr. Garcia-Hidalgo says his network first has to succeed commercially if it’s to move the needle on Hispanic votes at election time. “It’s about ratings,” he says. “You have to get the message across.”