Politico: Padilla’s time to shine
By Lindsey Holden
PRIME TIME: Sen. Alex Padilla will get his moment in the State of the Union spotlight tonight when he delivers Democrats’ Spanish-language response to Donald Trump’s address.
After the president speaks, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger will provide the party’s English-language rebuttal, and Padilla will appear on local and national Spanish-language outlets, including Univision, Telemundo and CNN en Español.
Padilla has helped Democrats reach this audience, and valuable voters, before. During California’s Proposition 50 gerrymandering campaign, redistricting proponents spent millions of dollars airing a Spanish-language ad featuring the senator talking about his handcuffing at a Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem press conference last year.
“I think the core themes will be pretty consistent,” Padilla said of his and Spanberger’s remarks. “But it’s not like we’re both giving the same speeches in two different languages.”
Playbook spoke with the senator about what he plans to say and why he has “no regrets” about not running for California governor.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What points do you plan to hit in your response?
When you anticipate, well, what’s Donald Trump going to say in his State of the Union? A couple things we encounter are lies, lies and misrepresentations, because that’s just who he is. He lies so much, you’ll have to call that out.
He’ll suggest that the State of the Union is strong. And I think there’s a lot of people who have a hard time feeling like the State of the Union is strong when prices continue to go up. This is the president who promised to bring down prices, and he’s done the opposite. So, failed economic policy, reckless, unnecessary tariff war … cost affordability, that’s certainly going to be one thing.
Another, because we absolutely can’t ignore it, is the terror that a lot of communities are feeling with this out-of-control immigration enforcement/mass deportation agenda that he’s pursued.
You know, we know that the vast majority of people that have been detained and arrested by ICE are not convicted criminals. It’s not the dangerous, violent felons that he talks so much about. He attacks a lot of hard-working people who may be undocumented but are otherwise law-abiding, taxpaying, family-raising, business-starting members of our community. But they’ve also detained a lot of legal immigrants, and even United States citizens, and even some veterans. So people see how out of control it is.
…Then a third theme that I plan to emphasize is elections and democracy, because they’re no longer saying it quietly. They’re very vocal, transparent and blatant about their attacks on the right to vote, whether it’s the weaponized Department of Justice seeking voter files and the personal information of voters across the country as a pretext for trying to purge the voter rolls.
Will your Spanish-language response differ from Abigail Spanberger’s address? Are there certain themes you want to focus on for a Spanish-language audience?
I think the core themes will be pretty consistent, but it’s not like we’re both giving the same speeches in two different languages. And I do think that the Latino community across the country — first of all, it’s very diverse. More than 40 million Spanish speakers across the country, many bilingual. This is not just a monolingual Spanish-speaking audience. Many citizens and many voters who just happen to have either Spanish as their primary language or as their preferred language.
This is very much essential to truly engaging people in our democracy. But given a unique perspective of the Latino community, which is very diverse in and of itself, I think it’s important to reflect that diversity and that perspective.
There was a narrative after the 2024 election that Latino voters shifted to the right. Is that on your mind as you’re crafting your remarks?
Of course. In my takeaways of the ‘24 election, undoubtedly, there’s some people who maybe voted Democratic in the past and voted Republican this time around. I think in equal, if not greater, numbers, there’s Latinos who might have voted Democratic in the past and who didn’t vote in November of 2024.
So whether it’s how you win a voter back from the other party, versus how you win a voter back from not having participated, both are important dynamics to reflect on.
I can’t talk to you without asking about the California governor’s race. Do you have any regrets about deciding not to run as you look at the unwieldy field?
No regrets. I think what’s transpired — across, not just California, but across the country — in the days since I announced I would not be running for governor has only reinforced the decision. There’s a lot to focus on, a lot to work against, pressure this administration on a daily basis. I need my complete attention and energy focused on saving our country from Donald Trump.
What do you think of the candidates in the race now?
It seems [to be] anybody’s ballgame. So the upside, as I see it, is the winner is going to be whoever works the hardest to earn the support of the voters of California.
Read the full article here.