Democrats build a digital field guide for Latino campaigns

The campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is building a digital translation and messaging platform to help Democrats hone their campaign outreach to Hispanic voters.

Bold PAC is releasing the platform periodically, focusing on different topics of interest to Latinos.

The platform, Bold Translate, has launched a limited test with messaging about jobs and went online Friday with a module focused on reproductive rights and abortion in commemoration of the first anniversary of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision that struck down the federal right to an abortion.

“The economy and certainly reproductive health care and choice are two incredibly important things. One of the reasons we have rolled this out so early is our intention is to be able to cover lots of incredibly important political topics throughout the cycle,” said Victoria McGroary, the executive director of Bold PAC.

Each online module of Bold Translate includes a glossary of commonly used terms for any one campaign issue and examples of the best Spanish-language translations to use in Democratic messaging.

The section on jobs, for instance, directs campaigns on how best to refer to the terms “jobs,” “wages,” “unemployment,” “decreased,” and “leisure & hospitality.”

Each term has examples of phrasing Bold PAC suggests campaigns should use — and others to avoid. Generally speaking, the suggestions to avoid include commonly used erroneous translations, regional slang terms and jargon.

The goal, according to McGroary, is to avoid the sorts of translations that result from bad use of online tools or bilingual dictionaries.

“When people are translating, often, they try one-to-one, ‘Let’s take this word, and what does it mean?” McGroary said.

“That’s not how we need to do this. And so here we’re just trying to make sure that everyone can understand what is trying to be communicated.”

Because it’s a national toolkit aimed at messaging clarity, Bold Translate is a deviation from Bold PAC’s usual practice of aggressively adopting regionalisms to microtarget bilingual and Spanish-speaking voters of different national origins.

“We wanted to take a little bit more of a of a wider lens in that respect, but of course, we would always advocate for … microtargeting,” McGroary said.

Beyond the glossary, the toolkit includes topical messaging guidance in English and relevant data points.

The abortion package, for instance, tells campaigns to explain the impact the Supreme Court decision that overturned the federal right to abortion has on Latinas and to “emphasize that Latinas already face several barriers to accessing safe, free abortion and reproductive health care.”

Bold PAC plans to periodically release guidance on other relevant issues, and it has not set a ceiling on how expansive the toolkit could become, according to McGroary.

“The goal here is at the end of this cycle, we will have a series of issues, the sort of top issues that matter to people that affect them in their daily lives,” McGroary said.

“This will be sort of a communication one-on-one and anyone could take these toolkits and know generally what are the issues that matter here, but also, more specifically, then how do we speak with Latinos about those?”

McGroary added she’s not concerned that Republicans will also have access to this publicly available information.

“We aren’t worried about Republicans using the right words to communicate their bad ideas,” she said.

“We are focused on making sure our people can communicate all the good we’re doing.”