“Donald Trump got a historic number of Latino votes in 2020, and you can claim it was because of this or because of that, but it’s not like Larry Elder broke through for these folks. There is something else going on,” said Michael Trujillo, a Democratic strategist based in Los Angeles, referring to the leading Republican candidate in the failed recall attempt…

The recall actually performed slightly better in the heavily Latino Imperial County than it did statewide, with 38.7 percent of voters in the county voting to remove Newsom from office, compared to 36.1 percent in the entire state, though not all votes have been counted yet.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 won Imperial County by 41 percentage points. President Joe Biden won it by 25 percentage points in 2020. Now, the pro-Newsom anti-recall effort is winning it by 22.6 percentage points so far.

“There is a canary in the coal mine and it’s called Imperial County,” Trujillo said. “That canary has a cough, and as a party we need to do more than just give it a throat lozenge or a cough suppressant. We need to cure the cause.”