When Maria Montero was growing up in small-town Pennsylvania, she used to sit with her grandfather and watch him shout at Ronald Reagan on the television. Most people in her neighbourhood, Hispanics who had moved out into steel and coal country to find work and cheap housing, were true-blue Democrats.
But as she listened, Reagan and his message of hard work and the American dream struck a chord. Now she is running for Congress as a Republican. And increasingly, it is President Biden who is drawing the ire of Hispanics in a realignment that could win Donald Trump the election.
“Over the last 15 years I’ve seen my friends who were registered Democrats become Republican, not because they’ve changed, but because they feel that the
