In Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district, home to about 78,000 Puerto Ricans, Democrat Bob Brooks, president of a firefighters’ union, defeated Republican incumbent Ryan Mackenzie by more than 35,000 votes in the November 3 midterm elections. The result, echoed across traditionally Republican districts nationwide, helped give the Democratic Party majorities in both the House and the Senate.
The district covers Northampton, Carbon, Monroe and Lehigh counties, with Allentown as its seat; about 35,000 boricuas live in Allentown, roughly 48 miles from Philadelphia. On election morning, Democratic volunteer Sheila Alvarado, 41, a Pennsylvania-born daughter of migrants from Orocovis, Puerto Rico, greeted voters outside the Fearless Fire Company polling place on Front Street with her 13-year-old son Eli Martínez.
Alvarado, a legislative assistant to state Representative Peter G. Schweyer and vice chair of the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners, the first Latina to hold that elected post, said housing has dominated constituents’ concerns: people face eviction, and some already evicted now live in hotels. First-time voter Neishaliz Rodríguez, 18, originally from Guayama, Puerto Rico, said she cast her first ballot motivated ironically by "the President we have," voting for Democrats despite Donald Trump’s months-long push for turnout.
Political scientist Carlos Vargas, of Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies in New York, said discontent, anger and disappointment toward Trump drove the Democratic vote.