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From rodeos to radio, inside the Arizona fight against misinformation
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PHOENIX — Tucked in the historically Latino east side of Phoenix, Ariz. is the broadcast studio of Radio Campesina. Founded by labor activist César Chávez in California, the station has broadcast across the West for 40 years.
Arizona listeners are drawn into the programming of regional Mexican cumbias, norteñas, rancheras and románticas. Their goal is to play uplifting and inspiring music driven by nostalgia for the relief brought after a long day of work.
But beyond the music, La Campesina also provides Spanish-language news. And during this election year it has a big goal: combat misinformation about elections among Arizona Latinos.
“César (Chávez) was very strong on ‘get out to vote,’” said Maria Barquin, program director of La Campesina, about the role of Latinos in elections. “For us, it’s our future. We need to show the audience the importance of that event and the value they have as a community.”
Latino voters in the swing state of Arizona are crucial to helping decide who will win the White House. Maricopa County, the swing county that includes Phoenix, is 30% Latino or Hispanic.
Yet Arizona is also a hotbed for conspiracies about elections and voting, and Latinos are among the demographic groups exposed to more misinformation this election cycle.
La Campesina pitches itself as nonpartisan, with listeners who vote for both Democrats and Republicans. It's one of several groups that have been working for months in the lead up to Election Day to help combat the swirl of misinformation in the state.
“That division is being highlighted here. The pressures are being shown here. And we are a swing state,” said Tara Jackson, president of Arizona Town Hall, a nonpartisan group hosting town halls around the state on elections and voting. “So we just exemplify what's happening nationally.”
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Last year, La Campesina launched a campaign at a local rodeo to battle misinformation, and has since gone on to provide information on air, online and through videos about how and when to cast a ballot.
Barquin said starting at the rodeo was a way of uniquely targeting Latinos. Partnering with other organizations like the progressive voting group Mi Familia Vota, Barquin said they also bring water, food and voter information to construction crews across Phoenix or farmworkers in Yuma.
La Campesina has a monthly reach of over 7 million listeners on their radio airwaves and streaming. According to Neilsen, radio is the primary media platform for Latinos.
Throughout its campaign, La Campesina has debunked several rumors about voting and politics. Among them, Barquin said, were questions around trusting mail-in ballots, or the falsehood that if voters have bad credit, they can’t vote.
Listeners have also called in to ask about sharp political rhetoric, like when former President Donald Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the nation.
“People get stressed about this, people get angry,” said Osvaldo Franko, producer and host at La Campesina, who helps with some of this real-time audience engagement. “That’s where we come in. We say, ‘Look, what he is saying is just a campaign slogan to attract followers, but obviously it’s meant to create division between people.’”
The radio network hopes to hold town halls and roundtables in the final weeks before the election. Barquin said the goal is to instill in their audiences that it is their responsibility to vote and be a part of the political process.
“It's the whole accountability that we built in the audience, but also the uplifting and the value in their involvement in politics and elections,” Barquin said.
Barquin blamed Republicans, and primarily Trump, for the misinformation about elections and various policy issues.
“I think it's coming from one side,” Barquin said. “The ones that want to see us as criminals, the ones that diminish the Latino community. That's the side that is building all the lies against that Latino community because they want to build a negative narrative of what the Latino community brings to the table in this country.”
A new billboard on the skyline
Arizonans across the state looking to fight back misinformation about elections point to the 2020 election as the turning point.
“All you have to do really is go back to the 2020 presidential election and the role that Arizona played in that election,” said Jackson, from Arizona Town Hall. “Perhaps I might even add the role of that division in the Republican Party that you saw here in Arizona.”
Arizona, and specifically Maricopa County, became the center of election conspiracy theories after the state was called for President Biden in 2020. The false claims about voter fraud, machine voting problems and result manipulation have been largely promoted by Trump and other GOP leaders like Senate candidate Kari Lake — who also falsely denied her own gubernatorial loss in 2022.
The results have been serious. Thousands gathered in 2020 to protest the election results. Since then, Republican officials and their families have been threatened and there have been wider security concerns around not just elections but the physical act of voting in Arizona.
Out of this, a group of Arizona conservatives launched a new nonprofit called Conservative Agenda for Arizona. Backed by national organizations R Street and The Agora Foundation, and with a board of more than a dozen current and former GOP leaders, the group was created to be a “conservative voice and space” in building trust in the voting process.
“I've always been a registered Republican, but I found that some of the positions — or all of the positions that were taken on election denialism — were something that I couldn't align myself with,” said executive director Jane Andersen. “We are uniquely positioned to reach out to our conservative groups. We are uniquely positioned to offer an alternative that people can hold on to, and that actually does feel really comfortable.”
The group stood up an electronic billboard, visible from the freeway, with the words, “Thank you election workers” and the organization’s logo. The message aims to counter false conspiracies that election and poll workers might manipulate election results.
“This election cycle [the poll workers] are going to be … veterans, a lot of our neighbors, a lot of them are your friends. So this idea that we're going to villainize them based on politics is just wrong,” said Matt Kenney, another cofounder of the nonprofit.
He hopes their organization can also show that not all Republicans believe false claims of a stolen election, or are looking to act violently.
“We've used this as an opportunity to bring together your big tent Republicans, your big tent conservatives who want to see confidence restored in the election system and back in democracy,” Kenney said. “This sort of distrust and lack of confidence only hurts my party long term.”
Ailsa Chang, Noah Caldwell and William Troop contributed to this report.
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