Last-minute billboard campaign seeks to galvanize Puerto Ricans for Harris

New billboards are going up in Pennsylvania and North Carolina on Thursday, stoking Puerto Ricans’ pride in their island to shore up support for Vice President Harris.

The billboards, paid for by Voto Latino and the Oakland Corps, feature images of Puerto Rico landmarks and beaches with the caption, “This isn’t garbage. And neither are we. Boricuas, this time, we vote for her.”

The $500,000 campaign is the latest act in the “garbage” war set off by a comedian at former President Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, and inflamed by a gaffe by President Biden on Tuesday on a call hosted by Voto Latino.

The offending comedic act equated Puerto Rico to a floating island of garbage, touching a sore spot and potentially energizing key groups of low-propensity or undecided Puerto Rican voters in swing states.

“Sunday’s hateful insults against Puerto Ricans were just the latest example of Trump and his campaign showing us that they do not consider Latinos to be ‘real’ Americans,” said Voto Latino President María Teresa Kumar.

Though the Trump campaign disavowed the joke and Trump himself claimed never to have heard it, multiple media outlets labeled the incident as 2024’s “October surprise.”

Biden entered the fray through a jumbled sentence that has been interpreted as the president either calling all Trump supporters “garbage” or using the same word to describe the rhetoric at Trump’s rally.

The Trump campaign adopted the former interpretation, blasting Biden — and by association, Harris — in an attempt to turn the tables on the issue.

Trump on Wednesday made an appearance in a Trump-branded white garbage truck in Wisconsin, which he said was “in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”

But Puerto Rican and Latino leaders generally in states including Pennsylvania have consistently reported anecdotal evidence that the original comment — the slight on Puerto Rico itself — has become viral in their communities.

“I think that [Trump is] not going to gain one vote for playing the garbage card. By the way, the garbage language started with him. He was [the] first one to say that America was a dump for the world. I don't think that he's gaining voters, any significant voters, by playing that narrative,” said Frankie Miranda, president of the Hispanic Federation.

“However, we know for sure that the Sunday comments have generated additional energy in the Latino community, for people to come out and vote in protest of what they saw was an unfair treatment ... of or characterization of Latinos and Puerto Ricans.”

The new billboards, one of which features an image of a beach and the other of La Perla, a San Juan working-class neighborhood famous for its brightly colored homes overlooking the ocean, will seek to fuel that sentiment among Pennsylvania’s 470,000-plus and North Carolina’s 130,000 Puerto Rican voters.

“Donald Trump has denigrated Latino communities for years. It started with his first campaign statements in 2015, and it has not stopped since,” said Chuck Quintero, a spokesperson for Oakland Corps.

“His hate for our community was on full display for the world to see this past weekend with fresh attacks on Puerto Ricans at his Madison Square Garden rally. We all have the power to stop the racism and the hate by getting out and voting in this election, and we’re proud to partner with Voto Latino to get that message out in these final days.”