Harris campaign targets Latinos in new ad blitz focused on boxing matches and baseball games

WASHINGTON — The Harris campaign is launching its largest effort yet to reach Latino voters, with new spending on Spanish-language radio and an organizing push around boxing matches and baseball games as National Hispanic Heritage Month kicks off this weekend.

The investments come as early voting is set to begin soon in some of the critical battlegrounds which are home to sizable Latino populations, like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Vice President Kamala Harris will address the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual conference on Wednesday, according to a senior campaign official, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is expected to pitch Latino voters in swing states in the coming weeks. Surrogates will be a part of the travel plan as well, the official said in plans first shared with NBC News.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez will all attend the highly anticipated super middleweight fight between Canelo Alvarez and Edgar Berlanga in Las Vegas on Saturday night, a day after former President Donald Trump held a rally in town.

Mobile billboards featuring “Luchadora,” an ad aimed at Latino voters that discusses Harris’ work on the border and actions taken against cartels when she was the California state attorney general, will fan out near the venue that evening.

“Latinos con Harris-Walz” will also hold events in Michigan, with Rep. Chuy Garcia, D-Ill., attending a Detroit Tigers Hispanic Heritage tailgate event on Saturday. On Sunday, Chavez Rodriguez will headline a “call-a-thon” that seeks to reach 500,000 voters in 30 days, according to the campaign.

“Hispanic Heritage Month is an important moment to celebrate the richness and diversity of Latino communities across the country,” Chavez Rodriguez told NBC News in a statement. “It is also a critical moment for us to leverage, as we continue to reach Latino voters about the stakes of this election, how crucial their vote will be in deciding this race, and defeating Trump and his anti-Latino agenda.”

Latino leaders, including Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, will participate in events in Arizona and Pennsylvania, respectively. The Harris campaign is also planning to host gatherings around Mexican Independence Day on Monday, including voter contact events at churches.

Beyond in-person events and organizing, the campaign plans to devote $3 million to new ads on Spanish-language radio from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, which is among the largest and “most significant” spending in Hispanic media ever, according to the senior campaign official.

The plan includes engagements with influential radio personalities and will also be tailored to sports-themed shows, with a focus on local baseball, football and soccer team coverage.

The Harris campaign is especially focused on reaching undecided Latino voters who may be persuaded by some of Trump’s economic message. Many Hispanics rely on their close networks of friends and family for information that could affect how they vote, so the Harris team is also working to ramp up its “trusted messengers” program in those communities.

Campaign officials said they launched a “Latinos con Harris-Walz” WhatsApp channel last month in an attempt to reach voters who may be consuming misinformation and disinformation on the platform.

Harris is favored by Latinos in Spanish-speaking and bilingual households at a higher rate than English-speaking ones, according to an August poll of eligible Latino voters. Nearly 60% said they would vote for the vice president, compared to 32% for Trump. In English-dominant homes, 51% of respondents supported Harris, while Trump’s stood at 38%, according to the survey from UnidosUS, the largest Latino advocacy group.

The poll was conducted by BSP Research, a Democratic polling firm whose co-founder, Matt Baretto, is a pollster for Harris. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points, and a quarter of respondents took the survey in Spanish.