Nearly a century later, as President-elect Donald J. Trump is set to return to the White House, LULAC is preparing to stand on the front lines of clashes with the incoming administration over proposed mass deportations, voting access and issues involving education and the social safety net.
The group’s chief executive, Juan Proaño, said in an interview that its mission — protecting the rights of Latinos — was more critical than ever. But he said LULAC was also contending with election results in which many Latino voters, especially Latino men, gravitated toward Mr. Trump, suggesting they might no longer see themselves as part of the group’s fight.
“We’re going to have to decide where to build bridges,” Mr. Proaño said, calling Republicans’ potential capture of all three branches of government “worse than my worst-case scenario.” He acknowledged that Mr. Trump had outperformed past Republican presidents with Latino voters: “I will give Trump credit where credit is due,” he said.
Over the coming weeks, Mr. Proaño said, his group will sift through voter data to understand what led working-class Latinos to shift to the right. Their march toward Mr. Trump came despite his organization’s political action committee throwing its support behind Vice President Kamala Harris in August, the first formal endorsement of a presidential ticket it had ever made.
Although the PAC’s leadership voted unanimously to endorse Ms. Harris, the group’s broader membership of nearly 325,000 people across 535 councils runs the spectrum of party affiliations and ideological beliefs. One of the councils, in the Houston area, objected to the endorsement. Now, the group’s bipartisan board will need to weigh how to engage the next administration in a way that reflects not only the broader Latino electorate, but also its own diverse membership.