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The influence of New Bedford’s fastest-growing population is easy to spot.
You can find restaurants serving any tortilla-based dish you desire on Acushnet Avenue. More teachers and police officers in the city are speaking Spanish than ever before. The recent renovation of Dias Field into a soccer complex reflects how children’s interests have shifted from baseball to fútbol.
One place the changes haven’t reached: the City Council chamber. One in every four New Bedford residents is Hispanic, but none of the city’s 11 councilors are.
Hispanic residents turn out to vote at lower rates than the rest of the city, casting less than one in every 10 votes during recent general elections, according to a New Bedford Light analysis of voter data in collaboration with Boston University’s Spark! Justice Media co-lab.
In New Bedford, Hispanics are a young population with many recent immigrants, which means a smaller share of the city’s Hispanic population is eligible to vote compared to the city as a whole. While 65% of New Bedford residents are U.S. citizens over the age of 18, just 44% of the city’s Hispanics fall into that group.
But eligibility doesn’t fully account for the gap. Even among Hispanics who were eligible to vote, the turnout was lower compared to the rest of the city during the last election. The Light’s analysis of voter and census data indicates that about a third of New Bedford’s eligible Hispanic voters cast a vote in the 2024 election, compared to about half of all eligible voters in the city.
“Representation does matter — to have elected officials who reflect your community and the needs you’re seeing day-to-day,” said Corinn Williams, executive director of the Community Economic Development Center, which works closely with the city’s Spanish-speaking population.
Williams said it’s especially important to have that representation in government right now, as the Trump administration pursues an aggressive mass-deportation strategy. Hispanic immigrants are at the center of a fundamental conflict over who should be allowed to live in the United States. And it’s happening in the context of what some see as a decline in democracy.
Low turnout is not a new phenomenon among New Bedford’s Hispanic population, data shows. But Williams said the current political climate could layer on another chilling effect in the upcoming municipal election this fall. Hispanic residents live in fear that they or people they know could be deported, she said, and that makes them less willing to get involved politically.
“In some ways, there’s a sense of despair,” she said. “Of throwing their hands up in the air.”
A contrast: Spanish- and Portuguese-speakers in city politics
When Guelmie Santiago was campaigning door-to-door for an at-large City Council seat in 2023, she was alarmed to find that many Hispanic residents didn’t know who their councilor was, and didn’t even know that they were registered to vote.
“Your kids go to school here; this is the street that you live on,” she said in an interview this summer. “I think there is a disconnect of them understanding that.”
Santiago, who is from Puerto Rico and runs a professional services business in New Bedford, had hoped to become the city’s first Hispanic councilor. Some voters who spoke to The Light during the 2023 election said they had voted for Santiago specifically because they wanted more Hispanic representation on the council. She finished ninth in a field of 10 candidates.
Between 2010 and 2020, the number of New Bedford residents who identify as Hispanic or Latino increased from around 16,000 to around 24,000, according to the U.S. census. Yet this fast-growing population holds less political power than the city’s Portuguese and Cabo Verdeans, who turn out to vote at higher rates. Most current city councilors come from those two ethnic groups.
The Light’s data analysis estimated that voters with Portuguese surnames cast about 18% of votes in the last city election in 2023, while voters with Hispanic surnames cast about 9% of votes. Cabo Verdeans cast about 6% of votes.
The Hispanic community hasn’t been in the city as long as the Portuguese and Cabo Verdeans, Santiago and Williams pointed out.
“This first generation is not as politically engaged because they’re working hard, they’re raising their families,” Williams said. “It might take that next generation of their children to become politically active.”
The Hispanic community also isn’t as culturally united or integrated with the rest of the city as Lusophone communities, Santiago said. That’s partly because Hispanics come from many different countries and cultures, so they don’t have as much of a shared identity. And, partly because of language barriers, Santiago says the Hispanic community tends to keep to itself.
Enormous community-wide events celebrate Lusophone culture: the Cape Verdean Recognition Parade stretches for miles, and the Portuguese Feast of the Blessed Sacrament attracts 100,000 people. There’s no large-scale Hispanic equivalent to those gatherings, Santiago said.
“Where do we fit in all this?” she said. “I’ve never seen nobody raising a flag for the Hispanic community.”
How The Light and Boston University students analyzed voter data
The BU Spark team’s data fellow created an ancestry classifier based on common surname suffixes for Portuguese, Cabo Verdean, and Hispanic people.
This classifier first labeled all surnames with Hispanic features, such as “Ez” or “Eno,” as Hispanic. The classifier then matched remaining surnames with common Portuguese suffixes and Cabo Verdean surnames.
If a surname was matched with both Portuguese and Cabo Verdean, the name was assigned an ancestry randomly following the distribution of how many of each ancestry lived in the voter’s respective ZIP code. If the name was not matched to anything in the database, it was assigned “Other.”
It is possible that surnames of voters who do fall into one of the three ethnic groups of interest were placed into the “other” category if the name is not common, or had a suffix that was not commonly of the voter’s ancestral origin.
The region’s media landscape contributes to low Hispanic voter engagement, Williams and Santiago said — there aren’t any local publications that cover New Bedford in Spanish on a daily basis. It’s also too difficult to find accessible information on how to vote, especially for residents who primarily speak Spanish, they said.
The Hispanic population doesn’t know its political power yet, said City Council President Shane Burgo. But he thinks that will change as their population and investment in the city grow.
“Similar to the Portuguese and Cape Verdean community, they will have the same feeling of pride in New Bedford, and wanting to effect the change by electing individuals that will help them effect the change that they want to see,” he said.
Lack of representation, advocates say
Santiago and Williams said a lack of representation in city government has caused Hispanic neighborhoods to be left behind.
“They’re paying their fair share of taxes, but sometimes there’s a disconnect between what they pay out and what they’re receiving,” Williams said.
The city and state need to invest more in streetlights, garbage removal, and sidewalks in Hispanic neighborhoods like Acushnet Avenue, where a lack of services has been a “longstanding issue,” Williams said.
Elected officials in New Bedford use active voter lists to focus their reelection campaigns on people who already vote, Santiago said. This campaigning practice has created a system where politicians rely on the same small voter pool to win elections, without taking the time to educate potential voters who haven’t engaged in the past, she said.
“So, maybe you see the same streets getting fixed, and you wonder why your street’s not getting fixed,” Santiago said. “You’re still paying taxes like everybody else — so perhaps it has something to do with the fact that you guys don’t vote.”
Santiago and Williams said higher Hispanic voter turnout could help advocate for city services that better serve these areas. Hiring more Spanish-speaking staff in City Hall and holding community meetings in Spanish would also help, they said.
Right now, the Community Economic Development Center does “a lot of troubleshooting” for Spanish-speaking residents when they encounter daily issues like parking tickets or sewer issues.
“There’s tons of city-based services that could have more attendance, and more support for limited English speakers would go a long way,” Williams said.
Polling place problems
Language and cultural barriers prevented some Hispanic residents from voting in the 2023 city election, Santiago said.
She said she heard reports from people in her campaign that poll workers often didn’t speak any language other than English and didn’t understand that Hispanic voters can have multiple last names. According to Santiago, poll workers couldn’t find some residents’ registration records and turned them away. Santiago and Williams said there should be multilingual poll workers to prevent that from happening again.
But Burgo, the city councilor, said it’s already hard to find people willing to work the polls without a language requirement.
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“Do we need more individuals that can speak multiple languages?” he said. “Yes, definitely, but the challenge becomes, who can we find that’s willing to do that work?”
Manuel DeBrito, the city’s election commissioner, said part of the issue with last names is how the state gathers names for the voter rolls. DeBrito explained voters are registered with one last name but might go by a different one.
“It’s a challenge and it goes both ways,” DeBrito said. “I think the state is doing a good job trying to differentiate and adding a lot more information to the voter list so we can differentiate who’s who. But that’s definitely something that’s always been a challenge, but that’s not unique to New Bedford at all.”
It’s up to the state to clean voter information in the voter registry to make it easier for people to vote, DeBrito said.
The city’s Election Commission has been working to get students — many of whom they say are multilingual — to work as poll workers (the pay is about $15 per hour). Officials hope that will help address the language and cultural barriers that caused some voters to be turned away.
This year’s election
This fall, all City Council seats are up for election, as well as three of six School Committee seats and one assessor position.
The deadline for candidates to file nomination papers is Aug. 19. Candidates need a minimum of 50 signatures to make the ballot, but often seek many more. The preliminary election will be held Oct. 7; the general election is Nov. 4. A full calendar explains this cycle’s election process.
Von Marie Moniz, the CEO of the South Coast Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, who is running for School Committee, called for more Hispanic representation when she spoke to The Light earlier this summer.
Santiago said she doesn’t plan to run for City Council again because of the amount of time it would take to mount a campaign and, potentially, hold office. But she hopes someone else from her community will.
“I would love to see somebody who is Hispanic and is from the community to try to take a [City Council] seat — to try to represent us, and to try to open that for the future,” Santiago said.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org.
Tavishi Chattopadhyay, and Jakob Moskowitz worked on this project as students in Boston University’s Spark! Justice Media co-lab.
More stories by Grace Ferguson
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You forgot to mention that the people who fear being deported are in America illegally, or they’re completely ignorant to the fact that if they are here legally, they can’t be deported, either way, it’s a lack of education that allows that ignorance to continue.
Why don’t you mention the fact that many “Hispanic” people living in New Bedford, or across America still don’t understand, read, write, or speak English? Part of that problem is all local, state, and federal government services provided verbal and translation to accommodate them, and that’s just wrong.
I almost hope that “A Tax Payer” is being deliberately provocative because if not, it’s utterly tragic that they do not understand the consequences of the actions they say they want. There is a way to regulate immigration without cruelty. There are ways to create clearer and easier paths to citizenship. And in the absence of improved policies, exploitation runs amok. There are businesses and other interested groups that like it that way. So, I say it again: there is a way to regulate immigration without cruelty.
Legal residents and citizens have been affected by ICE too. Please look into that. The American government is flaunting its disregard for the very people they are meant to protect — here and abroad!
If you like the current approach, then you are supporting cruelty. Rights are being denied. That is not the America I grew up believing in. The current administration doesn’t even take the time to deport people to their country of origin.
Beyond the racism, xenophobia, and plain old abuse of power, there’s ENRICHMENT too. For-profit prisons make a lot of money. And more prisoners means more money.
I’d rather the tax payers’ money be used to uplift the community. So, “A Tax Payer,” if you support an increase in deportations, do yourself a favor and take the time to question if YOU are satisfied with THIS kind of approach. Try not to let someone else dictate your conscience.
Did you know that American immigration judges have been fired too? There’s a lot going on. Please look more closely.
People have rights in America. And how we treat others says a lot about who we are as individuals and a country. Take a moment to ask yourself what kind of American you want to be.
As for your language criticism… If you resent people needing translation services, that’s as good as saying that they don’t deserve to understand what is happening to them. Those accommodations are hardly drains on the system. In many situations, someone freely provides that support. It can come from a relative or someone who works nearby and speaks the language. And a lot the time, the person understands English well. They just don’t have the confidence or experience to engage with it more fluidly. It takes time to learn a new language and adapt to a new place, and that process would be easier without constant fear.
If you think immigrants are the reason you don’t have what you need to live your best life, then please look more closely at the 1% of this world. When in doubt, follow the money and always, always look up because the powerful have a lot more influence in your life.
I don’t know where you got the idea that I don’t have what I want due to illegal immigrants, I never said that anywhere because of illegal immigrants, I have everything I need, and want because I’ve worked for it, and I don’t depend on anything from anyone.
My point is, anyone, from place in the world who leaves their home country to live in a different part of the world shouldn’t expect the people to learn English,
This is such a strange article. I love the idea of higher voting and greater representation, but no one group of everyday citizens is at fault. You say the Hispanic population votes less in comparison, but New Bedford’s voter turnout is very low in general. Why not go deeper into those reasons and talk about voter turnout in general too?
And you miss another huge discussion point: if officials are catering to the ones that actively vote, that’s on them! Every representative should be looking out for ALL of the people, not just the ones that help keep them in power. Do representatives NEED to be told to fix the pot holes? This article says it and doesn’t say it at the same time: representatives want you to “play the game.” But people want to live their lives, not kiss some representative’s behind or fall for their “I’m sorry, I tried” performance.
And “representation” has increasingly become a joke. There’re no guarantee that more Hispanic representation would result in better circumstances for the Hispanic community. That is true for “Black representation” and “Female representation” and even “Local representation.” Look at Jon Mitchell! Just because he’s a local boy doesn’t mean he won’t exploit this community.
And even when the public votes for something, their state can “make it go away.” Dig deeper, New Bedford Light! You know well that the groups with the highest representation ANYWHERE — on any level of government — are the RICH, POWERFUL, AND CORPORATE. Everything else is window dressing.
Hispanic voters will be even less inclined to vote this year because of ICE. The Trump administration is pushing for more overt racial profiling. Speaking Spanish will soon become even more dangerous. If you genuinely want more voter turnout, talk about the bigger issue: lack of real representation for ANYONE NOT IN THE 1%.
The problem with American democracy started well before Trump. Start acting like it!
Good luck to them all, but no matter where your from, if you want to live in America and have the right to vote and participate in out elections, you must become an American Citizen (on voting day a legal form of identification should be required to obtain a ballot).
Of the 28,000 Hispanic residents how many can speak English fluently? There is lack of understanding city politics that keeps many Hispanics from getting involved. So I say to those if you to have some representation register and run for public office.