In the last few years, partly because of Trumpian outreach and partly because of Democratic Party excess, more and more minority voters are swinging to the GOP. This is a trend that we need to encourage, with constant outreach and with good candidates. One such candidate may have emerged in Nevada: world champion fighter Jessie Vargas.
Vargas, 32, is an excellent boxer, with a professional record of 29 wins, three losses and two draws. He is a former world champion in two weight classes, having held the WBA and IBO super lightweight titles in 2014, and the WBO welterweight title in 2016.
And he is a conservative who has entered the race for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District:
World champion boxer Jessie Vargas is joining the race for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District as a Republican, pitching himself as a former Democrat who will fight for conservative values.
Vargas, 32, told The Nevada Independent on Monday that “absurd issues” with the Democratic Party, including rising inflation under the current federal administration, made him rethink his prior party affiliation.
“The Democratic Party left me,” he said. “That’s when I made the decision to run as a conservative. I mean, it’s quite clear. I’m pro-life. I’m pro-guns. I’m all for family values and for having strong law enforcement.”
Vargas’s parents came to the U.S. from Mexico.
In a release announcing his candidacy, Vargas said he is “not a politician” and that “Washington’s liberal policies are making it harder for everyone” to accomplish the American Dream. According to his campaign website, Vargas’s plans include limiting the size of government, strengthening schools (including opposition to “crazy liberal ideas like Critical Race Theory”), maintaining police funding and securing the nation’s borders.
That last point, securing America’s borders, is very popular among legal Hispanic voters.
There are a number of contenders for the GOP nomination in Nevada’s 4th District, and I have no idea whether Vargas will come out on top. But his candidacy is one of many that make me optimistic about the future of the Republican Party and, therefore, our country. I am going from memory, but I believe that in the recent Virginia election for governor, Fox News’s exit polling found Youngkin beating McAuliffe by 11 points with Hispanic voters. Those are the kinds of results we need, and in today’s environment, we can hope to duplicate.
And I do not discount the fact that Jessie Vargas is a professional boxer. The exemplar of the Democratic Party is Pajama Boy, and Democrat voters seem to consist in large part of people who can’t figure out which sex they belong to. In what world is that a winning formula? Republicans need to stand up for sanity, and candidates like Jessie Vargas can help us to do so.
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