Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina A small Latino policy organization in Chicago — with a staff of under 20 — is getting bi-weekly email invitations to join talks with the White House. The emails from ERNESTO APREZA, senior adviser for public engagement, which go out to multiple Latino stakeholders, were a surprise to SYLVIA PUENTE, who has run the Latino Policy Forum for more than ten years. “That is obviously not something that existed under Obama, didn’t exist under Trump,” Puente said. Latino outreach has been a key focus for Team Biden ever since they were hit hard by disappointing results with Latino voters during the 2020 elections—results that Latino leaders predicted well in advance . And it remained so on Tuesday, as Biden, along with nine aides, met with 12 Latino organization leaders to talk about the Build Back Better agenda, voting rights and immigration. The more than 90-minute meeting started on Biden Standard Time (a bit late). LORELLA PRAELI, co-president of Community Change Action — and a former Latino outreach director to HILLARY CLINTON — called the meeting “robust and much longer than expected” and said it covered the economy, immigration and voting rights. She said community leaders requested that Biden and Vice President KAMALA HARRIS meet with them quarterly and to have a direct line of communication with them. “The President reiterated his commitment to creating a path, passing and getting a path to citizenship done via reconciliation,” Praeli told West Wing Playbook, referring to the massive budget bill that Democrats are beginning to move through Congress by a party-line vote. The New York Times last week unpacked the ways in which the White House has proactively reached out to Latino advocacy groups about voting rights and immigration. The rationale in part, is to not take the Latino vote for granted, especially ahead of the midterm elections. Although Biden won the Latino vote with a 59-38 percent margin over Trump in 2020, he trailed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margin by 17 points, according to the Pew Research Center. That’s a massive drop in support from a growing constituency and a lot of points to make up before the next election cycle hits. CHUCK ROCHA, a former BERNIE SANDERS senior adviser who runs Nuestro PAC, said it’s clear Biden and outside Democrats groups were terrified of the 2020 numbers. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending more than $1 million around the country in midterm battleground districts to make gains among minority voters. That figure may seem relatively small, given the size of the committee’s ad budget. But Rocha said it’s the timing that matters here. “I've never seen a group of folks go out and spend money, talking to Latinos as early as the pro Biden outside groups have done. So Building Back Together, Unidos and other groups, it’s like they all got the s*** scared out of them with Miami and the Texas valley last time and they are actually doing what all of us who were complaining about, they're doing it differently, really differently,” Rocha said. “You never saw Bill Clinton, or even Barack Obama, go out six months after the election and spend millions of dollars in Spanish, telling people what they're doing to make their lives better.” Former Biden campaign pollster MATT BARETO is a senior adviser for the White House approved nonprofit Building Back Together, and is working to show the Latino community the direct impact of Biden's agenda through TV and digital ads. While advocacy groups say the Biden administration has done some things well in his first six months — including early executive actions to try to undo or place reviews on Trump era policies — there have been no shortage of tension points. This week, the administration backed away from plans to begin phasing out the use of Title 42 to expel migrant families, arguing that the Delta variant and a growing number of border apprehensions required continued use of the public health law provision. We asked the White House about their Latino outreach efforts and they gave us a lot (like eight pages) of info, including a “representative” but not “exhaustive” list of all meetings Biden has conducted with Hispanic members of Congress, DREAMERs and other stakeholders. Of note, the White House says between March and June OPE and PPO conducted weekly check-ins with external organizations to “create a pipeline of Latino candidates for Administration roles.” In total, Biden held at least 16 meetings, calls or recorded remarks, dating back to January 30. First Lady JILL BIDEN is close behind with at least 15 events, interviews with Spanish media and meetings targeting Latino outreach efforts. They included her July 12 appearance on a “Sesame Street Inclusion Special,” where she talked about “inclusion, kindness and being an ‘upstander with Rosita,” a 5-year-old turquoise Mexican muppet familiar to anyone with small kids. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you ELIZABETH BROWN? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. | 
