Getty Bernie Sanders names Latino outreach director

Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign has a new director for Latino outreach: Arturo Carmona.

Carmona, who the Sanders campaign announced Friday will also be its Southwest political director, was previously the executive director of Latino advocacy group Presente.org.


"I am going to work hard to build a strong team that can connect Bernie's campaign with Latino families," Carmona said in a statement. "As the son of an immigrant, his story resembles that of millions of Latinos in the U.S."

The announcement came the same day that the Sanders campaign said the Independent senator from Vermont and 2016 liberal presidential candidate would travel to Tucson, Arizona, for a rally at the Reid Park DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center. He plans on discussing "a wide range of issues including income and wealth inequality and the disappearing middle class, campaign finance reform" as well as his plans on college affordability and criminal justice reform.

Sanders has taken very public steps to appeal to African-American voters, but so far he hasn't matched that effort among Latinos.

Polling has shown he remains largely unknown among the Latino community, especially compared with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

A poll of Hispanic voters by Noticias Univision, for instance, found that 68 percent of those interviewed said they didn't know or hadn't yet formed an opinion of Sanders. By contrast, 68 percent also said they had a favorable opinion of Clinton, while 26 said they had an unfavorable opinion of her. Just 6 percent had not formed an opinion or had not heard of her.