The Briefing
- Allentown, the population center of Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, is a majority-Latino city where roughly 56 percent of residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, placing it at the geographic heart of the most closely watched House race of the 2026 cycle.
- Latinos account for roughly 23 percent of the total population in PA-7, a share large enough to determine the outcome between Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie and Democratic challenger Bob Brooks in a district decided by a single percentage point two years ago.
- A new NBC News/Telemundo national poll of Latino registered voters finds only 20 percent approve of President Trump’s handling of the cost of living, while 78 percent disapprove — numbers that are reverberating through morning radio in the Lehigh Valley.
A Question, an Open Phone Line, and an Earful
Victor Martinez turned it into a challenge. From his fourth-floor studio in downtown Allentown — hardwood floors, a view of an old stone church, and a control board he works like a conductor mid-performance — he put a single question to the thousands of Spanish-speaking listeners tuned in each morning to La Mega 101.7: name one positive thing about President Donald Trump.
What rolled in was not a list of achievements. A trucker called to share what he described as a silver lining to surging diesel prices — he was anticipating an unplanned vacation because he could no longer afford to top off his rig. A second caller said flatly that he had no intention of voting this November, and left it at that.
At the halfway point of Trump’s second term, Martinez said the mood he hears on air mirrors what he was picking up two years ago — frustration over fuel costs, grocery bills, and an economy that neither administration has managed to tame in the eyes of his callers. “It’s the economy, stupid. That’s what it is. I mean, things have gotten so bad,” he told the Associated Press. “People didn’t think Biden did a good job. Everything was expensive and now it’s worse.”
A Decade on Air, a Community Tuned In
Martinez has been at the microphone in the Lehigh Valley for nearly ten years. Over that stretch, the Latino share of the area’s population has moved from roughly one in five residents to approaching one in four. The politics hour he added to the show during the final stretch of Trump’s first term has since grown into the program’s most-listened-to segment — part call-in therapy, part civic forum — where callers have aired their fears about the January 6 attack, their frustration with inflation under Biden, and their anxieties about the current moment in equal measure…