By james art 
NAZARETH, Pa. — Pennsylvania Democrats believe comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s offensive remarks about Puerto Rico at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27 are already helping Puerto Rican voters who would otherwise stay home in this critical swing condition.
Of the seven battleground states that will determine the winner of Tuesday’s election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Pennsylvania has the largest population of Puerto Ricans. The Keystone State’s Puerto Rican population of nearly 500,000 is concentrated in North Philadelphia, the Lehigh Valley, Reading and Hazleton.
On the same day that Hinchcliffe’s remarks rocked the political firmament, Harris was campaigning in North Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican community.
“I heard directly from the Puerto Rican community how offended they were” by Hinchcliffe’s remarks, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) said Saturday while campaigning for Anna Thomas, a Democrat, running for Pennsylvania state representative. “I think it has awakened the community in a way that will turn them on in even greater numbers for Kamala Harris.”
Pressed to explain why those remarks might resonate with voters who aren’t yet firmly in a corner when so many other Trump or Trump-related comments have failed to hurt him, Shapiro said: “That’s my feeling from the entire state: that it broke through and somehow resonated with the community where it made them say, “Well, wait a minute, this guy is not for us. This guy doesn’t respect us.
They keep saying, “Oh, he’s just a comedian.” It still hurts.Nilsa Vega, voter from Pennsylvania
State Rep. Josh Siegel (D), who represents Allentown, a city that is the center of Puerto Rico, and Lamont McClure, Northampton County Executive, had similar assessments on the campaign trail Saturday.
“It’s had an undeniable impact on the land here in the Lehigh Valley,” Siegel said.
Reached by phone Saturday, Philadelphia City Councilwoman Quetsy Lozada (D), who is from Puerto Rico, said her office has received messages from people who voted for Trump and want to know if they can change their votes . (They can’t.)
Lozada, who accompanied Harris to a Puerto Rican restaurant while she was campaigning in North Philadelphia, also heard from many voters who said their friends and relatives were either leaning toward Trump or didn’t plan to vote until they heard about the insult. Hinchcliffe. It’s a marked change from the mixed results Lozada got several days knocking on doors for Harris in parts of North Philadelphia before Hinchcliffe’s remarks.
“I’ve seen a tremendous level of anger and a sense of disrespect,” Lozada said. “I think we’re going to see people who were undecided until this week turn around for Harris. We will see Puerto Ricans come out in record numbers to demand respect. And they will demand it through their vote.
Strategists from both major parties were still reeling from a critical moment in Trump’s xenophobic rally on Oct. 27 that Democrats hope could provide a slim edge in the final days. While presenting a comedy set filled with racist jokes, Hinchcliffe, a comedian from Austin, Texas, described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of trash in the middle of the ocean.”
At a rally filled with nativist and racist remarks, Hinchcliffe’s comments still stood out because of the politically important constituency they offended. Republican elected officials from Florida and other states and areas with large Puerto Rican populations were quick to condemn the remarks. Puerto Rican pop stars Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin responded tonight by sharing Harris’ video appeal to Puerto Rican voters.
The Trump campaign took the rare step of distancing itself from the offensive comedy, saying “the joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
Trump’s Puerto Rican critics, however, blame him for failing to apologize or condemn Hinchcliffe’s remarks immediately after taking the podium.
“I specifically asked the audience, ‘Okay, what would you say if Trump today, all of a sudden, decided to apologize … Would that be okay?’ Would you take that into consideration?” Victor Martinez, host of a Spanish-language morning radio show popular throughout Pennsylvania, said on CNN on Tuesday. “Overwhelmingly everyone said, ‘No, too late.’
Seeking to capitalize on the backlash Trump received, the Harris campaign sent the vice president’s sister Maya Harris and Puerto Rican musical theater artist Lin-Manuel Miranda to rally Puerto Rican voters at the Puerto Rican Beneficial Society in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on Thursday. Harris is scheduled to hold a rally in nearby Allentown on Monday afternoon.
HuffPost spoke with several Puerto Rican voters outside a CTown supermarket in south Bethlehem, across the street from the Puerto Rican Beneficial Society.
Nilsa Vega and Neidel Pacheco of Hellertown, a neighborhood south of Bethlehem, said they had never voted before, but Hinchcliffe’s remarks were the reason they planned to vote for Harris on Tuesday.
“It hit the spot,” Vega said. “They keep saying, ‘Oh, he’s just a comedian.’ It still hurts.”
Pacheco saw Trump’s decision to pose in a garbage truck at a campaign stop in Wisconsin the next day as an added insult. “If he had nothing to do with it, what’s he doing in the garbage truck?” Pacheco asked.
Sergio Martinez, a warehouse worker from Bethlehem, said he had never voted before and was wondering if he should vote now. He thinks Trump has “kept the country strong — as far as the economy goes — and kept the borders a little tighter.”
But Martinez has reservations about Trump because he has “ways of saying things about immigrants and just white people [people]. So that’s kind of a little doubt about it.
Martinez was less troubled by Hinchcliffe’s remarks. However, his mother, who never votes, plans to vote for Harris because of the joke.
“It definitely made an impact,” Martinez said. “Everybody is telling everybody, ‘Don’t vote for him.’