More Latinos, more African Americans, more women and more open representatives of the LGBT community. The composition of the US Congress as it begins its 118th term this week is more mixed than ever. And for the first time, Hispanic deputies exceed 10% of the total seats, in a new sign of the growing importance of the burgeoning Hispanic electorate in the US.
In the inaugural session of the House of Representatives this Tuesday, while the rounds of voting were taking place in which the Republican Kevin McCarthy tried again and again without success to be elected president of that assembly, an unprecedented number of legislators had Hispanic roots.
In this legislature, 47 representatives in the lower house identify themselves as Latino. A figure that represents almost 11% of all legislators. Still below the proportion represented by the Hispanic population in the US (19% of the total, or 62.1 million people) but a quota that had not been reached until now. It is foreseeable that the number will continue to grow as the proportion of Hispanic voters in the US electorate increases: in the last decade this community has expanded by 23%. According to data from the Pew Research Center, Hispanics represent 51% of the increase in the population in the United States.
“Invest in the Latino vote. Talk to Latino voters early on and have Latino and Latina candidates not just in Latino-majority districts. We have a lot of Latino members who won their respective elections, and not only in districts with a Latino majority,” insisted the president of the Hispanic caucus, Congressman Rubén Gallego, at a recent press conference with these new deputies.
Latino congressmen are as diverse as their community. Of the 47 representatives, 35 are Democrats, in an indication of the support that that party has traditionally had among the Spanish-speaking community. But the Republicans have beaten their own record in the last elections and will have twelve Latino deputies. An eloquent sample of the progress that the conservative party has been achieving among these voters in recent years.
They are generally young. His average age is 38 years, two decades less than that of the typical congressman in this legislature. The new batch tends to militate in the tougher wings of their respective parties. The Democrats support measures such as the increase in the minimum interprofessional wage or the creation of a path that allows the regularization of the close to eleven million undocumented immigrants who are estimated to reside within the US borders.
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