Why California’s Latinos are just as politically divided as everyone else

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In 1998, four Latino Republicans were elected to the California Legislature. As the press secretary for a Republican legislative leader, I convened a news conference demanding an end to a discriminatory policy: The all-Democratic Latino Legislative Caucus should stop insisting on a political monoculture and allow Republicans to join.

Twenty-five years later, California’s Latino Legislative Caucus still excludes Republicans. In contrast to states such as Arizona and Texas, whose Latino caucuses are bipartisan, California’s Latino Republicans remain excluded from an ethnic caucus that purports to represent them.

This peculiarity mirrors the history of Latino political empowerment in the state. When the caucus was founded in 1973 by the late L.A. Assemblymember Richard Alatorre and others, it seemed inconceivable that any consequential number of Latino Republicans could be elected to serve in Sacramento. This proved accurate for decades.

But now, as the rightward shift of Latino voters has swept a record number of Republican Latino lawmakers into the Capitol — there are now nine who have formed their own caucus — the debate has been resurrected. This time, it feels different — because Latino voters and identity are different.

Today’s Latinos lack the defined ethnic and racial perspective of prior generations. New Latino voters are overwhelmingly U.S.-born, primarily English-speaking and more likely to see themselves as “typically American” than to associate with their countries of origin. And they are more likely than members of any other ethnic group to be unaffiliated with a political party. Latinos are becoming more populist and less partisan.

Over the years since I was a bright-eyed, 20-something staffer, I’ve come to doubt the practicality of a bipartisan Latino caucus, which now seems like a lost opportunity of the last generation. A bipartisan California Latino caucus could have focused on shared goals such as improving public education, increasing college attendance and graduation rates, making housing more affordable and preserving the upward mobility of working-class Californians — all of which should have been Sacramento’s priorities too. Instead, by nearly every social and economic metric, Latinos are worse off now than they were a generation ago despite the exponential growth of Latino representation.