Motivational and Attitudinal Factors Amongst Latinas in U.S. Electoral Politics

Chicanas and Latinas ¹ have a long history of being political actors, dating as far back as the Mexican Revolution. Yet scholarly research has only recently begun to address their contributions to American politics. In this essay, we delineate the increasing presence of Latinas and Chicanas in electoral politics as activists, candidates, and officeholders. Drawing from some of the more recent literature on gender and Latinas in politics, as well as our own study of 51 Latinas and Chicanas active in party or grassroots politics, we look specifically at the intersection of gender and ethnicity to explore why this group pursues political involvement and how it perceives its own political leadership. It is our contention that Chicanas and Latinas approach mainstream political participation differently than do their white female counterparts because of their unique experiences and political history as minority women. Studies such as Melville's and Cordova's underscore the complexity of the experiences of Chicanas in the United States (1980; 1986). In particular, we argue that Chicanas and Latinas are much more likely to have community-oriented motivations for their political involvement and to manifest their political participation largely in relation to themselves, their families, and their particular ethnic communities.

Events prompting this research started in the late 1980s when Latinas and Chicanas began to reach a new level of visibility in the national political arena. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban American Republican from Florida, brought national attention in 1982 with her election as the first Latina to win a congressional seat. Gloria Molina, Los Angeles' first Mexican American of either sex to hold a county supervisory position in one of the largest metropolitan cities, brought national attention in the late 1980s. In addition, much publicized elections for Congress, such as Anita Perez Ferguson's close bid in California, helped establish a new Latina presence in national politics in 1990. In 1992, two additional Latinas were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives: Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), the first Mexican American assemblywoman from California, and Lydia Velazquez (D-NY), the first Puerto Rican assemblywoman from New York. More recent campaign successes include Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) and Grace Napolitano (D-CA). There are also a number of prominent Latinas within state legislatures, including Hilda Solis (D-CA) from the Los Angeles area and Irma Rangel (D-TX). Equally important, recent hotly-contested mayoral elections and school board races in prominent cities such as San Francisco and Pasadena, California; Phoenix, Arizona; San Antonio, Texas; and Santa Fe, New Mexico have also brought attention to Latinas at a national level. With reference to the latter category, Latina elected officials, like their female counterparts in other race-ethnic groups, still appear most prominently on local school boards and in municipal government. Nevertheless, they make up a sizeable percentage of the total number of Latino-elected officials, surpassing the proportion of women in U.S. politics overall. Pachon and DeSipio, for instance, reported that in 1992, Latinas made up 30.1 percent of all Latino elected officials (1992). In that same year, women constituted only 17.2 percent of elected officials in the United States.

One factor contributing to the increased political representation of Latinas and Chicanas is the early involvement and support of Latina and Chicana organizations. In effect, Latinas and Chicanas are creating their own paths of leadership development. Organizations such as Comision Femenil Mexicana Nacional, which is a nonpartisan women's leadership organization based in Los Angeles, help prepare Latina women for political office. Other organizations, such as the National Hispana Leadership Institute and the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, offer leadership training for Latinos and Latinas in politics. Similarly, the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), specifically the Hispanic Steering Committee, sponsors candidate development conferences for Latinas. Regional organizations, such as Las Adelitas in New Mexico, target and assist potential political candidates...