How come that even though California has about 40% of its population being of Latino ancestry, it has only had one Latino representative in the senate (D-Padilla)?

34 comments

1. Not every Latino is racist enough to only vote for Latino candidates?

   Also each state has two Senators so having one Latino Senator makes Latino representation 50%.

2. latinos don’t necessarily only vote for latino candidates

3. Well California only gets two senators so a senate delegation that is 50% latino seems pretty good to me op

4. Latinos don’t only vote for Latinos

   And Latino turnout in CA primaries is only about 15%. So the vast majority aren’t participating in the primary candidate selection process

5. There are only two senators. Technically, 50% of California’s senators is Latino.

6. Hispanics only recently had that high of a population and skew way younger than the population as a whole. A plurality of eligible voters in California are still white. It takes time before a group gains political power.

7. The other senator has been in office since the early nineties, before Latinos made up a strong plurality of CA democrats. I would suspect one of the 6 Latino congresspersons to vie to replace her when she retires.

8. Racism

9. Because in America we can vote for whoever we want instead of voting for someone who looks like us. It’s pretty great.

10. We voted for Bernie. I don’t think we care much about skin color.

11. Because political seats aren’t filled on an affirmative action plan. People run for office and they might be Latino, Black, white, Asian or Intergalactic. People may or may not vote them into office, depending on countless things. Nobody is standing by with a clipboard saying, “Sorry, only a Martian can run for this office because Martian-Americans are underrepresented in this state.”

12. There are only two Senators in each state. 40% Latino ancestry and one Latino senator makes a decent amount of sense.

13. How many senators do you think California has?

14. Not all who run are Latino.

15. Because not all of them have gotten their citizenship yet to be eligible to do so (please don’t take this the wrong way, as I mean absolutely no offense). Unfortunately, it can take a long time to get.

    Also, people can vote for whoever the fuck they want in the U.S! Most people vote for candidates based on their stance on the issues, not race. It seems patronizing to think otherwise.

16. There are only two senators per state at any given time and Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer have dominated California politics for decades. Boxer has only recently stepped down while Feinstein is still there – albeit there’s some concern she might not be mentally.

    It’s also important to remember that the rise in Latino population is relatively new. Up until very recently it was a very “white” state. The Latino population has grown tremendously over the past half century.

17. Probably for similar reasons to the fact that women are like 51% of the population and make up only 27% of congress. Both groups are historically repressed.

18. Since there are only two Senators, one being Hispanic appears to fit the demographics correctly. If you are looking at Historically, then you need to look at the history of Hispanic migration too because using today’s data is not reflective what California was 100, 50, or even 10 years ago.

19. As a Latino in California:

    In 2016 when Kamala Harris was running against Loretta Sanchez for Senate, I voted for Harris because I didn’t like Sanchez politics (nor that “Indian” thing she did).

    In the 2018 Senate election with Feinstein vs De Leon, I voted for De Leon.

20. They aren’t a monolithic group, each individual ethnic group doesn’t share the same values. Some are more conservative, some are more liberal. A lot of it has to do with why they came to the US. For example, Cubans and Venezuelans (at least older ones) are more conservative because they left their countries after Castro and Chavez took over, one a communist and the other a socialist. So naturally, people who fled from those leaders and settled here will have ideologies that more conservative.

    Not to go out of the question you asked, but the same can be said for Asian groups as well. Vietnamese immigrants on the West Coast, until recently, supported conservative candidates and were important parts of Reagan’s SoCal coalition. A lot of younger Vietnamese refugees also came of age during Reagan, so he influenced a lot of them. Former US Assistant AG, Viet Dinh, was one of these people.

21. Democracy is A bitch when it doesn’t work out the way you want it to

22. There are only 2 senators per state. The other option would be having 100% of senators be Latino ancestry

23. For one thing, the Latino population of California is pretty young- the median age is not much above 25. For another, the way that most (almost all) Latino people arrived in California was not conducive to the pursuit of a political career within one or two generations. Cubans are a different story- the way in which Cuban people arrive in the US (a different part of the US) is reliably assisted by the US government in a way that makes college education and business ownership much more likely. The specific Latino ancestry of California has a strong tendency to be Mexican, and that’s been a very different situation.

24. Because past is where it is

25. So you see, there’s this thing called racism.

26. Incumbency advantage. Only now are Californians getting proper representation as older incumbents from California’s past retire.

27. I think everyone should have a path to citizenship, regardless of how they got here, just for the sake of this conversation, without any aspersions, how much of that 40% are not citizens and therefore ineligible to vote? the census, which is likely where these statistics come from, measures people who can’t vote
    https://www.ppic.org/publication/race-and-voting-in-california/

28. Guys. English.

    Has only HAD one. Repeatedly saying “but there are only two!” is not helping.

29. In large part because Diane Feinstein has served for 30 years, Barbara Boxer also served for many decades before being replaced by Kamal Harris (who is now VP)

30. You are opening a can of worms or maybe even more so Pandoras Box on this.

    So we should base the make up the Congressional Caucus by percentage of population based on race, ethnicity, gender??? Just skip the elections right? Or you want to gerrymander seat(s) for this breakdown? Some of this is occurring already in my state, and big time argument over it. Other states have some of this.. this is even worse than gerrymanders for party as far as I am concerned.

    How PC Woke. No thanks.

    Just because x group is y% of the population doesn’t mean they get Congressional seats in proportion to that. Thats why we have elections.

    Just how would this work out???

    Maybe we should say that Ethnic Russians get 10 seats in the Lithuanian Parliament ? How do you think that would play?? Especially in 2022??? Don’t think that would play well in Vilnius!

    ***This would not solve many of the issues with elections or the actual real issues in the US. Likely it would cause a huge huge raft of new ones.***

31. I hate to break it to you, but ethnic and racial groups aren’t some sort of hive mind consensus based intelligence who all automatically agree with eachother. People don’t just see a guy who is their race and automatically vote for them.

32. How come Latinos vastly outnumber blacks but you hardly see any representation for them? Oh sorry, I’m probably being racist here.

33. Because race isn’t a good reason to vote someone in.

    Obama wasn’t made president because he’s black.

34. Because they only voted for one Latino representative