“How can we advocate for California Latinos if they won’t let us into the room?” Assemblyman Jeff Gonzalez asked.
Earlier this month, Republican Jeff Gonzalez took the oath of office this month and officially became the representative for California’s 36th State Assembly District. It’s an impressive feat given that Democrats enjoy a 14% voter registration advantage in CA AD-36. It also contradicts the narrative that Republicans cannot compete with Democrats in deep-blue Latino-majority districts.
Some argue that this narrative is the result of years of deliberate effort, primarily on the part of the California Latino Legislative Caucus, to exclude Republicans in Sacramento from participating in “[identifying], [promoting] and [advocating] on behalf of the professional, educational, social, political and cultural interests of the Latino Community.” As such, Democrats barred Assemblyman Gonzalez from joining the caucus. Understandably, this has drawn ire from GOP lawmakers.
“Democrats will not allow Jeff, a Marine Corps veteran, to join the Latino Caucus despite being Latino and representing a Latino district,” wrote Assemblyman Joe Patterson. “It’s sad that the caucuses have become tools of the majority party to simply defeat Republicans, rather than advance policies to improve lives.”
“How can we advocate for California Latinos if they won’t let us into the room?” Assemblyman Gonzalez recently asked on Twitter/X.
His post includes a link to a piece by the Editorial Board of The Press-Enterprise which criticizes the Latino Legislative Caucus’ “No Republicans allowed” rule and calls the restriction “particularly awkward given the growing number of Latino Republicans in the California Legislature.”
Indeed, Republicans are making serious inroads with Hispanic voters—both in California and at the national level. In 2022, the State Legislature added four Latino Republicans to their roster. Then, in last month’s general elections, President-elect Donald Trump won 43 percent of the overall Latino vote, which constitutes an 8% increase from 2020. Furthermore, 2020 was a roughly 3-4% increase from 2016; and 2016 was a 2% increase from 2012. It’s a trend Democrats should be taking seriously.
“I really do believe that what we experienced at this [2024] election was the official breaking up of the Latino community with the Democratic Party,” said Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “[Democrats] need to come back to the values, to the middle… We are temporarily breaking up. It could be a permanent break up based on the next steps taken by the Democratic operatives.”
This cycle, Latino voters also elected Republican candidate Leticia Castillo in California’s 58th Assembly District after having been represented exclusively by Democrats since 1992. In both cases, Gonzalez and Castillo ran on platforms of restoring common sense and focusing on the real economic issues that affect voters—not social issues or esoteric gender studies in public school.
“I found a lot of people would talk about stuff that the Democrats were trying to push on them that they should care for,” Castillo said in reference to both abortion and the State’s efforts to ban school districts from enacting parental notification policies. She argued that voters “have other issues going on that are more important.”
While still not invited to the Latino Caucus table, California Republicans are, naturally, excited by these trends and hopeful that it could offer them a path forward to breaking the Democrats’ supermajority in Sacramento.
“I think it’s huge,” said Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher. “It represents a realignment. We’re starting to see more and more Latino voters that were loyal Democratic voters and have started to break away from that.”
Latino Caucus Chair Sen. Lena Gonzalez called the Republicans’ condemning remarks “media sensationalism” and argued that asking to participate in their caucus “detracts from the real issues that our Latino communities are facing daily in California and beyond: inflation, immigration, housing insecurity and more.”
The Press-Enterprise piece shared by Gonzalez argues that Democrats insulating themselves from Republican voices has, in actuality, not delivered positive results for Latinos—or any Californians—on the issues of inflation, immigration, or housing insecurity. In fact, it asserts that “[Lena] Gonzalez and her fellow Democrats have failed to do a remotely competent job of governing the State of California.”
“Perhaps if she and her fellow Democrats heard Latino Republicans out, they might learn something, maybe even pick up some good ideas.”
