WASHINGTON — The number of Latinos serving in Congress will rise to at least 42 in the new year, and that figure most likely will increase when one still undecided race is called.
Thirty-three out of 44 Latino Democratic candidates won election in Tuesday’s contests, while seven out of 15 Latino Republican candidates claimed victory.
Francisco Pedraza, a political scientist at University of California, Riverside, thinks a small increase in the number of Latinos in Congress is very important because it happened despite redistricting that followed Republican victories in the 2010 election.
“In 2014 and in 2016 elections it was not that obvious,” Pedraza told The Associated Press. “Today we see the importance of all the changes brought after the 2010 election.”
The 57 million Latinos who live in the United States are the nation’s largest ethnic or racial minority and constitute 18 percent of the total population. However, their political impact is substantially diluted due to their low electoral turnout.
NALEO Educational Fund, a prominent nonpartisan Latino organization, said that only 6.8 million Latinos voted in the 2014 mid-term election.
Latino winners in both parties include new faces who represent a number of firsts.
On the Democratic side, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 29-year-old Puerto Rican New Yorker and former Bernie Sanders organizer, became the youngest woman elected to Congress after her primary victory over one of the most powerful House Democrats in New York.
Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia will be the first Latinas to represent Texas in the House.
And Debbie Mucarsel-Powell will be the first Ecuadorean to have a seat in the House of Representatives after defeating two-term Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo in a Florida district where 70 percent of residents are Hispanic and nearly half are foreign-born.
