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

Chicanas and Latinas' 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 RoybalAllard (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