Pacific Northwest emerges as new Hispanic political hot spot

The Pacific Northwest is emerging as a hotbed for Latino political representation, as a trio of Latino federal elected officials from the region face their first re-election campaigns, with others potentially joining them in Congress.

From 2011 to 2023, former Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) was the only Hispanic federal elected official from the Pacific Northwest.

Although Herrera Beutler lost her bid for reelection in 2022, Reps. Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) won their elections and tripled representation Hispanic in the region. during the night.

“Latinos have played an essential role in our economy and way of life in Oregon for decades. My district in the Willamette Valley has long been home to a vibrant Latino community, and we are now the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the state,” Salinas told The Hill in an email.

“That kind of growth made it difficult for experts to ignore us. It also increases the need for representation at all levels of government, especially at the federal level, to ensure our voices are heard.”

The region’s Hispanic congressional presence could expand in 2025, with Gresham City Councilman Eddy Morales running in the Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Washington State Sen. Emily Randall (D) in primary to replace retirement. Rep. Derek Kilmer (D).

The diversification of elected representatives is also felt at the local level.

Last year, the Washington state legislature created its first Latino caucus, a reflection of the group’s growing numbers.

In Oregon, 2022 saw a reduction in the number of Latinos in the legislature, in part because Salinas left the state House to run for his federal seat. Oregon’s legislature became more diverse that year, despite losing some Latino representation, with the election of five Vietnamese Americans and one Native American.

Still, the trend is toward increasing Hispanic representation — if Salinas and Chavez-DeRemer are reelected and Morales takes Blumenauer’s place, half of the Oregon House delegation will be Hispanic.

Although Hispanics are among the fastest-growing groups in Oregon and Washington, demographic shifts don’t tell the whole story.

According to the 2023 U.S. Census population estimates, 14% of Washingtonians and 14.4% of Oregonians identify as Hispanic.

In 2010, 10.5 percent of Washingtonians were Latino, as were 11.2 percent of Oregonians, but Herrera Beutler and former Oregon Rep. Sal Esquivel (R) are the only two Hispanic names on the lists of any legislature that year.

In both states, social policies from education to health to criminal justice have created the space for Hispanics, even undocumented or mixed-status families, to become politically involved, local advocates say.

“We were fighting. We were just reacting against anti-immigration policies. And at a certain point, we decided that we should actually adopt proactive policies. And so for years now, we’ve been passing policies, again, at different levels, state, county and city, in different areas of Washington, that have ended up giving the protection that the community needs,” said Maru Mora-Villalpando, a progressive community organizer in the Seattle area.

“And one of the reasons is not just so that people can live in peace, but that they can actually participate and understand power, right? We say it is important to vote, but voting is not enough.”

The progressive organization has become a feeder league for aspiring politicians in a region where both states appear solidly Democratic but have a much more complicated spectrum of ideologies at the local level.

Randall, the state senator hoping to replace Kilmer, said she was inspired to run as a reaction to former President Trump’s surprise 2016 victory.

“I ran in the district where I grew up, but where, since Congressman Kilmer left the State Senate, we had Republican representation. And a lot of people told me that, you know, the queer Latina who worked at Planned Parenthood couldn’t win in that district. And we won by 102 votes in a hand recount of 70,000,” Randall said.

Outside of liberal cities, including Seattle and Portland, the Pacific Northwest is home to an eclectic tapestry of ideologies that sometimes seem incompatible with national issues.

“I tell people who don’t know my district that we are definitely more libertarian than Democrat or Republican. You know, people want to live in a rural community because they don’t want to live next door to their neighbor, right? They live in a rural community because they don’t want the government to get its hands on their guns, their uterus or their marijuana. That’s the vibe,” Randall said.

This vibe is reflected in the region’s federally elected Latinas.

Gluesenkamp Perez flipped Herrera Beutler’s seat after the then-incumbent was eliminated in the jungle primary, leaving Gluesenkamp Perez and MAGA-aligned Republican Joe Kent to compete in the general election.

The Democrat won by less than a percentage point — and potentially faces a rematch against Kent — and has maintained staunchly centrist positions, including voting in favor of a Republican resolution to condemn the Biden administration’s immigration policies in March.

“First of all, identity doesn’t match progressive ideology, right? We have much more representation than we did 10 years ago when it comes to Latino political officials, especially in the state Senate and House,” Mora-Villalpando said.

“The vast majority of them are progressive, but there are a few here and there who are not, regardless of their identity as Latino or Latinx. And I think it has a lot to do with your electorate and the history of the place.”

Hispanic farmworkers have worked seasonally in the region for decades, but as in other parts of the country, many migrant populations decided to remain where they were in the wake of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Accountability Act of 1996, which made repeated crossings more onerous borders.

The region also attracted immigrants from other states, including California in the mid-1990s, which cracked down on undocumented immigrants or restricted social services available to foreign citizens.

“My mother managed to raise us there by taking care of the farmworkers’ children and also making lunches for the farmworkers. So I think just because of the big agricultural economy here in terms of lumber, the pine, I think we have the biggest Christmas tree farms here, and also types of fruits and vegetables. I think a lot of this work attracted people here,” said Morales, a councilor running to replace Blumenauer.

“And then, you know, just like me, I became the first in my family to graduate from high school, the first to go to college. Our second generation simply becomes part of the community here.”

Like other Cascadians, the region’s Hispanics show different political and cultural leanings in the urbanized coastal areas and mountains of central and eastern Oregon and Washington.

But Hispanic populations are growing on both sides of the mountains, with political consequences. In the Yakima Valley in central Washington, for example, a federal judge ordered the state adopt an electoral map uniting Hispanic communities to create a majority-Latino district before the 2024 elections.

Expanding the Latino presence in the region has often been an uphill battle.

In 2022, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) campaign arm, Bold PAC, fought the national Democratic leadership in a $15 million primary – with the Bold PAC candidate spending about 10% of that amount – to elect Salinas .

“I am honored to be one of the first Latinas to represent Oregon in Congress, and the fact that voters elected me in a crowded nine-person primary speaks volumes about the power of the Latino electorate. But we are not a monolith,” said Salinas.

“More Latino representation will bring more diverse perspectives to the table, and politicians will need to maintain an open line of communication with our community if they want to win the Latino vote. I have worked hard to create these connections and will continue to meet with people on the ground, listening to their concerns and bringing them back with me to Washington DC.”