Latino legislators, business owners and community members are playing politics in Oklahoma with the long game in mind.
The strategy is to establish greater Latino political influence by educating the voter base and generate a pipeline of young Latinos who will one day run for office at local and state levels. The hope is to engage more Latinos in the electoral process overall.
Even though Latinos are the second-largest and fastest-growing demographic in the state, census data shows they register and vote the least compared to other racial and ethnic groups.
Latino registration and turnout rates are higher during presidential election years, data shows. In 2020, 42.8% of Latino voting-age citizens in Oklahoma registered to vote, or about 106, 000 of a potential 248,000. The next-highest registration rate was of eligible Black Oklahomans at 56.4%, or 123,000 of a possible 218,000. Demographic comparisons of registration and turnout rates for the 2022 election show similar trends.
Low participation leaves Latinos underrepresented in elected offices across Oklahoma compared to their share of the state’s population.
Oklahoma City Democrat Sen. Michael Brooks is one of five Latino state lawmakers in Oklahoma. He said more Latino representation is important because it would mean greater support for proposed laws like his SB 669, which would have permitted state taxpayers to obtain Oklahoma driver’s licenses using their Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. Introduced last year, the bill would have allowed people living in the U.S. without legal permission to lawfully drive on the state’s roads as long as they pay their taxes here.
Failing to energize Latinos to vote also means bills that hurt the community are more likely to pass, such as 2007’s HB 1804, Brooks said. The bill explicitly restricted the provision of public benefits to U.S. citizens, including driving and occupational licenses, food stamps, and Sooner Care.
“That anti-immigrant bill affected a lot of families, including those with U.S. citizens,” Brooks said. “I think sometimes things like that have happened because the Latinos in Oklahoma failed to use their voice.”
Latinos in Oklahoma don’t fit neatly into either of the major political parties, according to the results of a recent survey by Unidos US, a Washington, D.C.-based Latino civil rights advocacy organization. Those who do vote tend to choose candidates who stay away from extremism, work across the aisle, and focus on the rising cost of living, job stability and healthcare access as their primary issues, the survey shows.
Efforts to increase the civic engagement of Latinos in Oklahoma have been underway for more than a decade, however, and are starting to gain momentum.
Latino elected officials are organizing a political action committee that will support and mentor young Latinos with political aspirations. Other stakeholders in the community, such as the organizers of the Oklahoma Hispanic Institute and Building Bridges USA, are focused on educating Latinos about civic participation and highlighting the economic and cultural contributions of Latinos in the state.
The goal is the same: raise the volume of the Latino voice in Oklahoma.
Brooks chairs the Oklahoma Latino Legislative Caucus, which includes two more Democrats in the House and one Senate Republican. He said when the caucus first organized in 2021, its mission was to amplify Latino voices at the Capitol by getting more of them elected, regardless of their party. The PAC is an important step to work toward that goal, Brooks said.
“People on both sides of the political spectrum can see the increase in the Latino population and where demographics are headed,” he said. “And both sides think that their platforms dovetail with Latinos.”
A November National Survey of Latino Voters by Unidos US showed no strong leaning toward either party. While most responses about party trust and preference slightly favored Democrats, neither party secured a 50% approval rating on any issue.
The Latino population’s growth and moderate views, Brooks said, allows Latinos who run for office to campaign across party lines and issues and better address the needs of their constituents.
He said the PAC will consist of two nonprofits: One that offers scholarships and fellowships for college students interested in one day running for office, and another that provides voter registration help, campaign volunteer opportunities and financial support to candidates.
He said young first-year legislators such as Democratic Reps. Annie Menz from Norman and Arturo Alonso-Sandoval from south Oklahoma City are early examples of the kind of people the caucus hopes to foster.
Among the line-up of fresh Latino candidates for local and state elected office are Sam Wargin Grimaldo, Senate District 46; Jessica Emily Cifuentes, Oklahoma City Public Schools Board District 3 and Scotty Hernandez, who is running for OKCPS District 4 Board seat. All of these candidates are from Oklahoma City and have volunteered in the campaigns of Latinos who’ve run for office in the past.
As a legislative assistant for Brooks, Menz founded the annual Hispanic Day at the Capitol in 2017. By 2022, she was the first Latina elected to the Oklahoma House and the second elected to the state legislature. Sen. Jessica Garvin, R-Duncan, was the first Latina in the Capitol when she won Senate District 43 in 2020.
Menz said Latinos should see themselves serving on school boards, in city and county governments, and at the Capitol.
“Having candidates, not just issues to rally around, but actual people to be excited about really does matter,” she said. “It does energize people when they see somebody who looks like them or believes the same things they do.”
Menz said supporting candidates from both parties will make it easier to pass bills addressing the issues potential Latino voters care about. In Oklahoma, one of those bills includes allowing state taxpayers to receive state driver’s licenses, including those who live in the U.S. without permanent residency or citizenship.
She offered the Democratic primary election for House District 89 in June 2022 as her own example of a promising future. That was the night Alonso-Sandoval defeated a fellow Oklahoma City southsider Cristian Zapata for the House seat.
“There were two young Latinos running against each other,” Menz said, “They were duking it out. And so it’s like, this is interesting. We have to pay attention now. We’ve got to pick one.
“I mean, It’s opportunity,” she said. “That’s what drives the participation.”
For the Latinos in Oklahoma’s legislature to proportionally represent Latinos in the state, there would need to be more than a dozen elected in 2024.
With Latino voter registration rates in Oklahoma below 45% in 2022, the kind of competition Menz described among young Latino candidates is not yet widespread. Turnout was low that summer night. State election data shows 735 votes were cast in a majority Latino district with 9,737 registered voters.
“There are few opportunities for Latinos to enter elected positions, but also a lack of interest in voting,” Menz said.
That lack of interest is caused by multiple factors, according to Menz, community members in Oklahoma City, and the results of the latest Unidos US survey. Among them are prioritizing work or school over voting, distrust of government institutions, apathy because they don’t think their vote matters and a lack of education about how to participate in elections.
Camilo Ulloa is an Oklahoma County Republican Party community representative. He helps the GOP engage potential Latino voters by sharing information with them about Republican candidates and elected representatives. He said for many of the Latino families he has spoken to, right behind concerns about the rate of inflation and job security, are worries of corruption and the elimination of nuance in political discourse.
Ulloa pointed out there is a generational gap between potential Latino voters in Oklahoma, not just when it comes to age but also time in the United States. Some families have been here for more than a century, and have many members who are citizens. Others may have arrived in the U.S. recently and may have one naturalized member who has never voted.
Those worries are consistent with the findings by Unidos US in the organization’s latest survey. Latino voters prefer moderate candidates who are able to cut through extreme rhetoric on both sides.
Nationally, the survey shows 16% of Latinos will be voting in their first federal election and 22% in their first presidential election.
Francis “Pancho” Hobbes and his wife, Lera, are the founders of Building Bridges USA, an eight-month-old organization aimed at melding the history of Latinos and immigrants in Oklahoma to the History of America through socialization and online civic education resources. They are aware of how many new Latino voters enter the electorate each year.
The couple is using its decades of ministry in Guatemala, California and Oklahoma City to help connect with new immigrants and point them to the resources on their website.
“The website is still young,” Pancho said. “But our work in ministry taught us to always be where the people are, and when we asked around some of the churches in town, we realized people are online.”
The site will grow with resources on how to begin the naturalization process and how to register to vote, he said. It will also feature testimonials called “Nuestras Voces” to highlight experiences of Oklahoma immigrants who have made a life in the U.S.
Clarissa Martinez De Castro is the vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at Unidos US. Part of Martinez De Castro’s work involves analyzing Latino voter registration and participation rates in census data and overseeing surveys of the American Latino electorate before, during and after elections.
Census data shows that Latino voter turnout is much higher for presidential elections than for midterms, and that most Latinos registered to vote in presidential years do cast a ballot. Nationally, 87% of registered Latinos voted in the 2020 election. In Oklahoma, it was 71%.
“The registration gap is the one that needs to be closed if community organizers want to increase participation,” Martinez De Castro said. She said bipartisan and nonpartisan organizations focused on increasing the number of Latino voters sounds promising for the community in Oklahoma.
Ultimately, Brooks said, the issues that affect Latinos in Oklahoma are the same ones that affect the rest of the state, Latinos just haven’t been sucked into hyper-partisan news outlets pandering misinformation.
“I think the unifying characteristic of Latinos in the State of Oklahoma is that we come here to work,” Brooks said. “Regardless of how we feel about whatever the latest social hot-button issue is. To be free of political misinformation and instead make good policy to ensure Oklahoma governs and provides for us well, that’s the most important thing.”
