Why Gloria Romero’s run for odd office will change – Latest News
The most attention-grabbing race in California could also be Gloria Romero’s run for the oft-ignored place of Lieutenant Governor.
What makes this race completely different is that Romero is a completely different sort of Republican whose background constitutes a vigorous problem to the standard-brand Democrat, Treasurer Fiona Ma.
Romero is a 71-year-old Republican — but additionally a former Democratic State Senate majority chief and onetime leftist firebrand.
Republican National Committeeman Shawn Steel calls her nomination “the most important development for the California GOP in a generation.”
Lieutenant Governor candidate Gloria Romero attends a Latino Block Party hosted by California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton in Bell Gardens, California, on Saturday, July 25, 2026. Andy Johnstone for CA Post
That’s as a result of between 2000 and 2020, the Latino voter turnout practically tripled in California, surging from 1.6 million to 4.5 million, marking a notable increase of 184%.
Romero’s candidacy will appeal to some of these voters, despite the fact that her severely underfunded marketing campaign has little probability of truly profitable.
The key shouldn’t be who Romero is now, however who she was. Romero’s break with the Democrats might embody some personal beefs, however it was additionally about coverage — notably training, which is her specific ardour.
In Sacramento, she observed that the California Teachers Union mainly decided training coverage — and that the state’s training system was failing, and now dropping college students at a fast price.
Latino college students proceed to lag behind white college students in California, with take a look at scores displaying a persistent efficiency hole.
“I could have played games with the unions, but I couldn’t stomach it,” she advised me. “We need a pivot and the Democrats won’t do it.”
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Romero, who comes from a working-class, union household from New Mexico, was the primary in her household to go to school. She desires California’s faculties to pave the way in which to success for the subsequent era.
But it’s not simply training that’s holding back Latinos in California. Latinos characterize about 37.7% of the workforce within the Golden State — and plenty of state insurance policies, notably round climate change, have been detrimental to staff within the industries the place Latinos predominate.
Latinos make up nicely over 90% of agricultural staff; over 50% of all California construction staff; and roughly 30% of staff in oil and fuel.
These are exactly the sort of jobs California’s famously inexperienced insurance policies are destroying.
Latinos within the Golden State lag additionally considerably behind these in rival states like Texas and Florida in phrases of incomes, and in addition home possession.
Overall Latinos in Texas get pleasure from cost-adjusted incomes $10,000 greater than their Golden State counterparts.
Remarkably, Latino politicians — who comprise 32.5% of the California Legislature, nicely above the national average of 2% — aren’t outraged by these info.
Clearly, Romero has a good case towards her former colleagues. But convincing Latinos and different minorities to change to the Republicans gained’t be straightforward.
President Trump’s typically brutal immigration insurance policies have alienated Latinos. They very a lot favor a managed border and deporting prison aliens, however they’re much less smitten by watching Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) haul away longtime residents with households and clean information.
Clearly, Democrats can use the deportations to revive their Latino help. But now the Democrats’ leftward shift — with their radical views on gender, race, quotas, climate change, law enforcement and different points — provides a new alternative for Republicans.
Latinos are typically socially conservative on points like abortion rights, control of the border and defunding the police. Often, they’re the police, as Latinos are the fastest-growing phase of each law enforcement and the navy.
Hispanics additionally embrace the entrepreneurial ethos of America. Over the previous decade, Latino business homeowners nationwide grew 34%, in comparison with only one% for all business homeowners.
Too unhealthy for them that, based on the Small Business Regulation Index, California has the worst business climate for small companies within the nation.
Despite all of the challenges, Latinos are inclined to imagine in, and cherish, the American Dream. And when requested to determine essentially the most important elements for success within the US, 94% mentioned “a strong work ethic and working hard.”
To put it merely: Latinos typically don’t make very best socialist comrades.
But will they turn out to be future Republicans?
Republican National Committee member Shawn Steel believes that shared values may deliver Latinos and Asians into the GOP. (His spouse is Michelle Steel, the new US Ambassador to South Korea.)
But that may solely occur if the Republicans can divorce themselves from the caricature of being the “party of white identity politics.”
That caricature is strengthened when politicians embrace Christian nationalism, or promote a favoritism in direction of “heritage Americans” — i.e., the sort of white people whose households arrived in North America two centuries in the past.
That kind of Republicanism lives in a demographic fantasy land. People who declare German, English and Scots descent — the teams who predominated earlier than 1860 — solely account for roughly one in 4 Americans.
Mexicans, in distinction, aren’t solely the second-largest identification group, however are growing a lot sooner than the remaining. By 2050, the nation will be barely 50% white.
Latinos are simply the biggest heritage group in each California and Texas.
Breaking the Democratic captivity of Latinos and different racial minorities shouldn’t be a new concept. In his first run in 1966, Ronald Reagan used the slogan basta ya, that means “enough” in his marketing campaign towards regulatory overkill, high taxes, and lawlessness.
His method gained him appreciable Latino help — a sample he retained via his Presidency.
To win, Republicans need to make themselves the social gathering of basta ya as soon as again. And this yr, Gloria Romero is California’s basta ya candidate.
Joel Kotkin is the presidential fellow in city futures at Chapman University and senior analysis fellow on the Civitas Institute of the University of Texas at Austin.
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