East LA Jazmín
 | |
| Era | The Nineties |
|---|---|
| Age | 18-28 |
| Home | East Los Angeles, CA |
| Demographic | Latina, service work, second generation |
| Lean | Swing voter |
| Race | hispanic |
| Successor | Las Vegas Marisol |
A second-generation Latina who cleans hotel rooms in downtown Los Angeles, a union member, and the first person in her family to vote. She is also a part-time student and belongs to a bloc of voters that is only beginning to discover its own size.
Who they stand for
Proposition 187 was passed in November 1994, at the same election that re-elected Governor Pete Wilson. It is the event that turned California's second-generation Latinos from a group with low turnout into Democratic voters. Naturalisations rose sharply in 1996, and Latino voter registration climbed through the decade. Loretta Sanchez defeated Bob Dornan for Congress in 1996. Cruz Bustamante became Speaker of the California Assembly and then lieutenant governor. Jazmin's politics at work are those of the hotel workers' union, HERE Local 11, led by María Elena Durazo, and of the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage rose in 1996, and Proposition 210 raised California's minimum wage in the same year. Proposition 209 ended affirmative action in the state and Proposition 227 ended bilingual education.
She is a generation younger than Central Valley Ramón. She votes on wages and tuition, while he votes on farm work and immigration raids. Rio Grande Ofelia resents being grouped with her. Her successors are Las Vegas Marisol in the 2000s and Vegas Danny in the modern era. She passes on her union membership and the memory of Proposition 187. Danny inherits only the union membership.
Playing to them
She supports a rise in the minimum wage, union rights, in-state tuition and student aid, and any president who treats immigrant families as legitimate members of the country rather than as a problem. She opposes any measure resembling Proposition 187, any immigration raid on a workplace, and English-only rules. She takes each of these as an attack on her mother. Adopting her position costs little support elsewhere in the cast. Only Anaheim Darlene and Bitterroot Dale object to a pro-immigrant line. A rise in the minimum wage costs Koreatown Daniel and McPherson Don, because they are the employers who pay it.
The challenge with her is turnout, not opinion. She is a new voter with no habit of voting. A president who keeps her favourability high but never gives her a reason to turn out gains nothing from her in November. The kind of Republican who can win her is one who courts Latino voters as George W. Bush did in Texas. The California Republican Party in this decade has no such candidate.
Where they live
The five states where East LA Jazmín makes up the largest share of the electorate in the nineties:
- California
- New Mexico
- Florida
- Arizona
- Nevada
Lineage
East LA Jazmín → Las Vegas Marisol → Vegas Danny
Young Latino service workers in union jobs. Jazmín and Marisol vote Democrat for two reasons: the union tells them to, and they remember Proposition 187 as an attack on their families. Danny has the same union job and neither reason. He was too young for 187, and he does not think the union has done anything for him. So he keeps the union card, feels no loyalty to the Democrats, and votes on tips, rent and the price of gas. A loyal vote becomes a swing vote in one generation because the reasons for the loyalty were not passed down. The union job and the memory of 187 define the line, not sex.