Republican Chair to California Latinos: It’s time to make our voices heard

Fresno Bee
CAGOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson
October 16, 2024

As the first Latina, woman and millennial chair of the California Republican Party, I have had the incredible privilege of serving our state and community in ways I never imagined when I first began my political journey.

But the most meaningful part of my work has always been in empowering voices — including those in our Latino community — so that we can drive the change we want to see in our lives, our state and our country.

When I was first elected in 2019, it was a tough time to be a California Republican. We had just lost several members of our U.S. House delegation and were the third-largest political group in California, behind Democrats and no party preference. If we wanted to grow our party and start winning again, we were not going to do it by only talking to ourselves.

California is blessed to be filled with rich, complex and diverse cultures and communities, but the Republican Party has not always done a great job of being a part of them. California is home to more Latino and Hispanic-eligible voters than any state in the nation, and starting in 2019, diverse community engagement quickly became an essential effort of the CAGOP and our candidates…

We are running candidates who are deeply ingrained in the communities they seek to serve and understand the issues that matter most to them — from congressman Mike Garcia in Los Angeles County to Reps. David Valadao and John Duarte in the San Joaquin Valley. And it’s working. In all, we picked up five U.S. House seats over back-to-back election cycles, including two seats where a majority of voters are Latinos…

In partnership with the Republican National Committee, we opened three Latino community centers in targeted congressional districts that are unlike typical field offices. They focus on building relationships within the Latino community and host activities like Spanish-language phone banks, civic lessons, potlucks and roundtable conversations.

We are recruiting and training volunteers within the community, registering voters, doing Spanish-language voter contacts, creating Spanish-language campaign content, and making sure California Latinos know that the Republican Party shares their values and wants to help make their lives better.

I’m proud of our accomplishments, but I know we are just getting started. The challenges we face today, thanks to the failures of Democrats in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. — from economic hardship to the homeless crisis, crime and failing schools — require all of us to come together and support candidates who offer common-sense solutions to our everyday issues.

The Latino community has a critical role to play in this fight. We are the backbone of this state and America. We work hard, we build, we contribute, and we deserve leaders who understand our struggles, who will fight for us and who will deliver results…

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