Ricardo Ramírez - Mobilizing Opportunities: The Evolving Latino Electorate and the Future of American Politics

University of Virginia Press
2013 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2013

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Ramrez, Ricardo.

Mobilizing opportunities : the evolving Latino electorate and the future of American politics / Ricardo Ramrez.

pages cm. (Race, ethnicity, and politics)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780813935102 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 9780813935119 (e-book)

1. Hispanic AmericansPolitics and government. 2. Political participationUnited States. 3. ElectionsUnited States. 4. United StatesPolitics and government. I. Title.

E184.S75R35 2013

323.1168073dc23

2013013898

This book is about context and evolution in American politics. It is about Latino lives throughout the United States and the unique effect that context has on their levels of civic and political engagement. For some Latinos, the states in which they reside mobilize them into politics at faster than expected rates. For others, their incorporation into civic and political life is slower, but nonetheless steady. The degree to which we understand how and when the evolution of the Latino electorate happens is tied into institutions, place, and motivation and mobilization.

How this book became a reality is also intrinsically tied to the institutions with which I have engaged, the places where I have lived, and the sources of my motivation to see this project through. I have benefited from the financial and research support of four institutions outside of my academic home. I began my career after graduate school at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). Their financial support, especially Mark Baldassares support, allowed me the time to develop some of the early ideas for this book. I also benefited from the financial support of the National Science Foundation, which allowed me to conduct some of the data-intensive research while housed at the Institute for Social Science Research at UCLA with my sponsoring scientist, David Sears. The time and resources proved essential, but not sufficient, as I could not have obtained all of the necessary data without the willingness of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) and National Council of La Raza (NCLR) to grant me access to the work they do to change the lives of Latinos throughout the United States. At these institutions, I am particularly grateful for the support of Evan Bacalao, Efrain Escobedo, Marcelo Gaete, Rosalind Gold, Clarissa Martinez, Gladys Negrete, and Arturo Vargas.

The places where I have worked also greatly impacted the book, less because of their location and more because of how these places shaped my daily life. I consider myself fortunate to have had colleagues and friends who made going to work something to look forward to every day, which made conducting the research for this book seem less onerous. At the University of Southern California, they include Macarena Gomez-Barris, Ange-Marie Hancock, Pierrette Hondagnau-Sotelo, Jane Iwamura, Jane Junn, Anthony Kammas, Roberto Lint-Sagarena, Manuel Pastor, Michael Preston, Laura Pulido, Shana Redmond, Leland Saito, Michael Waterman, and Nick Weller. At the University of Notre Dame, they include Peri Arnold, Jaimie Bleck, David Campbell, Darren Davis, Cynthia Duarte, Juan Carlos Guzman, Carlos Jauregui, Tatiana Jauregui-Botero, Geoff Layman, David Nickerson, Paul Ocobock, Dianne Pinderhughes, Tim Scully, Naunihal Singh, Christina Wolbrecht, all of the faculty at the Institute for Latino Studies, and the students in my graduate seminar on ethnicity and immigration. I am also grateful to be a core member of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy and for the generosity of its donors, Francis and Kathleen Rooney, who believe in the importance of Latinos for the future of American politics.

The institutional support and work environment provided the means to undertake the painstaking task of conducting research and writing. The motivation to channel these resources to produce a book on Latino politics came from other sources. In this book, I make the case that the Latino electorate is evolving and that this coincides with the dramatic evolution in the study of Latino politics since I began my doctoral work in the 1990s. At the forefront of this evolution is the work and example of the principal investigators of the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS): Luis Fraga, John Garcia, Rodney Hero, Michael Jones-Correa, Valerie Martinez-Ebers, and Gary Segura.

If the LNS team has been at the forefront of the changes in the study of Latino politics, Adrian Felix is emblematic of the promise of tomorrow. I witnessed his evolution from my graduate student to trusted friend and colleague. He, along with others in his cohort, will help shape the future of the subfields of Latino politics and Latin American studies. I am also thankful for his great feedback on earlier drafts of the book.

Additionally, I have benefited from the insights, advice, and interactions with David Ayon, Christina Bejarano, Cristina Beltrn, Shaun Bowler, Bruce Cain, Susan Clarke, Vicky DeFrancesco Soto, Louis DeSipio, Jaime Dominguez, Jonathan Fox, Lorrie Frasure-Yokley, Alfonso Gonzales, Don Green, Zoli Hajnal, Vince Hutchings, Jonathan Fox, Taeku Lee, Ben Marquez, Natalie Masuoka, Jenn Merolla, John Mollenkopf, Celeste Montoya-Kirk, Stephen Nuo, Ron Schmidt Sr., Simon Weffer, and Chris Zepeda-Milln.

I am most indebted to Dom Apollon, Matt Barreto, Rudy Espino, Sylvia Manzano, Adrian Pantoja, Karthick Ramakrishnan, Gabe Sanchez, and Janelle Wong. Their support and long friendship has helped sustain me and has been at the core of my own evolution as a scholar through the many stages of my academic career. Without a doubt, our many conversations about politics and academia over the years have impacted my approach to the study of American politics generally, and Latino politics in particular.

I was lucky enough to have spent some time writing in Morro Bay for a few days in the summers of 2011 and 2012. Thank you, Val Staley for letting me use your home. I could not have picked a more ideal place to finish putting the manuscript together. I would like to thank Dick Holway at the University of Virginia Press for his vision and early interest in this project, as well as the Race, Ethnicity and Politics series editors, Luis Fraga and Paula McClain. I am grateful for the excellent feedback and suggestions of the anonymous reviewers who steered me through the final big picture sections that ultimately made the book come together.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my family. As the son of migrant farmworkers of very modest means, I would not have had the motivation to go to college, graduate school, or the professoriate without their love and support. My mother, Guadalupe Lpez Ramrez, instilled in me a sense of perseverance and determination that continue to be the cornerstone of my success. When I doubted myself, a simple no te me achicopales helped motivate me to push harder. I am thankful for the love and support of my siblings Martha, Maria, Jorge, and Pati, as well as Doa Esther and all of the Mendoza family. To my brother Domingo (19701981), you still inspire me to do all that I know you could have done.