The popularity of Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican singer whose fans filled AT&T Stadium two weekends ago, should not come as a surprise in 2022: Last week, the census revealed that Latinos, for the first time, surpassed white residents as Texas' largest group.
This expected, yet long-awaited milestone comes with a caveat: Hispanics are still underrepresented in voting numbers and elected representatives.
There were 5.5 million eligible Hispanic voters in 2018 and 2.8 million were registered voters, but only 1.9 million went to the polls, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
The trend has not changed since and, currently, there are only 45 Latino legislators in a body of 181 members. The Texas delegation in Congress has 36 representatives and just seven are Hispanic.
In 2018, a poll conducted by Jolt Texas, a left-leaning voter mobilization group, identified some reasons for this Latino apathy, ranging from mistrust of the political process to lack of information about the elections.
There is also another factor affecting these numbers: About 2.25 million voting-age Latinos in the state are not citizens.
Luis Fraga, from the Institute for Latino Studies in Notre Dame, has said that focusing on Latino voters in states like Texas is a good strategy for the future, but “campaigns are made with short-term decisions.”
Regardless of party politics, getting Hispanics to vote remains a challenge. As a voting bloc, they have been taken for granted by Democrats and ignored by Republicans, although this might be changing: There are signs in South Texas that conservative Latinos can be elected.
But also, Hispanics have not been consistent in developing leaders for political positions that can be appealing to all voting groups.
A recent effort that unfortunately was phased out in 2018 was the Latino Center for Leadership Development in Dallas which became a pipeline for leaders like Dallas City Council member Jaime Resendez, state Rep. Victoria Neave, Dallas ISD trustee Joe Carreon and former Dallas ISD board president Miguel Solis, among others.
This younger generation of leaders is already leaving its mark in Texas politics, all the more reason to invest in initiatives like this one.
Investing in future leaders is on par with educational opportunities and economic improvement, with clear sights on the younger state population.
Hispanics now represent 40.2% of Texans, while non-Hispanic whites account for 39.4%, according to the new census numbers. But among Texas children, they are even a larger group: 49.3% of Texans under the age of 18 are Latino.
In other words, those Bad Bunny fans may have the power to change Texas politics in the future, if we can get them to vote.
