Maria Montero remembers her Peruvian grandfather, a Democrat and loyal member of the carpenters union, yelling at President Ronald Reagan on television when she was growing up in a predominantly Hispanic part of Allentown, Pa.
Reagan had a different effect on Montero, however, giving her inspiration “that life was full of opportunity.” She became an attorney and the director of the state Commission on Women under a Republican governor, and now she is part of a new class of Hispanic Republicans competing for House seats in 2024.
Members of the group span the ideological spectrum from the far right to the moderate middle, but all hail from racially diverse districts that were won by Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and are represented by Democrats.
