On politics in California's Imperial Valley

This LA Times column by Jean Guerrero, out of Imperial County, California, speaks to what Democrats need to do to attract the Latino/a vote there, on the Mexico border.  Here's the lede:

For Democrats who mistake demographics for destiny, Imperial County is a mystery. It’s California’s most heavily Latino county, and yet Republicans have been making gains here.

This isn’t south Texas, where former President Trump’s appeal was rooted in cowboy-idolizing Tejano culture. This is Southern California. The GOP’s allure here is more complicated.

About 200 miles southeast of Los Angeles, the still-blue county does have similarities to the Rio Grande Valley, such as proximity to Mexico and a rural economy. The sprawling fields of the Imperial Valley supply the country with winter vegetables such as lettuce and carrots.

Voting patterns among the valley’s more than 180,000 residents look like a paradox: trending progressive in some local races while inching toward Republicans in state and national ones. Michael Luellen II, an 18-year-old out gay Latino, won a City Council seat in Calipatria. Raúl Ureña, 25, who is transgender, was reelected to Calexico’s City Council, alongside their ally Gilberto Manzanarez, 29. Countywide leadership is becoming younger and more diverse, reflecting a desire for change.

At the same time, Democrats’ margins of victory for top-of-the-ballot positions, such as governor and attorney general, shrank in the midterm elections last month. The GOP is continuing to make inroads here after Trump won 36% of the county’s vote in 2020, up from 26% four years before. There’s one through-line here: rejection of the status quo.

At the county’s southern end in Calexico, where the border wall’s steel columns and barbed wire cast shadows over farms and houses steps from neighboring Mexicali, common adjectives that people used to describe Trump to me were “loco” and “racista.” Crazy and racist.

In this part of the county, people roll their eyes at Republican rhetoric about “open borders.” Locals see the reality: The region is militarized and has been for years. Border Patrol vehicles are everywhere. Green-clad agents stroll on the sidewalks and eat in the taco shops, guns on their hips. Nearly 50 miles to the north, a Border Patrol checkpoint serves as a second border.

The column is worth a read in its entirety.   

Interestingly, California's new Chief Justice grew up in the Imperial Valley.  She is the first Latina Chief Justice in the state.  Former Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, Cruz Reynoso, also grew up in the Imperial Valley.