Our Legislative District, the 34th, is one of Washington State's
Democratic strongholds, and we had always planned to go farther afield to help other Democrats in this election cycle. But over the Cascades? It might as well have been over the rainbow.
But our first vice chair has a cousin in Sunnyside, Yakima County, in Washington's 15th Legislative District, and the two of them got to talking, and the next thing we knew, we had a proposal on the table for a "sister district" relationship with the 15th.
We thought we'd be cruising in 2006. We think we'll re-elect Maria Cantwell to the Senate. Jim McDermott and Adam Smith hardly have challengers for their House seats. Two of our three state legislators are unopposed and the third faces a perennial candidate.
We figured to give Darcy Burner some help. We have already, and we will again. But now we're up to our eyeballs in the belly of the beast--a State Senate race halfway across the state with a clear-cut battle between good and evil, and a view of the future for the fast-growing Latino voter demographic.
"When I told people I was running for the State Senate,"
Tomás Villanueva says, with a shy grin and a twinkle in his eye, "they told me two things. Number one, that I was crazy, and number two, that I couldn't win. Well, I know I have done some crazy things in my life . . . (the grin goes away and the twinkle becomes a steady gaze) . . . but I'm going to win this race!"
Villanueva faces a steep uphill battle, but his listeners want to believe, and they want to help. For his opponent is incumbent Jim Honeyford, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, arguably the single most anti-labor, anti-environment legislator in either house.
Honeyford has had the worst pro-labor voting record in the Senate for five of the last six sessions, scoring a perfect zero in four of those sessions. His rating for the 2006 Legislative session by Washington Conservation Voters was a perfect zero, a repeat of the perfect zero he scored in 2004.
Honeyford ran unopposed in 2002, and although he pays lip service to having an opponent, probably isn't running hard. Villanueva and his fellow Democrats hope that is the case.
Yakima County, which has the bulk of the population in the 15th District, is 38.6 percent Latino and 4.8 percent Native American, according to 2005 Census figures, and that demographic is growing fast.
The Washington State Democratic Party's Latino Vote Project is on the ground in the area, working as part of the Coordinated Campaign. But the 15th lies in parts of four counties, with a lot of territory to cover. That's where we come in.
Members of the 34th had met with Tomas Villanueva and 15th District chair Wendell Hannigan at the state Democratic Convention in Yakima in June. Last Saturday eight of us went over again, to the 15th's fundraising dinner, at the Filipino Hall in Wapato. There, over grilled salmon, chicken adobo, pancit, salads, and fruit pies, we got to know our fellow Democrats, heard speeches from candidates, watched dancers from the Yakama Nation and the Filipino community, and talked strategy.
The 15th lacks some of the organizing and campaigning tools that we take for granted in the wired, tech-savvy Seattle area. We are helping them set up a Web site and an effective e-mail list. It was suggested that we conduct Precinct Committee Officer training and help with voter registration.
Unlike more densely populated areas, meeting places and community organizing revolves around the individual small towns. Still, a precinct is a precinct, and many of the same tactics apply. We'll be picking people's brains to find out what works in the 15th and what doesn't, and helping our fellow Democrats to maximize what they have used successfully.
But such nuts-and-bolts organization building, necessary though it might be, is just an adjunct to the real task at hand in the 15th District--organizing and mobilizing Latino voters and giving them something concrete to work toward--and making sure that they, just like all other voters in this country, get a return on their investment in the political system.
In Tomás Villanueva, they undoubtedly have a candidate with the vision of where the Latino community has been and where it needs to go. In an incredible interview with the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington, Tomás tells the story of his life as an immigrant from Mexico, a farm worker, a union organizer, a lobbyist, and now, a candidate, and lays out his vision for the future.
One of the things there needs to be is political power. That's going to have to start with two things: voter registration but the other one is a lot of education and trying to get people out to vote.
Historically, Hispanics are very low in turning out to vote. I don't blame them. No candidate has anything to offer them. Once in a while we have had a candidate that makes a lot of promises and when they get to office they completely forget.
So people are very disillusioned. We're trying to get candidates that talk about the real issues. The candidates in this area don't talk about issues of concern to farm workers and the Hispanic and minority communities. They talk about the Black Rock Reservoir, about the water, about the agricultural industry, but nothing about issues related to the farm worker community.
I'm very fortunate from the position that I have. I do a lot of the advocacy that I've always done, even with the agricultural industry on behalf of the workers. Not too long ago there was a federal mandate for a state agency to do voter registration. I talked to my office and they were not even aware of it in Olympia. I'm going to be the person making sure that farm workers are receiving health services, and really gets involved with voter registration in Eastern Washington. Because my whole area is the whole Eastern Washington.
I already had the first meeting. I'm having meetings with every office and showing them what to do and what needs to be done. Hopefully, maybe we will double the participation within the next year or two. I think that's the only way we're going to change it. Get more people involved, the Hispanic community keeps growing. I think, I don't see too far in the future, when things are going to change politically. Hopefully, change will be for the better. I think that it will.
I challenge any Daily Kos reader to read through this man's oral history, and then tell me that he is wasting his time running for the State Senate, or that we're wasting our time trekking halfway across the state to work for him. Whether he wins or loses, he must run, and those who come after him must step forward, because we have no choice but to do so. We can't sit back and assume time is on our side.
If we Democrats are not there for the people who need us the most, who will be? And if we Democrats are not there, ahora y siempre, for those who need us the most, we can't expect them to be there for us.
I'll post later on our future efforts. Yakima, Klickitat, and Skamania Counties are not exactly New York, New York, but to paraphrase the song, "If we can make it here, we can make it anywhere."