“We need representation now,” Frausto said. “This goes out to all those little girls … this is for them to hopefully change the narrative so they no longer have to say, ‘I hope one day,’ and they’ll change it to ‘I know one day.’
“Sunnyside candidates for school board and city council and organizers from ELLA attend their weekly meeting to share information and resources on Oct.4, 2023.” Photo by Jasper Kenzo Sundeen/Yakima Herald Republic
Almost 70 people gathered in the gym at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on a July evening in Sunnyside. Grandparents, parents and children sat on folding chairs in front of a panel of six candidates for school board and City Council in the second-largest city in Yakima County.
It wasn’t the traditional fall election season, but with the primary looming in early August, candidates and get-out-the vote nonprofits had come together to connect with an oft-underrepresented group of Yakima Valley voters: Spanish-speaking residents.
“Estamos aqui para escuchar a sus voces,” said Keren Vazquez, a candidate for Sunnyside City Council’s Position 5. Translated: “We are here to listen to your voices.”
Vazquez is one of six candidates who are members of the Lower Yakima Valley Latinx Coalition, a team of candidates who collaborated to come up with ideas and overcome the challenges of running for office.
They took notes throughout the evening and discussed ideas and concerns presented by Sunnyside residents.
Maria Fernandez is the executive director of Empowering Latina Leadership and Action, or ELLA, an organization that has been developing community engagement, education and leadership in Sunnyside. ELLA has been a key part of efforts to share knowledge with Latina and Latino candidates. Fernandez wants voters and the people they’re voting for to understand the systems and issues in play.
“What are your worries? Your ideas?” Fernandez asked in Spanish at the July 13 listening session before gesturing to the candidates. “They want to hear from you.”
Sunnyside, a majority Latina and Latino community, could see an unprecedented number of Latinas or Latinos step into local offices this year. Many candidates for school board and City Council, and not just those who are part of the Latinx Coalition, are encouraging voters to participate in the electoral process.
Elections and voter engagement efforts have ramped up in the Lower Yakima Valley this year, where candidates – who are collaborating and organizing around important issues – and nonprofits – which are encouraging voter engagement – could alter elections in communities with historically low turnouts.
“First-time voter Silvestre Islas Nava drops his ballot into a drop box at Neighborhood Health Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, in Sunnyside, Wash. Photo by Evan Abell/ Yakima Herald Republic”
Yakima County has historically had low voter turnout rates, especially in local races that happen in odd-numbered years. But turnout is even lower among the Latina, Latino and Latinx population.
Officials track Latino voter turnout by looking at voters with Spanish surnames. In a county that is more than 50% Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, just over 14% of returned ballots came from those Yakima County voters during August’s primary election.
Community leaders and advocates are aware of the issue. During the last decade, legal and legislative changes have sought more representative election districts and policies at the city and regional level, and Yakima County has a staff of bilingual elections specialists.
Mark Figueroa is a program coordinator for nonprofit Poder Latinx, a nonpartisan group that focuses on voter engagement. He noted challenges Spanish-speaking voters face, like unfamiliarity with ballots, but added that there can be apathy when residents see candidates that might not share their language or experiences.
It’s possible Sunnyside is seeing the opposite — excitement for Latino and Latina candidates who are running for almost every position on Sunnyside’s school board and City Council.
Three Latinos – Vazquez for City Council Position 5, Jorge Galvan for City Council Position 7 and Anna Saenz for school board’s District 4 – moved on from the 2023 primary. That election saw more voters with Spanish surnames registered and voting than comparable local elections in 2021 and 2019.
Those efforts have garnered attention beyond the city’s 16,000 residents. The United Farm Workers (UFW), which is working to unionize mushroom plant workers in Sunnyside, endorsed three Latino city council candidates. It’s the first time UFW has weighed in on a municipal election in Washington, according to spokesperson Antonio De Loera.
Sunnyside residents asked questions and shared concerns in Spanish at a Lower Yakima Valley Latinx Coalition listening session on July 13t, 2023. Photo by Jasper Kenzo Sundeen/ Yakima Herald Republic
Many see benefits to developing talented Latino and Latina leaders.
“We have needed more Hispanic representation on council,” said Sunnyside Mayor Dean Broersma.
Broersma said he sees well-educated, knowledgeable and committed leaders running for office in this election. He added that he’s encouraged by the number of Hispanic candidates running for office.
Fernandez said that diverse leaders can bring new levels of attention to various communities in Sunnyside, including the Latino and Latina community.
“Our community, as a whole, has been neglected, harmed, ignored. I feel like what our community really needed was just somebody to step out on a limb, just take a little bit of a risk,” Fernandez said. “We all see the potential in our people. And I think they deserve to be those CEOs. They deserve to be those legislators, they deserve to be those council people. They deserve to be school board members.”
The six candidates of the Lower Yakima Valley Latinx Coalition are not a total anomaly. School board candidates Yasmin Barrios, running for the District 1 seat, and Sandra Zesati, campaigning in District 5, as well as City Council District 3 candidate Vicky Frausto, join Vazquez, Galvan and Saenz.
There are other Latinas running for office – incumbent school board director Silvia Ramos is running against Barrios. And in Grandview, two groups of candidates have campaigned together, including a slate made up of incumbents.
However, the Lower Yakima Valley Latinx Coalition is unique due to its size, the candidates’ collaboration between different elected groups and its focus on education.
All six candidates were new to the elections process. They decided to run for their own reasons, drawing motivation from diverse personal experiences and ideas, but they were stepping into the unknown.
Fernandez said ELLA called on anyone interested in running for office in a social media post earlier this year. That call bore fruit at a meeting between potential candidates, former elected officials and potential candidates at a café in Sunnyside.
“We decided as soon as filing week came up in May for Yakima County, let’s throw it out there. Whoever is interested in running for public office here in Sunnyside in particular, we will train you on governance,” Fernandez said. “And that was our first step into what we’re doing now.”
People were nervous but excited, Fernandez recalled. ELLA had been working to form a coalition of organizations since November 2022, and it grew to include organizations like Poder Latinx, Progreso, Puget Sound Sage and Raíces.
Developing leadership is one of the reasons ELLA is active in the Lower Yakima Valley — not just for elections, but for ensuring a focus on a broad range of issues that affect the community, Fernandez said.
“We can see these emerging leaders sitting in very key positions where they get to help decide where resources go, where time goes, where energy goes and truly change people’s lives,” she said.
ELLA, like Poder Latinx, is nonpartisan. Members cannot endorse candidates, so they work to educate community members interested in running for office. The focus is on the gritty details of city government – from maps to budgets to the way a city council meet runs.
“What we’re doing is just sort of demystifying these processes and how government works for us lay folks,” Fernandez said.
“ELLA has been just truthfully a very supportive organization. They’ve never told us, ‘You guys can’t do this or you can do that,’” said Vazquez. “They’ve truthfully just always told us, ‘You guys have our support, you guys run your own campaigns, you guys do what feels best for you as individuals.”
Vazquez added that there’s been some confusion about the role ELLA plays, but emphasized that each candidate is running their own campaign. Fernandez said the only value ELLA looks for in candidates is a commitment to serve their community, not an ideological platform.
ELLA began hosting classes open to all new candidates once a week. Candidates would sit at tables covered with binders, pens and papers while they took a deep dive into the machinery of local government.
Fernandez said ELLA largely built its own curriculum for the classes and this was the pilot program.
“We wanted to get into the weeds of what is the city budget, what is the school board budget? What are the policies look like? What does the city municipal codes look like? What are their subcommittees? We didn’t want it to be just a general civic education class,” Fernandez said. “So that they could understand how each of these processes work.”
Frausto, Vazquez, Galvan, Barrios, Saenz and Zesati all say the classes have helped them prepare for the election and for office.
“If my community is going to vote me in it’s because I’m not going to go warm up a seat and say yes to everything, I’m going to make change. And in order for that to happen, we’ve received that education through ELLA,” Zesati said.
Barrios noted that it helped bridge critical gaps in knowledge of a complex election process, knowledge she might have never known otherwise.
“Just like there’s generational wealth that’s passed on, there’s generational information. And we have been left out – women, minorities, or people of color, but generational knowledge does not get passed down to us.” Barrios said.
Eduardo Gallo drops his ballot off at a drop box near the Sunnyside Post Office Tuesday Nov 8, 2022, In Sunnyside, Wash. “I’m excited,” Gallo said. “One of my desires when I came to this country was to be able to vote.” Photo by Evan Abell/ Yakima Herald Republic
As election day gets closer, attention is shifting toward campaigning. All six candidates are still working together, though, to host events, share resources and communicate their ideas and goals.
Barrios and Galvan both noted that collaboration can allow increased accountability down the road.
“If I’m not doing my job, I want them to speak up. I’ll be doing the same,” Galvan said.
Broersma, Sunnyside’s mayor, said other candidates have run similar campaigns the past.
“On a number of levels, that makes sense,” he said. “If they’re able to work together and address those issues, I don’t see that as a bad thing.”
Still, not all candidates share the same views. Each brings their own priorities to their campaign. Some, like Ramos, are running alone.
Ramos has served on school board for just over a year and has a lot of confidence in school staff. She’s advocating for mental health services for students and parent involvement. She also feels good about her own efforts to get re-elected.
“I’ve always run on my own,” she said.
Bengie Aguilar was the first Latina City Council member in Sunnyside when she won an election in 2001. She got involved because she wanted to serve her community, she said, and she saw opportunities to include more Spanish language services and connect city government to Sunnyside’s Latino community.
There was a lot of pushback and little support, she said.
“The whole experience was hard,” Aguilar said. “I was so stressed out.”
Aguilar served out her four-year term, but was often frustrated. Aguilar has stayed active in Yakima Valley politics through the years – including a run for a seat in the Legislature – and has seen change come little by little.
Over time, advocacy and education efforts by various groups on the ground carved out paths for Latino and Latina candidates.
Those efforts have inspired people like Chelsea Dimas, who ran for Sunnyside City Council two years ago.
“When you start seeing people who look like you in these roles, it’s like a domino effect,” Dimas said.
Still, Dimas said there was not as much support and advocacy – she had to build her own campaign and seek her own connections. She ended up losing the election. Now, she’s sharing her experiences and knowledge with current Latina candidates.
“I wish I had that support group to bounce back ideas,” Dimas said. “That’s why I joined these efforts, too, I wanted them to have the whole picture, as many perspectives as possible.”
Dimas said harsh and unkind online comments are challenging for candidates. It’s something Ramos has noticed in her campaign, and she raised concerns about people attacking her online.
The candidates of the Latinx Coalition agreed that social media can be draining during an election.
“It has been very emotional. And I can see why people don’t run for positions,” Zesati said. “So then there’s the social media piece, where people just kind of start, stirring the pot. It’s been hard.”
Five members of the Latinx Coalition are women of color and may face intersecting challenges from racism or sexism online or during their campaigns. Many expressed frustration and noted that their collaboration with one another was key to keeping their campaigns on track.
“We’re here for empowerment and encouraging each other. Because in our community, how many Latinos are run like this before?” Saenz said. “By collaborating and working together, we motivate each other through those hard times.”
While city council and school board seats are important, Fernandez sees them as only a part of a larger puzzle that ELLA is trying to solve.
Knowledgeable and capable officials are important, she said, but so are residents who understand their jobs and can hold them to their promises.
“(Engagement) looks like residents becoming active within those city systems,” Fernandez said. “When the people feel empowered to attend meetings and hold officials account accountable and ask specific questions and ask for their specific needs to be met.”
Encouraging engagement is a common thread in the election. Barrios and Ramos, who are running against each other, both want more parents to come to school board meetings and get involved. Residents are being urged to vote and register to vote across the board.
Meanwhile, many hope that their hard work also inspires the community at a deeper level.
“For us all to come together as females — that to me was empowering and motivating. Because each single one of the women here that’s running are very powerful, very passionate,” Saenz said. “I’ve been quiet about a lot of things many years. And (the other candidates) inspired me to run. If they did that for me, in my 40s, I could only imagine the power that we’re going to give to our youth.”
“We need representation now,” Frausto said. “This goes out to all those little girls … this is for them to hopefully change the narrative so they no longer have to say, ‘I hope one day,’ and they’ll change it to ‘I know one day.’
Jasper Kenzo Sundeen’s reporting for the Yakima Herald-Republic is possible with support from Report for America and community members through the Yakima Valley Community Fund. For information on republishing, email news@yakimaherald.com.
Posted October 18, 2023
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