"Hispanic in name only"

A brief history of the Congressional Hispanic Conference and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and what we need to know about them before the 118th Congress begins.

In May 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Miguel Estrada to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. Estrada had immigrated to the United States from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, when he was 17-years old. When he arrived, he barely spoke English, but went on to receive a BA from Columbia University, a JD from Harvard University, and to work as a Clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The American Bar Association said he was “well qualified,” which Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer of New York and Patrick Leahy of Vermont called the “gold standard” of judicial ratings. He had the support of Democrats including Ron Klain, who was Vice President Al Gore’s Chief of Staff before serving in that same role for President Joseph Biden.

Estrada passed through the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee, but Democratic Senators filibustered his nomination, despite the fact that he had the support of a majority of Senators, both Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats who filibustered Estrada’s nomination said he was too extreme, even though he testified that Roe v. Wade was settled law and that he wouldn’t seek to over turn it (this was an important issue at the time, since President George W. Bush had asked the Supreme Court to reconsider the law), he had worked for the U.S. Solicitor General’s office during the Clinton administration, and said his personal political views wouldn’t affect his jurisprudence. A leaked memo from the staff of Democratic Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois said that Estrada was a “dangerous” candidate because it was rumored that President Bush might nominate him to the U.S. Supreme Court, and as a Latino he would be difficult to oppose.

The Democratic filibuster was successful. Estrada’s nomination never came up for a vote in the Senate, and Estrada withdrew his name in September 2003, after more than two years in limbo. It was the first filibuster in U.S. history to successfully prevent a judicial nominee from becoming a federal judge.

Why have I told you Miguel Estrada’s story, you ask? Well, it was the controversy over Estrada’s nomination that led a group of Hispanic and “Lusitanic” Republican Senators—yes, I had to look up Lusitanic, which, according to the ever-trusty Wikipedia, refers to people who share the “linguistic and cultural traditions of the Portuguese-speaking nations, territories, and populations”—to form the “Congressional Hispanic Conference.” They included Henry Bonilla of Texas, Lincoln Díaz-Balart of Florida, Devin Nunes of California (surely, he was the one who advocated for the inclusion of Lusitanic people), and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed by this group, they wrote that the Democratic opposition to Estrada’s nomination was “just one manifestation of a pervasive and troubling trend whereby the advancement of minorities is only applauded when it reinforces liberal politics.” They continued, “To counter this trend and to allow for the positive advancement of Hispanics in the U.S., the Hispanic Republican members of Congress are announcing with this article the formation of the Congressional Hispanic Conference.”

Until 2003, the only group of elected officials in Congress who claimed to represent Hispanics was the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, established in 1976 by Democrats Herman Badillo of New York, Baltasar Corrada del Río of Puerto Rico, Eligio “Kika” de la Garza of Texas, Henry B. González of Texas, and Edward R. Roybal of California. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus formed an important part of the opposition to Miguel Estrada—one news article claimed that they “led” the opposition against him—even though 94 percent of Latinos said it was “important to have a Latino as a federal judge,” 88 percent said Estrada “should at least have received an up or down vote,” and 87 percent said he “should in fact have been confirmed by the Senate.”

The group of Hispanic (and Lusitanic) Republicans writing in the Wall Street Journal complained that “some Hispanic Democrats and leftist activist groups” saw Estrada as a “Hispanic in name only.”

And so you have it: since 2003, there have been two groups of Hispanics in Congress claiming to represent the “interests” of the Latino community, one Democrat and one Republican, one called a Caucus and the other called a Conference. In their op-ed, Bonilla, Diaz-Balart, Nunes, and Ros-Lehtinen wrote, “The new Hispanic Conference will promote policy outcomes that serve the best interests of Americans of Hispanic and Portuguese descent.” In 2003, these policy outcomes included the promotion of Free Trade in the Americas (oh, how the Republican Party has changed), tax reductions, support for small businesses, “support of faith based initiatives,” and “educational choice for all.”

Likewise, the website of the Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus today says:

The CHC addresses national and international issues and crafts policies that impact the Hispanic community. The function of the Caucus is to serve as a forum for the Hispanic Members of Congress to coalesce around a collective legislative agenda. The Caucus is dedicated to voicing and advancing, through the legislative process, issues affecting Hispanics in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

But when they say their group provides a “forum for the Hispanic Members of Congress to coalesce around a collective legislative agenda,” they mean a forum for Hispanic Democrats in Congress. The issues they focus on include immigration and the border, civil rights, housing rights, voting rights, diversity and inclusion. Like Republicans, they also focus on trade, commerce, healthcare, technology, infrastructure, and economic development. But I assume that, on at least some of these issues—probably many of them—their policy preferences are different than the policy preferences of members of the Congressional Hispanic Conference.

This means that you have two groups of Hispanic elected officials who are very different from one another, both claiming with equal sincerity to represent Hispanic interests. And this makes complete sense, since Hispanics can have very different interests. When one group of Hispanics defines their interests differently than another, it’s not that they’re working against their own interests, as many Latinos, especially Democrats, like to say about the Latinos who disagree with them. Rather, it’s that they define their interests differently.

The story of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Conference is important to understand as we head into 2023. In January, new members of the 118th Congress will get sworn in. As many have noted, they will include a record number of Latinos who are both Democrats and Republicans. As has been the case for the past twenty years, the Democrats will become members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Republicans will become members of the Congressional Hispanic Conference. In fact, Hispanic Republicans are routinely refused membership in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure if the same is true for Hispanic Democrats, that they are barred from joining the Congressional Hispanic Conference; I’m not even sure whether they’ve wanted to or not.

Here’s the thing you should keep in mind when you hear each and every one of them claiming that they will work to represent the interests of Latinos: they will claim to represent all Latinos, but, in fact, they will caucus with the members of their respective parties, and they will probably have in mind something very particular, and very different from one another, when they define what Latino interests are. It’s important to pay close attention to how both groups claim to represent Latinos, and what their definition of Latino interests is, in order to understand Latino politics in the broadest possible sense.

P.S.—I did not write this in order to weigh in on Miguel Estrada’s qualifications, but here’s a little editorializing—my general thoughts about such matters. Ethnic and racial politics is a complicated business. There is absolutely no guarantee that someone will share your politics just because you share their ethnicity/race. That’s a given. But I also think that just because someone who shares your race/ethnicity may not share your politics, that doesn’t mean they aren’t qualified to do the job for which they’re nominated.