Historic Wins: More Latinos Head to the Senate, but House Sees Setbacks
More data continues to emerge from the 2024 election. The latest buzz is the historic gains by Latinos in the Senate on both sides of the aisle. While there is more representation for our diverse community in the Senate, the House of Representatives is a different story.
Latinos lost three seats in the House of Representatives after a contentious and bitter battle for control of the federal government. Here are some of the new Latino members of the Senate and those who lost their seats in the House of Representatives.
Senator-elect Ruben Gallego (D-AZ)
Senator-elect Gallego was in a tight race for a Senate seat in Arizona once held by Kyrsten Sinema. Sinema won her seat in the previous election as a Democrat, then spent her time in the Senate as an outlier, angering Democratic supporters and colleagues.
Senator-elect Gallego defeated his opponent, Kari Lake, a former TV personality who lost her bid for governor of Arizona in 2022. Since 2015, Senator-elect Gallego has represented the 7th Congressional District, defeating three challengers and then, in 2022, defeating a Republican challenger for the newly drawn 3rd Congressional District.
His victory in the Senate is a testament to Arizona voters’ trust in the military veteran.
Senator-elect Bernie Moreno (R-OH)
Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Senator-elect Moreno is a businessman without political experience. That didn’t stop him from throwing his name in the ring to unseat incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH). With the victory, Senator-elect Moreno is the first Latino senator elected to represent Ohio.
His campaign was a closely watched challenge to an incumbent. During the campaign, Senator-elect Moreno’s team had to field questions and allegations of wage theft and gender—and age-based discrimination. Senator-elect Moreno settled multiple wage theft allegations before starting his campaign for the Senate and was ordered to pay $400,000 to two employees.
Representative Mike Garcia (R-CA 27th District)
Rep. Garcia first won his seat in the House of Representatives in 2020, when it was still the 25th Congressional District, defeating Christy Smith. In 2022, Rep. Garcia and Smith faced off again for the seat and secured re-election. In 2023, the district was redrawn to be California’s 27th Congressional District.
That is when Democratic challenger and former NASA Chief of Staff George Whitesides. When the votes were counted, Representative-elect Whitesides defeated Rep. Garcia by three points. The 25th Congressional District has long been a reliably Republican stronghold before the redistricting.
Representative Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY 4th District)
Rep. D’Esposito won his seat in the House of Representatives in 2022, defeating former Hempstead town supervisor Laura Gillen to represent New York’s 4th Congressional District. His 2022 victory was an upset and has been credited to the coattails of gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin.
In the 2024 election, Rep. D’Esposito and Gillen were once again in a race against each other. This time, Representative-elect Gillen clinched victory, replicating the same margin that Rep. D’Esposito won with 51 percent of the vote.
Representative Lori Chavez DeRemer (R-OR 5th District)
Rep. Chavez DeRemer was another Republican who won in the 2022 election. She was the first Republican woman to be elected to represent Oregon in the House of Representatives, but it seems that the voters were not satisfied with her work.
Rep. Chavez DeRemer was defeated by two points by Representative-elect Janelle Bynum, who will now represent Oregon’s 5th Congressional District.
Despite a number of Latinos swinging to vote for President-elect Donald Trump in the 2024 election, a majority of the Latinos representing their communities and us in Congress are Democrats. As for the Latinos who lost their races in the House of Representatives, each was a Republican who got replaced with a Democrat.
