Objective. This article uses a political empowerment approach to explore the effect that descriptive representation in legislatures has on levels of political alienation among Latinos. Methods. Using data from the 1997 Tomás Rivera Policy Institute post-election survey carried out in California and Texas, supplemented with data on the ethnicity of legislators serving each respondent, we test this political empowerment thesis. Results. The presence of Latino representatives in the state assembly, state senate, and/or U.S. House is associated with lower levels of political alienation among Latino constituents. The effect is modest, and we find that other factors-demographic, political, and ethnic-specific-also exert powerful influences on levels of political alienation among Latinos. Conclusions. Although finding modest evidence for the political empowerment thesis, descriptive representation alone is not a panacea for creating politically engaged personas among Latinos.

In this article, we compare the 1996 turnout among cohorts of naturalized and native-born Latino citizens, looking for between-group differences endogenous to recent anti-immigrant rhetoric and events in California. We argue that immigrants naturalizing in a politically charged environment represent a self-selected subsample of all voters, identifying individuals who feel strohgly about the political issues at hand, and who seek enfranchisement as an act of political expression. We suggest that newly naturalized citizens living in California made exactly these choices, which differentiate them from native-born citizens, longer-term naturalized citizens, and Latinos in other states. Using the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute's 1997 three-state survey of citizen attitudes, validated using original registrars-of-voters data, we estimate multivariate logit models of individual turnout of Latino citizens in each state for the 1996 national election. The data support our hypotheses. Newly naturalized Latinos in California behave differently from other Latino citizens of California, and the patterns of difference are not replicated in either Florida or Texas. Turnout was higher among those who naturalized in the politically hostile climate of California in the early 1990s. Our results suggest important political effects of wedge-issue politics that target Latino immigrants.

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This study adds to our knowledge of the naturalization process by considering the impact of political orientations in shaping the pursuit of U.S. citizenship among contemporary Latino and Latina immigrants. Copyright (c) 2006 Southwestern Social Science Association.