NOTE: Ask a Mexican was the name of a column that Gustavo Arellano, the writer of this piece, wrote for the alternative weekly, the OC Weekly, before he started writing for the LA Times.
Column: Larry Elder is the most Latino candidate in California's recall. It won't help him
by Gustavo Arellano
There's a knee-jerk familiarity with Elder any time I hear him babble. His swagger and respectability politics are what my blue-collar cousins say six Tecates into a carne asada Sunday.
When I read on Elder’s campaign website life lessons from his parents — like “Hard work wins. You get out of life what you put into it. You cannot control the outcome, but you are 100% in control of the effort” — I did a double take. Did Elder say it, or was it my dad, whose name — Lorenzo — is the Spanish version of Elder’s given name, Laurence?
It's an origin story that Elder shares with me and multitudes of Latinos in the Golden State. Elder's campaign knows this, so did a huge swing for Latinos last week. He held a video conference to boast about how polls then showed Latinos were almost evenly split on the recall. Joining him was former California Senate President Pro Tem Gloria Romero, a Democrat whose influence among Latinos is about as much as the third-string quarterback for the Las Vegas Raiders.
Column: Larry Elder is the most Latino candidate in California's recall. It won't help him
by Gustavo Arellano
There's a knee-jerk familiarity with Elder any time I hear him babble. His swagger and respectability politics are what my blue-collar cousins say six Tecates into a carne asada Sunday.
When I read on Elder’s campaign website life lessons from his parents — like “Hard work wins. You get out of life what you put into it. You cannot control the outcome, but you are 100% in control of the effort” — I did a double take. Did Elder say it, or was it my dad, whose name — Lorenzo — is the Spanish version of Elder’s given name, Laurence?
It's an origin story that Elder shares with me and multitudes of Latinos in the Golden State. Elder's campaign knows this, so did a huge swing for Latinos last week. He held a video conference to boast about how polls then showed Latinos were almost evenly split on the recall. Joining him was former California Senate President Pro Tem Gloria Romero, a Democrat whose influence among Latinos is about as much as the third-string quarterback for the Las Vegas Raiders.
