Is the Democratic Party losing one of its most important voting bases?

Women of color are the fastest growing voting bloc in the country, and are more likely than white women to vote blue. But just weeks before the California midterm elections, they are “disillusioned” as ever with a party that “lacks vision,” according to Gabby Trejo, an organizer and executive director of Sacramento Area Congregations Together.

“The polarization in the political realm has really impacted how people perceive whether they can impact an election or not,” she said, “and whether their voices are going to be taken into account or not.” .

The women Trejo works with certainly feel a sense of urgency going into the election, but “they’re not hearing that same sense of urgency from candidates.”

Trejo works with low income families on the brink of eviction or who are newly evicted.

“A person $19 short of rent is now homeless,” she said. “We are seeing a lack of vision around how people are addressing these issues.”.

Trejo joined four other progressive women of color earlier this month at a forum organized by The Sacramento Bee and She The People president Aimee Allison to discuss the state of the Democratic Party before the Nov. 8 election.

Democratic Party politics are “same old-same old,” said May Lee, a social worker and former director of Asian Resources, Inc., who attended the forum, and said that representation of women of color on the ballot is simply not enough to rally voters.

Democratic candidates “can’t ride on emotions” she said. “You’ve got to be able to say, ‘These are issues I can deal with, and this is my platform.’ They have to ride on solutions.”

The women that Lee works with are “newly minted citizens … just trying to survive,” she said. In California, half of Asian American voters are naturalized permanent residents.

The forum took place the same week that the Los Angeles Times released an audio clip of Latino members of the Los Angeles City Council making racist and homophobic comments in a meeting about redistricting.

Lorreen Pryor, president and CEO of Black Youth Leadership Project in Sacramento, had one word to describe how her community is feeling going into the midterms, especially after hearing how powerful political players — and other politicians of color — spoke about Black people in a meeting about redistricting: Frustrated.

“We’ve been trying to tell people that these things are happening, and they’re directing their ire towards Black people,” she said. “ Nobody wanted to listen.”

“I’m hearing people feeling like they’re being ignored.”

It doesn’t help that Democratic campaigns are “paternalistic,” she said, “like everybody else knows what’s best for us.” Pryor and fellow community members are also suspicious of Democrats who court the Black vote disingenuously.

“Certain Democrats come into our churches and ask for our vote, and tell us all the good things they’re going to do, and then they get into office and they forget what they said. That happens over and over and over again.”

Issues of importance to Black Democrats — namely, reparations, reparative justice, and police reform — are addressed in campaigns, Prior said, but not often enough addressed once politicians are elected.

The party cannot afford to lose Black women voters such as Pryor. Long called the “backbone of the Democratic Party,” Black women are consistently the most likely to vote blue, and if Black women become disillusioned as a voting bloc, the party will certainly suffer for it.

Communities that Pryor, Trejo, and Lee represent are less concerned about abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and more concerned with housing, immigration reform, and health care.

“We just don’t have enough [housing],” said Lee. Democratic solutions are “a drop in the bucket” compared to years of redlining. “We’ve been hammering at this issue for the last 20 years.”

“We need to look at issues through the lens of equity,” Trejo said.

“I am hungry to hear a strategy [about the homelessness crisis] that is universal but also acknowledges that certain communities are over-represented.”

In Sacramento, some Democratic politicians are passing muster, and approaching policy through that equity lens.

Lee spoke highly of State Senate Candidate Dave Jones, who’s running in a contentious — and expensive — race against fellow Democrat and City Councilwoman Angelique Ashby to represent the 8th District.

“He really walks the talk,” Lee said.

Pryor spoke highly of Oak Park’s Caity Maple, a young progressive who’s running for a seat on the City Council and whose policies many of the young, Black voters Pryor works with were also fond of.

Trejo said that City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela, who survived a recall attempt after Land Park and East Sacramento residents couldn’t rally enough signatures for a petition, “understands her constituents” and “takes the time to understand” issues she’s not already familiar with.

And that’s what these women of color want to see acknowledged: that the communities themselves have the solutions to the problems they experience.

“Do elected officials actually believe that the people closest to pain have the solutions?” Trejo asked. “Because at this point, I don’t know that they really do.”

This story was originally published October 28, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Is the Democratic Party losing one of its most important voting bases?."