Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, candidate for the Senate, at a barbecue joint in Texas last week
“Capturing these young voters of color is critical for progressives in Texas and beyond—but such a development cannot be assumed.” That assessment comes from an April 2018 article in the Prospect, co-authored by University of Southern California professor Manuel Pastor and Texas social-justice advocate Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez.
As a candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in today’s Texas primary, Tzintzún Ramirez is now putting that prediction to a test. The very well-funded MJ Hegar—an Air Force veteran and former Republican who almost unseated a longtime GOP House member in 2018, and who is the preferred candidate of Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee—has a lock on first place. But Tzintzún Ramirez is one of three or four candidates battling it out for second. And second place matters, because, unless Hegar manages to pull more than 50 percent of the vote tomorrow (highly unlikely in a field of 12 candidates), she will face a runoff against the number-two finisher on May 29.
The only candidate in that second-place hunt whose candidacy is rooted in young voters of color is Tzintzún Ramirez, who just after the 2016 election of Donald Trump founded Jolt, an organization to bring Texas’s young Latinos into the political process. Even before she founded the group, Tzintzún Ramirez was being hailed as one of the most effective and charismatic young progressive organizers in the nation. Writing in In These Times, former New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse characterized her as “whip smart, a born organizer and an inspiring speaker.”
Tzintzún Ramirez first came to public attention as the director of the Workers Defense Project, an organization to improve conditions for the state’s construction workers, who had the highest death-on-the-job rate in the nation. Taking the helm of the group while still a senior at the University of Texas, Tzintzún Ramirez quickly put the state’s horrendous safety record in the public eye, with such events as displays outside governmental offices that lined up the number of work boots that all the workers killed in the past year would have worn. In time, the Austin City Council enacted ordinances—such as requiring water and rest breaks—that were previously unheard of in fiercely anti-worker Texas. She also got Apple and other companies to provide safety training and higher wages to the workers putting up their buildings.
At Jolt, Tzintzún Ramirez proved to be an equally innovative organizer, holding a range of cultural events—music and dance in particular—in which Latino teens could both celebrate their heritage and their generation and find an entry point, far from that of any old guard, into Texas politics. Nearly one million Latinos turn 18 every year, she and Pastor wrote in their Prospect article, and Tzintzún Ramirez was working to make sure they could have the greatest possible impact on American politics.
“Every now and then, you meet someone and say, ‘My God, this person has tremendous potential.’ Cristina is such a person,” says Pastor. In Austin, by focusing on worker health and safety, “she found a way that construction unions and day laborers, who often have conflicts with each other, could come together. At Jolt, she realized that younger Latinos did not feel connected to traditional Hispanic politics and could be mobilized in a very different way.”
Tzintzún Ramirez proved to be an innovative organizer, holding a range of cultural events in which Latino teens could both celebrate their heritage and their generation and find an entry point into Texas politics.
Tzintzún Ramirez’s work drew the attention of some key staffers from Beto O’Rourke’s ambitious 2016 U.S. Senate campaign against Ted Cruz. They encouraged her to challenge Republican Senator John Cornyn when he was up for re-election in 2020. Like Bernie Sanders, whose electoral support also appears strongest among younger Latinos, Tzintzún Ramirez advocates a distinctly progressive agenda, including a Green New Deal and Medicare for All. (Texas has the highest rate of uninsured citizens of any state.)
As such, she presented the Democratic Senate leadership with a clear choice. At a time when the major Texas cities were turning various shades of blue, and when Latino voter participation was rising steeply in-state, they could back Tzintzún Ramirez in the hope that she could bring the state’s “sleeping giant”—the roughly 40 percent of the population that’s Latino—to the polls. Or they could back Hegar, a centrist white candidate who’d come over from Republican ranks, who might not be able to mobilize the Latino vote but just might win enough Anglo crossovers to defeat Cornyn. Schumer quickly opted for the latter.
Tzintzún Ramirez has the support of a range of progressive organizations, including the Communications Workers of America, the Working Families Party, and the Center for Popular Democracy, as well as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Joaquin Castro (D-TX). In her race for second place, her leading opponents are state Senator Royce West of Dallas and Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards, who each has a base of support in their respective cities. Former Congressman Chris Bell of Houston is also a factor.
While Tzintzún Ramirez has seen her polling inch upward, she’s one of five Latinos seeking the seat, and the entire contest hasn’t drawn much attention around the state, save for Hegar’s ad campaign. As Schumer’s anointed candidate, Hegar has raised vastly more money than her rivals. This is something that’s been replicated across the country; as progressives focused on the presidential primary, Schumer has had a relatively free hand to select the centrist, largely inoffensive candidates he’ll use to try to flip the Senate.
If Tzintzún Ramirez is to squeak into second, she may do it on Sanders’s coattails. A mid-February poll from the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston shows her to be the clear favorite of Sanders supporters, with 42 percent of their backing against Hegar’s 12 percent. A May runoff between Hegar and Tzintzún Ramirez would be a clear test pitting two visions and two strategies for the future of Democratic politics against each other, and opening a window on the future of the Lone Star State.
