In California Race, a Latina Democrat Carries Hopes of Her Party and People

*All eyes are on Anamda Renteria in California. She’s put together an impressive campaign. VL

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times

SANGER, Calif. — “Ya es tiempo — you have a voice,” Amanda Renteria, a Democratic candidate for Congress, declared one recent Saturday morning at a park in this little city southeast of Fresno. There was no need to translate the Spanish. The park was festooned with “Amanda Renteria para el Congreso” signs.

As she told her local-girl-makes-good story — daughter of onetime migrant fruit pickers, degrees from Stanford and Harvard, a job in Washington as a senator’s chief of staff — men in ranchero hats smiled with pride. Women choked back tears. Candidates like her, they said, do not come around often in places like this.

“We have been waiting, waiting,” said Diana Rodriquez, a retired teacher whose parents also worked the fields here in the agriculturally rich Central Valley, in a largely Hispanic congressional district.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo courtesy amandarenteria.com]

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