Lupe Valdez, The First Latina Woman To Run For Texas

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Lupe Valdez, the former Dallas City Police Chief, became the first Latina woman to win the Democratic Party's nomination for the governor of the state of Texas, as well as being the first openly gay woman to achieve this distinction..

Despite the fact that 40 percent of the population of the border state is made up of the Latino population, the chances that Valdez can reach the governorship seem not to be in his favor, since since 1990 a Democratic candidate has not won the state elections.

The rival to beat for Valdez is the current Governor Greg Abbott, who after winning the Republican nomination will try to keep the chair again in the upcoming elections on November 6.

As featured on The Huffington Post's online site, the two candidates could not be further apart in terms of the spectrums of the population they represent. On the one hand, Lupe comes as a progressive woman, lesbian and with Latin roots. For her part, Abbott is a man of a political center, white, straight, businessman and the son of a former governor.

Valdez, who was born in 1947 in the city of San Antonio and in 2004 became the only Latina in the country who was chief of police. The daughter of farmworkers and seven other siblings, throughout her life she has had to fight against discrimination in every way.

Do you want to see my wounds? … The first four or five years (as chief of police) were extremely difficult. I received emails and faxes with hate messages. Many good men tried to stop me,”revealed the Democratic candidate to the media about how difficult it has been for her to break barriers as a gay Latino woman.