The first African-American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate recently gave a boost to the chances of the Senate getting its first Hispanic member in 28 years.
Carol Moseley-Braun of Chicago, who wants to get back into electoral politics after losing her Senate seat in the 1998 elections, now dreams of being president. She said she's giving up on the idea of a rematch against Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., in the 2004 elections.
Moseley-Braun's departure from a crowded field of Democratic candidates wanting to challenge Fitzgerald (who is seen as vulnerable because of the way he's upset members of the Republican establishment in Illinois) turns Gery Chico, a Chicago attorney of Mexican descent, into a serious candidate.
If Chico -- who bills himself as "the only Hispanic in the nation running for the U.S. Senate" -- wins, he would be the first to serve in Capitol Hill's upper chamber since former Sen. Joseph Montoya, D-N.M., whose two-term stint ended in 1977.
Chico also would be the only Hispanic elected to the Senate outside of New Mexico, which has had three senators of Mexican descent -- Republican Octaviono Lozano from 1928-29 and Democrat Dennis Chavez from 1935-62 were the others.
Moseley-Braun was Illinois' front-runner because of name recognition. Her single Senate term made her the darling of women's activists nationwide. She also was a state legislator in Illinois and county recorder in Chicago, who after leaving the Senate served as ambassador to New Zealand under President Bill Clinton.
With Moseley-Braun out of the way, Chico becomes a more credible contender because of his experience with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
He served as Daley's chief of staff, and Daley later chose him as president of the Chicago Board of Education. Chico's reform work in the mid-1990s with now-Philadelphia schools chief Paul Vallas helped the Chicago Public Schools shake off the "worst in America" label affixed by Reagan-era Education Secretary William Bennett.
Since leaving the Chicago schools, Chico, 46, has been a partner in the law firm of Altheimer & Gray, although early in 2002 he became the first candidate to officially declare for the 2004 race.
He faces competition in the form of investment banker Blair Hull, a multimillionaire with a social conscience who has provided financial backing to various Democrats.
Hull has the kind of funding to compete with millionaire Fitzgerald and the millions of dollars of his own money he pumped into his 1998 campaign and is likely to do again in 2004. It is for this reason that Daley himself privately urged Hull to consider running for the Senate.
But Chico's campaign is not broke. Last month, the campaign fund surpassed the $1 million mark, and Chico said he expects to have up to $8 million with which to wage a Senate campaign.
That's more than any other would-be Senate candidate has in his campaign coffers, and Chico actually reached the million-dollar mark in contributions quicker than any other U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois political history.
While Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes and Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas also are considering the Senate, both have posts giving them security and local political influence. Hynes, who is 35, is an ambitious sort from a politically connected Chicago family who will make the Democratic primary interesting.
The other likely candidate for the post is Barack Obama, a Chicago Democrat in the Illinois Senate. But his past candidacies outside the Legislature (he unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., in 2000) drew little interest from African-American voters.
Perhaps Obama's Ivy League education (Columbia University and Harvard Law School) make him seem a little esoteric to those voters with more of a black activist world view or to those who see politics as being about controlling the awarding of contracts for picking up the trash.
For now, Hull and Hynes are competitors, although Chico is trying to match the Democrats who owe them favors by gaining the support of groups across the United States who want to see more political representation than the 22 Hispanics currently in the House of Representatives.
Although that is an all-time high, when one considers Hispanics make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, 22 out of 435 representatives and 100 senators is pathetic.
The New America Alliance, a business coalition, is helping Chico make connections in places like Miami, Houston and New York with people who want to see a Hispanic presence in the Senate.
It is through their efforts and the ties Chico made as a Daley ally in Democratic politics that Chico's campaign includes support of officials such as California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros.
But as a sign that Chico can also play in the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago politics, his supporters include 12 current or former aldermen, including Edward Burke, one of Chicago's ultimate old-school pols whose political organization rivals that of Daley.
Chico has one other factor that could benefit him in a general election against Fitzgerald -- his wife, Sunny. She is a regional representative for the U.S. Education Department, and she considers herself to be a Republican.
If handled right, that fact could result in a sufficient portion of the Illinois GOP regulars, who have come to despise Fitzgerald, deciding they could "cross over" and support Chico.
(Hispanidad is a weekly column about the culture of Hispanics and Latinos in the United States, written by Greg Tejeda, a third-generation Mexican-American. Suggestions for topics can be made to [email protected])
