Jeremy Baca, son of Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Joe Baca, has lost yet another race. I’m sure that his pops will put him up to run for something else out in the Inland Empire next election season if not another run for the Colton City Council. Maybe Jeremy will run for the Water District and come up with a cute slogan like “Clean up the Caca with Jeremy Baca.” Perhaps one of my readers will have some other ideas, but I think that this whole saga of the Baca family points to a larger problem within the Latino leadership circle. One would think that Joe Baca would know how to groom leaders, but it doesn’t seem to be happening with his son.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Michaelr // Nov 5, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Asking Joe Baca to groom a leader would be like asking George W. Bush to say something remotely intelligent. It’s not something that’s a part of their repertoire. How can you teach someone, something you know absolutely nothing about? Leadership lessons from Joe Baca? There are already too many ineffectual, incompetent, self-serving Latino politicians feeding off the public trough. The City of Colton just dodged a bullet here.
2 theKaiser // Nov 5, 2008 at 7:48 pm
The city of Colton may have spared itself, but the Congressional 43rd district just screwed itself again. Not that the Republican choice was much better. Citizens in Ontario, Fontana, Bloomington, Colton, and Rialto are really going to feel the tax dollar squeeze over the next two years. Higher unemployment, lower school budgets, and more violent crime will all make their presence known. All those industries and businesses that targeted the Inland Empire as a possible location have altered their strategies because Joe Baca was absolutely clueless in how to persuade them, or even get involved. That’s working Joe Baca for you.
3 electricityNow // Nov 5, 2008 at 8:20 pm
We had to babysit this thirty year old child at Southern California Edison for Frank. I don’t know what was dumber, Jeremy, or the tasks we had to create for him. If the father is anything like the son, these people are complete morons. Dumb as rocks. Just goes to show you, you don’t have to be intelligent to get elected.
4 wendy carrillo // Nov 6, 2008 at 11:42 am
what a sad day it is when potential latino leaders are quoted as “dumb as rocks”. not to discredit anyone, but i have been asking this for a long time… who is responsible for training and looking at new Latino talent? The Congressional Hispanic Caucus? Hispanas Organized for Political Equality? Who is chosen? the kids of current electeds? what hope is there with our people?
5 Michaelr // Nov 6, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Latino culture is largely divided by social class, religious beliefs, ethnic superficiality, and contradictory family values. Latino men are further hampered by the whole concept of machismos, and the need to express themselves in this manner to anytime, anywhere. All this has created sub-cultures within sub-cultures here in the United States. Because we are a fractured ethnic community, White America has been able to easily repress us politically, socially, and economically. Look what Black America risked to make that leap into the U.S. cultural mainstream. We haven’t even started to do that. And we don’t have the political leadership to even put us on the path to this reality.
You would think this reality would produce political leaders. But it hasn’t. The vast majority of Latino political leaders are self-serving, corrupt, and extremely superficial.
However, there are some bright spots. On the Federal level, we have Raul Grijalva from Arizona, Hilda Solis, and Linda Sanchez from California. Neither one of them are orators, but they have all used their pens to make their presence known. On a State level we still have Gloria Romero performing against type, and locally there’s Gloria Molina. None of them have achieved what Henry B. Gonzalez was able to do on Capitol Hill, but there’s still hope.
Our political organizations such as MALDEF and UCLR are just self-serving enterprises designed to enrich the individuals receiving salaries from these organizations. They have a long way to go before they can be mentioned in the same breath as NAACP, the Urban League, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
6 theKaiser // Nov 6, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Michaelr…you forget to mention the coconut mentality that is prevalent amongst the evangelical Latinos and the Third World mentality that exists amongst the recent migrants. And then you have the various hybrid mindsets of all those sub-cultural Latinos. All this behavior clashes when the Latino community attempts to mobilize politically in a singular direction. This is why we are at the bottom always looking up. Some of our most vibrant potential leaders are in prison, where White America likes to keep all the real minority political talent. 98% of the Latino politicians are bagman for Corporate America. The Latino politicians you mentioned are the few who have worked their way through the cracks.
7 Johnny Dilznik // Dec 7, 2008 at 9:19 pm
White America isn’t your enemy your so-called leaders are. Villarraigosa? Nunez? Baca? MOLINA? You think she is the answer? Wow you are fools.
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