AOC doesn’t represent the Hispanic community: Rep Mayra Flores
Rep. Mayra Flores hits back at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and sounds off on the Biden administration’s role in the southern border crisis on ‘The Ingraham Angle.’
Amid a number of notable Republican victories involving minority candidates and shifting voting trends in the United States, the liberal media has sounded the alarm on a new perceived political emergence: White supremacy and far-right extremism among Black and Hispanic conservatives.
On Wednesday, The New York Times published a piece headlined "The Rise of the Far-Right Latina," referencing Mayra Flores, the first female Mexican-born member of the House, and two other Republican Latinas running for office, Monica De La Cruz and Cassy Garcia.
The piece argued that Flores flipped her seat in Texas from blue to red by "shunning moderates" while "embracing the far right."
"More Marjorie Taylor Greene than Kay Bailey Hutchison," is how national politics writer Jennifer Medina described her.
Rep. Mayra Flores is interviewed outside the Capitol after being sworn in on June 21, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
After winning a special election last month in the state's 34th Congressional District, she will run for a full term in November against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez as part of a new map that favors him. This is the first time the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas will send a Hispanic Republican to Congress in 10 years. Liberal media outlets have frequently criticized the Republican Party for lacking diversity, but now appear to worry that Hispanic voters are shifting conservative.
For her charge of labeling Flores far-right, Medina’s evidence included a prior instance in which the Texas representative called for President Biden’s impeachment, calling the Democratic Party the "greatest threat America faces," supporting Donald Trump’s conservative policies, and tweeting QAnon hashtags. In the latter example, Flores has repeatedly denied the hashtags were meant as support for the conspiracy theory group, but rather draw attention to and denounce it. These tweets have also been deleted amid scrutiny. Flores also failed to answer a reporter’s question about whether Biden was a legitimately elected president.
Medina’s evidence for labeling De La Cruz and Garcia as "far-right" was that they are all "pro-Trump."
In comparison, The New York Times offered a much comfier deep-dive into another Latina politician, Democratic Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez, in 2018 following her surprise Democratic primary victory in New York.
The piece described Ocasio-Cortez as a "political rock star" who never failed to speak her mind or stick up for her values. Notably, The Times’ concern with radical political philosophy did not extend to the avowed Democratic socialist, who currently holds a 97% progressive score on the Congressional voting records database ProgressivePunch.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAS ABANDONED THE HISPANIC COMMUNITY TO FOCUS ON WHITE LIBERALS: MAYRA FLORES
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a rally on immigration outside the U.S. Capitol, Dec. 7, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Speaking with Fox News Digital, Media Research Center Latino Director Jorge Bonilla slammed the Times’ piece on Flores as an "ethnic disqualification piece."
"We never heard about the ‘rise of the socialist Latina’ when AOC was elected because this is the left’s presumed norm. Since the Latino identity is inextricably linked to left-wing politics, the piece serves to identify the Texas Trio to the rest of the media as race traitors and therefore non-entities within the communities they aim to represent in Congress," Bonilla said.
He went on to add that the media presumes Blacks, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities are "permanent members of the Democrats’ coalition" to be engaged on "race-adjacent matters."
But, The Times’ piece on "far-right" Latinas is far from the first time in recent memory that liberal media outlets have grown concerned about conservative political extremism among minority groups.
Another notable Republican, Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, also faced intense criticism from media outlets when she was elected alongside Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2021. Sears is the first Black female elected to Virginia statewide office, a Jamaican immigrant, and a Marine Corps veteran, but that did not stop outlets from tying her to the far-right.
VIRGINIA LT. GOV. WINSOME SEARS: 'TOO MANY OF OUR POLITICAL LEADERS' USE RACE 'TO DIVIDE US'
Winsome Sears celebrates winning the race for lieutenant governor during an election night party in Chantilly Virginia, Nov. 3, 2021. (Reuters/Elizabeth Frantz)
In November, liberal commentator Michael Eric Dyson called Sears a "Black mouth" for White supremacy.
"You are doing what all political figures must do: make choices," Dyson said on MSNBC. "The problem is here they want White supremacy by ventriloquist effect. There is a Black mouth moving but a White idea… running on the runway of the tongue of a figure who justifies and legitimates the White supremacist practices," Dyson said.
As Dyson spoke, "The Reidout" show displayed the chyron, "Republicans deploy ‘get out of racism’ card in VA."
Former ESPN host Jemele Hill, just days earlier, also credited White supremacy for Sears’ victory.
A week later, following her historic win, ABC News’ FiveThirtyEight pointed to prejudice and racist White voters for Sears' success, publishing an article on why "racist White voters favor Black Republicans."
The authors, Stanford University Assistant Professor Hakeem Jefferson and University of California Irvine Professor Micheal Tessler, criticized those dismissing "Republican racism" because of Sears’ election win.
"But supporting a Black candidate hardly precludes voters from harboring racist beliefs and motivations. Republicans are increasingly more likely than Democrats to hold prejudiced views of minorities, so Black Republicans like Sears often draw especially strong support from [W]hite Americans with otherwise anti-Black views simply because they draw most of their support from Republican voters," Jefferson and Tesler wrote.
Former GOP California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder also faced similar comments on the campaign trail, with The Los Angeles Times proclaiming that Elder was the "Black face" of White Supremacy.
Larry Elder sits in his hotel room in San Francisco, California, on July 14, 2021. (Nina Riggio/The San Francisco Chronicle)
Outside of minority conservative politicians, the media has also repeatedly hyped concerns about Black and Hispanic Americans moving to the Republican Party. Some have been outright confused as to why these groups would choose to be conservative.
Perhaps one of the most blatant examples came from ABC’s "The View," when co-host Sunny Hostin referred to Black Republicans as an "oxymoron" on May 6.
Guest co-host Lindsey Granger said there were "many conservative values" she held that she would like to talk about.
"Are you a Republican?" Hostin asked Granger, to which she confirmed she was.
"I feel like it's an oxymoron, a Black Republican," Hostin said, interrupting her.
"Why? Your friend right here is a Republican," Granger shot back, referring to Ana Navarro, who identifies as a Republican, although she's now a diehard Democratic supporter and even worked for Biden's 2020 campaign. Hostin later said she did "not understand" Black Republicans or Latino Republicans.
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According to April polling by Quinnipiac University, Biden's approval among Hispanic voters sits at just 26%. That same poll found approval with White voters at 31% and Black voters at 63%. When it comes to the most urgent issues facing the country today, a plurality of Latino voters said inflation was their biggest concern at 31%.
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