Arizona Latina and Former Phoenix Suns Executive Moves Up Court in Run for Congress

If 2022 will be remembered for anything in politics, it will most likely go down in history books as the year of the Republican Latina.

Earlier this year Mayra Flores made national headlines when she won a special election in Texas’s 34th district to fill the unexpired term of U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, making her the first Mexican born Latina to serve in U.S. Congress. The win also made her only the second Republican in history to represent the Rio Grande Valley.

Two other Latina Texan Republicans, Cassy Garcia in Laredo and Monica De La Cruz in McAllen are also running in congressional races in communities near the Mexican border. The combined power of Flores, Garcia and De La Cruz have prompted conservatives to call them the “triple threat.”

“They share the same advisers, have held campaign rallies and fund-raisers together and have knocked on doors side by side,” reported the New York Times on July 6. “They accuse the Democratic Party of taking Hispanic voters for granted and view themselves, as do their supporters, as the embodiment of the American dream: Ms. Flores often speaks of working alongside her parents as a teenager in the cotton fields of the Texas Panhandle.”

In another development, two Democratic Latina judges in Texas, Dale Carruthers of Terrell County and Cinderela Guevara of Presidio County—who both preside over cases in border communities declared an immigration invasion in the state—and announced they were defecting to the Republican Party.

However, the so-called ‘Republic of Texas’ isn’t the only place Republican Latinas are on the move.

Tanya Contreras Wheeless, a former banking association lobbyist and Phoenix Suns communications executive is running for Arizona’s 4th Congressional District. The second-generation Mexican American Latina learned the ins and outs about Congress while working as Deputy Chief of Staff for former U.S. Sen. Martha McSally.

Wheeless’ story is all-American, and something that should appeal to Republican voters in the upcoming primary election.

Having been born to a young mother, she grew up struggling. She started working at a local bakery at only 14 years old to help her family make ends meet. Her mother worked at K-Mart and her father was in construction. Both her grandfathers worked in blue collar jobs and one of her grandmothers was a nurse while the other worked on a farm.

But financial hardship didn’t stop Wheeless from getting good grades and getting an academic scholarship for college.

During her time in between university classes, the then aspiring student says she mopped floors and worked at a cash register. Eventually the cashier-college student went to law school, became a lawyer, a lobbyist and rose to become a powerful aide for a prominent Arizona U.S. Senator.

The cashier turned lawyer is now aiming to become the first Latina to represent Arizona in the United States House of Representatives…. (Excerpt from Star News Network)