Introduction

Chapter 1 begins by presenting an overview of the vicissitudes of descriptive representation in state legislatures for women and men from the four largest racial groups in the United States, from 1996 to 2015. The chapter then previews the book’s main finding: factors related to representation and candidate emergence, such as the relationship between district populations and descriptive representatives or political ambition, are shaped by race and gender simultaneously. To account for the persistence of underrepresentation among women and minorities, Chapter 1 then advances the intersectional model of electoral opportunity. The model accounts for external and internal, multilevel pressures that constrain and facilitate the realistic candidacy opportunities for white women, white men, men of color, and women of color. The chapter closes by discussing the necessity of studying Asian American women and men, and Latinas and Latinos, in order to better understand representation in a nation shaped by immigration and immigrant communities.

Empirical Strategies for Intersectional Research

Chapter 2 specifies how the book’s research design operationalizes intersectionality theory through its multi-method and multilevel data collection and analysis. This includes an expanded discussion of how using this framework to analyze Asian American women and men, and Latina and Latino candidates, facilitates new understandings of the relationship between race-gendered political processes and electoral opportunity within those communities, and more generally across other groups. The chapter then details the data collection processes for the book’s original datasets. The first is the Gender Race and Communities in Elections dataset, encompassing candidate and district demographic data for every state legislative general election from 1996 to 2015 in 49 states. Next, the American Leadership Survey of state legislators fielded in 2015 is described. And finally, the design for a multi-method case study of Asian American and Latina/o candidate emergence in Los Angeles County is presented.

Demographics Are (Men’s) Destiny

Chapter 4 takes long-standing debates over the “population–seats” relationship in a new direction by focusing on how the preponderance of white-majority districts and very small number of majority-minority districts limit the realistic array of electoral opportunities for Asian American women and men and Latina/os. The chapter also shows that the utility of majority-minority districts in advancing descriptive representation has been mischaracterized. Using the GRACE dataset, Chapter 4’s analysis shows that the relationship between a racial group’s population size in a district, and its likelihood of having a descriptive representative on the ballot or in office, is much more robust for men than women. To explain why, Chapter 4 uses interview data to demonstrate that within these rare districts that are widely perceived as nonwhite candidates’ primary opportunity for representation, the politics of recognition among political elites often disadvantage Asian American women and Latinas, relative to co-racial men.

Conclusion

The concluding chapter offers a review of the main arguments and findings of the book and situates them in the broader literatures on women of color in politics, immigrant incorporation, and descriptive representation. Immigrant communities’ recent and possible future roles in reshaping American electoral processes are also discussed. The chapter specifically details how the intersectional model of electoral opportunity can offer more expansive accounts of the forces shaping descriptive representation, due to its embrace of multidimensional and multilevel analyses. This includes a discussion of how the representation of other marginalized groups that are not centrally featured in the book, such as LGBTQ communities, working-class and low-income communities, and white women, can be studied in future research using the intersectional model’s approach. The chapter closes by looking forward to upcoming redistricting processes and reforms that may address the structural challenges to equitable electoral opportunities and representation raised in the book.

The Rest of the Pie

Chapter 5 underscores a key theme of this study: that understanding how one group’s opportunities are constrained requires simultaneously accounting for how those opportunities are facilitated for others. This chapter encompasses the first comprehensive analysis of the prospects for representation of Latina/os and Asian American women and men in predominantly white districts across the United States. Chapter 5 also provides an account of how partisanship interacts with race-gendered processes to create particular limits on the electoral opportunities for Asian American women and Latinas. The final section of the chapter addresses the phenomenon of the “crossover” candidate. Such a candidate is often characterized by pundits and some scholars as a Latina or Asian American woman running in a racial plurality or predominantly white district, on the basis of her presumed appeal to white voters.

Candidacy in Contexts

Chapter 3 shifts and expands the lenses that extant scholarship has often relied on to explain candidate emergence. The chapter moves away from a primary focus on individual-level concerns like ambition, to an interactive set of considerations that engage individual, household, group, and macro contexts. Using national survey and interview data, the results and analysis in Chapter 3 affirm the utility of integrating individual-level concerns and domestic relationships with group membership and positioning in explaining variations in candidate emergence. Key findings include lower levels of ambition relative to white men among all other groups in the study, including groups of men, and asymmetrical impacts on domestic structures and relationships stemming from the decision to run. The chapter also relies on a feminist conceptualization of self-recognition to argue that a strong sense of immigrant identity plays a complex role in advancing the likelihood of candidacy among Asian Americans and Latina/os.

“She Came out of Nowhere”

Chapter 7 shifts the case study of Los Angeles to group-level contexts and examines race-gendered processes of candidate development and emergence among Latina/o and Asian American political elites. Latina/os and Asian Americans as pan-ethnic groups occupy distinct positions within the electoral context of Los Angeles County. The chapter uses original qualitative data and interviews to show that the pressures associated with those positions interact with and shape the internal dynamics of candidate development within those communities in distinct ways. Latina/os’ informal but highly organized candidate emergence systems often actively exclude Latinas and limit their access to electoral opportunities that are otherwise available to Latinos. Asian Americans’ lack of political infrastructure contributes to an “entrepreneurial” field of candidates and a dearth of resources to facilitate the emergence of potential Asian American women candidates, in an electoral context marked by a high cost of entry.

If Not Here, Then Where?

Chapter 6 presents a case study of Asian American and Latina/o candidate emergence in Los Angeles County. The county is defined by large immigrant populations, strong coalitions of racial minorities who are Democrats, unions active in electoral politics, and an effective Latina/o political infrastructure focused on candidate development and support. Yet here, as in the rest of the country, white men’s choices about where and when to run appear relatively unconstrained while women and men from other racial groups are largely focused on running in a small number of select seats. The chapter offers new data on patterns of descriptive representation among white, African American and Asian American women and men, and Latina/os in Los Angeles County for the past two decades. The chapter also uses interviews to detail how Latinas, Latinos, and Asian American women are positioned in the political context and coalition politics of the county.