The new Latino South
April 4, 2024
On Super Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina, Gabe Esparza watched the primary election results roll in alongside his father, a man who once worked in agricultural fields and then shattered ceilings when he became the first Mexican American to earn a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan. They were surrounded by family, waiting — and hoping — that the young Esparza would take a decisive step in the race for state treasurer and toward potentially making history as the first Latino elected for statewide office in North Carolina.
Like his dad, Esparza, 51, is a pioneer. As an operations manager at the Walt Disney Company, his first job out of Stanford University, he started a Latino affinity group that still exists today. He went on to obtain an MBA from Harvard Business School and hold leadership positions in global business development at American Express and other companies. More recently, Esparza held a senior role in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of International Trade.
As a fully bilingual Democrat, Esparza embodies the new South, a traditional Republican stronghold that is being reshaped — culturally, economically, and politically — by its rapidly growing Latino population. The region proved itself crucial to Democrats in 2020, when Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992, thanks in part to Latino voters. The shift underscores the South’s crucial role in the country’s political future, with Latino political participation taking center stage.
In North Carolina, where Esparza settled with his wife and children six years ago, the number of eligible Latino voters has more than doubled in recent years, from 160,000 in 2010 to 388,000 in 2022, according to Nathan Dollar, director of Carolina Demography, a unit of population scientists housed within the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Latinos have been the fastest-growing demographic in the state since the 1990s and they are expected to account for 14% of the state’s population by 2050, making the North Carolina of the future very different from the North Carolina of the past.