A conversation with North Carolina State Rep. Ricky Hurtado

Robin Huang and Kelvin Doe recently sat down with North Carolina State Representative Ricky Hurtado from District 63 for an episode of GU Politics podcast Fly On The Wall. In partnership with On The Record, an excerpt of the interview has been published below as a part of Robin’s column, “North Carolina: The Nation’s Looking Glass.”

In 2020, Ricky Hurtado was the first Latinx Democrat to be elected to the North Carolina General Assembly. Outside of politics, Hurtado is a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and co-founder of LatinxEd, an education initiative helping first-generation college students and immigrant families break down barriers to higher education.

The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

FOTW: Before running for public office, you held a long career in education. You currently serve as a professor at the University of North Carolina, and founded LatinxEd to mentor first-generation college students. How has your role as an educator and mentor informed your worldview?

Hurtado: Mentorship has played such a key role in my life, and I’ve seen the transformational power that it can have in other people’s lives. Anyone in life will get to where they need to go with a really strong support system—that’s my story, and that’s the story of so many folks I’ve worked with. You need to find a village around you to catch you when you fall. Mentors were instrumental in my life, and helped guide me as I think about what it means to be Latino and how I can unapologetically hold that identity. I’m excited now that I’m in a position in politics, where I can continue advocating around issues of educational equity and make sure that everyone has the resources they need to succeed.

FOTW: What made you decide to jump into a career in politics in the first place?

Hurtado: I first voted in the 2008 election, when President Obama was on the ballot. I was honestly drowning in college and figuring out what my next step was in life as a first-generation student and a son of immigrants. I did not understand the implications of what it meant to elect President Obama into office. It wasn’t until later that I connected the dots with my story and realized how many challenges are not simply faced by individual families, but entire communities. Government has both helped advance people and held them back. Eventually, I got really interested in advocacy through public policy. I wanted to ensure our voices were heard as young people and community members. One day, I went to the General Assembly in Raleigh to advocate on behalf of the students I work for everyday, and I saw the reality of what it meant to be an elected official. Our stories were falling on deaf ears as first-generation students, students of color and children of immigrants. Until people with this lived experience were in these positions of power, nothing was going to change. As a result, I began to have a real interest in politics. The laws that are passed on the local, state and national levels will impact the futures of the students that I work with every day.

FOTW: As a newly-elected representative, how have you built connections with your constituents? How do you advocate for them in Raleigh?

Hurtado: Community connection is everything for me. People often feel like their elected officials are really far away. However, at the end of the day, I’m a community member living in the same circumstances that you are. While I alone can’t solve every problem, we as a community can begin to think about what systemic change can look like. Right now, my office is much more active than we typically would be due to COVID-19. Constituents have been reaching out to our office regularly to deal with challenges they face around health, unemployment, eviction, housing and a number of other issues. As a state representative, I have really limited staff—it’s my legislative aide and me. Nonetheless, we want constituents to know that there is a line of communication for them. We may not be able to solve every problem, but we at least can hear them out, try out what we can, and also point you in the right direction of other resources in the community. This is a little more of a radical approach than what other representatives take. Something is missing if you are missing a connection with the people on the ground—the people in the community that you are representing.

FOTW: In your opinion, what are the most important obstacles to accessing higher education for first-generation students and for immigrant families today?

Hurtado: Fundamentally, the cost of college is way too high. I work with students every day who are super motivated, inspiring and ready to be the next generation of leaders in our community. That doesn’t change the circumstances that they may have grown up in. There are working class folks who are still figuring out a way to keep food on the table and the lights on, and must pay for college on top of that. Students who are able to get access to college may find the four-year journey is tough in trying to pay for every semester. Some students may be working at a job or two on campus, and need to decide on how much time they devote to earning money versus studying. First-generation students from working class backgrounds have it more difficult when it comes to surviving and thriving in a college campus setting. We have to figure out how to lower the cost of college, or make it more affordable for families through higher subsidies or scholarships.

FOTW: Across the nation as well as in the North Carolina General Assembly, reopening schools during COVID-19 is an especially potent issue. What do you believe are the top priorities in reopening schools across the state?

Hurtado: In North Carolina, COVID-19 infection rates have continued to drop. Widespread following of health guidelines have allowed our communities to for once have hope that things will turn for the better. At this point, we have seen vaccinations move pretty smoothly. Every week, North Carolina is within the top ten in the country in terms of vaccines distributed, and number one in terms of people above 65 years of age who have gotten their vaccinations. North Carolina has some of the best equity data when it comes to collecting information around who’s getting the vaccine in terms of race and ethnicity. I’m sharing all this because these are really important foundations in order to be able to open schools in a proper way. We have been in a back-and-forth partisan battle on not if but how we reopen schools. For us, it was really important that we were reopening in a safe way that protected both students and families as well as educators. This is an ecosystem that we must think about critically; every part matters. We voted against a bill that Republicans introduced in the General Assembly because we thought that health standards weren’t what the CDC and our Department of Health and Human Services were recommending. This week, leaders from our legislative chambers and the Governor came together to find a bipartisan agreement that I happily voted for, which included science and health to reopen safely and continue following protocols that allow students to socially distance, wear masks, and have a plan in case we do have future outbreaks. This allows us to open if we need to, but pull back as well in an emergency. While there is light at the end of the tunnel, we’re still not out of this. It is really important to vaccinate all our teachers and navigate this week by week. We’re almost there. In North Carolina and for the entire nation, we’ve never felt as hopeful for things to slowly but surely get back to normal in the near future.

FOTW: North Carolina is a competitive swing state, notably with a Democratic governor but a Republican-controlled legislature. As a Democrat, how do you find common ground with your colleagues?

Hurtado: I won a very competitive race—it’s a very purple district, and one of the most competitive counties in North Carolina. We have to focus on the 80 percent of things that unites us. There is common ground around the challenges that we all face as a community. Being able to focus on those issues that unite us allows us to have a deeper conversation. Times are tough right now, with COVID-19, the rise in attention around racial injustice in America and the insurrection at the Capitol. Folks are traumatized, hurt and angry. I have tried not to paint generalizations, but meet people where they are and have conversations with them one-on-one. You’ll find folks much closer to where you are than you realize in terms of the issues you care about and how we go about solutions. However, there are still folks that are pretty far away from you also. It’s about having a feeling on when to lean in conversations and when to step away when it is not productive. I’ve found myself in both situations as an elected official. There have been really great conversations across the aisle that give me hope, but there have been a few other conversations—the minority for the most part—where extremists have a fundamentally different view of where we need to be going in this country that are anti-democratic and anti-American. Those sentiments are dangerous. We must be careful and keep extremists accountable, and think about what the future looks like and how we hold true the values that have created this country from the beginning. It’s a battle not over by any means. I’m navigating it week by week like the rest of the nation. It’s a challenging situation that we’re in. The first step in any healing process is acknowledgement. People are really looking for ways to move forward as a community.

FOTW: You are the first Latinx Democrat to be elected to the North Carolina General Assembly. Why do you think it took so long for a Latinx representative to be elected from the Democratic Party in North Carolina? How do you think the North Carolina Democratic Party is evolving?

Hurtado: I’ve learned that party politics is an incredibly risk-averse industry. People are looking for the path of least resistance to win; every election has such high stakes. The last few weeks have debunked prior assumptions. We saw what happened in Georgia with the mobilization of voters of color. There has been an expansion and focus on voters that we know are going to turn out on the issues we care about. I think it happened in North Carolina, where we’ve shattered the barrier and shown that a young, Latino candidate can win in a competitive race. We certainly got a lot of pushback, but folks respond to stories, values and issues regardless of who the candidate is. We were able to run a really competitive race that allowed us to see the uniqueness of our candidacy and the shared experiences of all of us. The one mistake folks make is that they focus too much on the candidate themselves and not the reality of the candidate—I’m really just a mirror of my community. When I speak to folks on issues, they’re really hearing about themselves and the community and what they are experiencing at the same time. The better we begin to understand it, the more successful we will be. I’m hopeful that while I’m the first, I certainly won’t be the last. I’m excited to work with young folks and other candidates who are interested in getting more involved in politics because representation truly does matter, and I think that will change the dynamics of how we think about who’s competitive and who’s important in the near future.

FOTW: Nationally, the GOP has made inroads with the Latinx community, from Florida to Nevada. How can Democrats connect with these same communities?

Hurtado: We need to debunk assumptions on who the Latinx community is and isn’t. Latinx is a really diverse and complicated identity. My parents don’t identify as Latinx, they identify as Salvadoreans. They are immigrants from a different country and they identify by their nationality. My wife is Mexican before she is Latina—that is her identity. It’s important to understand what gets lost in these details when you see the headlines around the percentage that Trump gained in Florida or in Texas or in other places, and really complicating that dynamic. It’s important to zoom in a little bit in the Latinx community and understand people’s voting patterns a little bit better. How are Cubans and Venezeulans voting versus Mexicans and Central Americans? Are there commonalities, are there differences? You do see trends and patterns here. In states that have a greater Latinx community, the Democratic party has started to understand this dynamic and really target folks with culturally competent messaging. Being Mexican is very different from being Puerto Rican and Salvadorean. Being able to understand those nuances will allow us to connect with these communities in a much more meaningful way. I’m hopeful that we begin to do some of that micro-targeting here in North Carolina and tailor our messaging instead of painting a broad brush in terms of who we are as a community.

FOTW: In the most previous election cycle, the Senate race in North Carolina was a toss-up for a long time between Cal Cunningham and incumbent Thom Tillis. Why was the North Carolina Senate race such a close election in 2020, and how do you think the Democratic Party can be successful in winning the Senate in 2022?

Hurtado: We saw an incredibly tight race in North Carolina. Democrats haven’t won statewide for a presidential candidate since Obama in 2008, and we’ve come close every time. While we continue to lose as a party, the margins continue to get bigger and bigger in rural areas, and we are leaning a lot on urban municipalities, where many Democrats are moving to and live. Now, some of the battlegrounds are some of the suburbs outside the municipalities. I think that is a part of what we have to answer in 2022 and beyond—not just running up the margin in urban areas, but decreasing the winning margin for Republicans in rural areas. Us Democrats have to learn how to have a race-class narrative that really connects our issues together. At the end of the day, when I talk to working-class white folks, they are facing the exact same issues that our working-class communities of color are facing as well. Why is it that we have dramatically different voting patterns? I think it’s the most masterful marketing scheme of the century in terms of convincing voters to vote against their interests. We have to make an effort to build a multiracial coalition of voters that are voting for their interests for the first time, as opposed to against it. I think if we can figure this out in battlegrounds like Alamance county, we can see success again in North Carolina.

Listen to the entire conversation with Representative Ricky Hurtado on Soundcloud, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can also find out more about Fly On The Wall here.