Last year, the historically red IL-14 flipped blue as Lauren Underwood was elected to Congress. Underwood is the youngest black woman ever elected to Congress. Now, Woodstock resident Catalina Lauf is challenging her. If elected, Lauf would set her own milestone as the youngest Hispanic woman ever elected to Congress.
Lauf, who is running as a Republican, has already received quite a bit of media attention. She has appeared on Fox and Friends and has been featured in several magazines such as the New York Post.
Suzanne Chod, associate professor of political science, said that this media coverage of Lauf is unsurprising.
“We think about when there have been women of color running in the Republican Party and they’re like unicorns,” said Chod. “For a young Hispanic woman running for (the) Republican Party, because it is so rare, we’re seeing a lot of media attention.”
The question is not why is the public seeing so much attention directed toward Lauf. Rather, the focus is what Lauf running on the Republican ballot means for the Party.
“A lot of it has to do with (how) we’ve seen this focus on the ‘Squad’ and on young women of color in the Democratic Party,” said Chod. “Catalina Lauf could be, for lack of a better parallel, like the AOC of a Republican ‘Squad.’ But she has to win first and it’s going to be an uphill battle.”
Lauf has no interest in comparisons between AOC and herself. Instead, Lauf intends to focus her campaign on the basis of “America first.” Although the daughter of a Guatemalan immigrant, Lauf puts her status as an American first.
“I’m an American first. And so I’m going to put the country and the ideals ahead of everything,” said Lauf. “That doesn’t mean I can’t be Guatemalan. That doesn’t mean I can’t embrace my heritage. It just means that I fundamentally love my country and I am not going to apologize for that.”
However, the connotation of the phrase “American first” evokes troubling images of nationalism. Chod calls this phrasing a “slippery slope.”
Lauf’s use of the phrase is what she claims is the left’s identity politics. She says this is when the left tells her she should vote Democratic because of her Hispanic heritage. Lauf claims this rhetoric comes from the stereotypes of voters.
But identity politics is a tool both Republicans and Democrats use. In fact, identity politics became a defining characteristic of the 2016 election.
Chod said the employment of the identity politics on both sides was used to mitigate the identity crisis of the nation, with the central questions surrounding the idea of “What does it mean to be an American?”
“Identity politics, essentially, is (that) there are certain characteristics that you are defined by and that makes you more or less American,” said Chod. “That was the central dividing thing in the 2016 election.”
This idea of what characteristics makes one American comes from then-candidate Donald Trump.
“For Catalina Lauf, she’s not wrong in saying, ‘look, because I’m Hispanic, I should be a Democrat,’” said Chod. “I wouldn’t argue that the left tells her that. But that is what we tend to see when we look at the demographic breakdown of who votes for which party.”
The demographics for each party are distinct. In March of 2018, Pew Research Center found that nearly 56% of females in the electorate lean Democratic while 44% of the male electorate lean Republican.
Furthermore, the breakdown of the demographics based on race is even more drastic. Nearly 84% of the Black or African American electorate lean Democratic. Meanwhile, 63% of Hispanic voters lean Democratic and 65% of registered Asian American voters identify with the Democratic Party.
But to say that it is only the left that engages in identity politics would be wrong. In fact, Chod argued that by Lauf putting her American identity first, she is playing identity politics.
“She’s choosing how to identify herself in a way (that) the Republican Party identifies who is an American,” said Chod. “It’s not necessarily wrong for her to play into it. There are arguments on both sides that you see strictly in political science. This is where we are right now. And we were ushered into this in 2015. And so it makes perfect sense to me that this is the card she plays.”
As a Republican, Lauf remains true to the conservative values, including those on immigration.
Lauf proudly speaks of her family’s “legal immigrant” status. As such, she is a strong proponent of legal immigration but believes there needs to be a different way to encourage individuals to enter the country.
Like the president, Lauf believes that some of these immigrants are criminals and negatively effecting the drug crisis. For Lauf, the only way to deal with these issues, along with the larger immigration crisis, is to close the country’s borders. Yet, Lauf argues the immigration discussion is hard to have in Congress because it has become such a partisan issue.
Lauf claims that Congress, currently controlled by the Democrats, “don’t want to have safe and secure borders.” Instead, she claims Democrats are incentivizing illegal immigration.
Chod concedes that while Lauf is not completely wrong, she’s not entirely correct, either. Part of the current immigration crisis stems from Clinton administration policies.
There is a correlation between the strengthening of punishment and those who come over illegally during the Clinton administration. This pushed the discourse that the Democratic Party was “the party of open borders.”
“But that was also in the mid to late 1990s,” said Chod. “I don’t know what else now that we’ve seen the Democrats have passed … that has directly resulted in an increase in undocumented people coming across the border.”
However, the Democratic Party is more open to a pathway to citizenship and asylum than the Republican Party. Since her time in Congress, Underwood has demonstrated the left’s stance on immigration, speaking out on immigration policies and proposals presented by the Trump administration.
With two such different candidates, the election will be tough for both politicians. While young voters like those at NCC find their political voice and consider who to vote for, Lauf encourages them to read the Constitution and “come up with their own philosophy.”
“I encourage students to really read (the Constitution) and to really understand all aspects of a policy,” said Lauf. “Delve deeper into a policy issue and then come up with your own stance on it.”
Lauf also encourages voters to find common ground outside of politics to focus on the things that really matter.
“Politics has become such a contentious topic,” said Lauf. “People should not be losing friendships because they disagree on politics, that’s not the American spirit that we know. We should be finding common ground in other areas of life … to connect. There is so much more that we need to focus on instead of just focusing on politics.”
