For decades, pundits and professors have noted the disconnect between the large and growing size of the Latino population and the small and generally politically impotent active Latino electorate. With the aim of generating a better understanding of how, when, and where Latino voters can achieve their potential, Ricardo Ramírez offers a focus on reactive mobilization and proactive mobilization, more simply understood as mobilization in response to a perceived political threat and/or in response to outreach by media or community organizations. Thus, for example, one can understand increased Latino politicization and participation in 2006 as reactive, in that it was reacting to the anti-immigrant Sensenbrenner Bill (HR 4437), and also as proactive, in that the massive immigration marches in protest of HR 4437 were encouraged by Spanish-language radio. Critiquing a simple “demography is destiny” message, Ramírez posits that taking into consideration both types of mobilization, as well as information about state-level variations in political context and the composition of the Latino population, generates a more nuanced understanding of sub-national Latino political power—e.g. why Latinos in California have experienced growth in descriptive representation while those in Texas have not.

A number of scholars have noted the massive defensive mobilization of the Latino community inspired by HR 4437, and that point is also well made here. In addition, Ramírez’s claim about the powerful role played by Spanish-language radio in organizing the 2006 immigration marches is consistent with recent randomized experiments that find Spanish-language radio advertisements are a powerful method of turning out Latino voters (Marisa Abrajano and Costas Panagopoulos, “Does Language Matter? The Impact of Spanish versus English-language GOTV Efforts on Latino Turnout,” American Politics Research 39 [2011]: 643–663; Costas Panagopoulos and Donald P. Green, “Spanish-language Radio Advertisements and Latino Voter Turnout in the 2006 Congressional Elections: Field Experimental Evidence,” Political Research Quarterly 64 [2011]: 588–599). While his focus on Spanish-language radio is compelling, however, it minimizes the well-known role of other agents, including family members, the Catholic Church, labor unions, and other community organizations, as well as new social media such as text messages and email. As noted by one of the community organizers interviewed by Kathy Rim (“Latino and Asian American Mobilization in the 2006 Immigration Protests,” Social Science Quarterly 90 [2009]: 703–721, p. 715), “[A] lot of people say it was the radio, but it was the first time that the radio was saying the same thing as the television station, the community organization, at the local church, and at your local labor union.”

Ramírez then turns to reactive mobilization, documenting with Latino National Survey and other data the effect of the 2006 marches on desire to naturalize. His major argument here is that the marches were catalysts capitalized upon by community organizations and Spanish-language media to launch the Ya Es Hora (YEH) citizenship campaign. Given the substantial barrier of navigating the bureaucratic process, the assistance of Latino civic organizations played a crucial role in helping eligible immigrants become U.S. citizens. Marchers in many cities chanted, “Hoy marchamos, mañana votamos” (Today we march, tomorrow we vote). Thus, the obvious (but unanswered) question is the degree to which the 2006 immigration marches and the YEH campaign actually moved Latinos to go to the polls and vote in 2006 and later elections. Instead, Ramírez revisits the massive effect of Proposition 187, an anti-immigrant ballot initiative approved by a large majority of Californians in November 1994. While eventually declared unconstitutional, Prop 187 transformed California politics and is partially responsible for the current domination of the state by the Democratic Party. This is nicely illustrated in a set of figures displaying rates of turnout among naturalized and native-born Latino citizens in California, breaking out the 1994–1996 cohort, in elections from 1996 to 2000 (p. 92–93). The degree to which HR 4437 inspired a similar pattern of turnout or partisanship is left unexplored. Within this discussion, Ramírez claims that there is “disagreement in the literature” about the effect of nativity on voting (p. 75), but this is better understood as an evolution, as documented by ongoing scholarship. While early research (1996–2001) on Latinos and Asian Americans found that naturalized citizens were less likely to participate in elections than were U.S.-born citizens, more recent work (2001–2014) finds that turnout among naturalized Latino and Asian Americans now regularly surpasses that of U.S.-born citizens (see Melissa R. Michelson and Lisa García Bedolla, “Mobilization by Different Means: Nativity and GOTV in the United States,” International Migration Review 48:3 [2014]: 710–27).

Ramírez next turns to a discussion of NALEO’s GOTV work as an example of proactive mobilization, briefly describing the group’s efforts from 2000–2010. Unfortunately, despite his tips-of-the-hat to the importance of randomized field experiments, he fails to mention the bulk of work done on the subject, suggesting that the manuscript was mostly written before 2006, neglecting more recent scholarship. Lisa García Bedolla and I present a robust analysis of the NALEO efforts conducted in California in 2006–2008 (see Lisa García Bedolla and Melissa R. Michelson, Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate Through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns, 2012). Most of those efforts failed to move significant numbers of targeted Latinos to the polls. Perhaps NALEO was more successful in earlier or later rounds, or in other geographic locations, but this book does not include much information about those efforts. Instead, Ramírez provides tidbits of information, such as, “There was a 3.7 percent turnout effect of live calls” in Las Vegas in 2008 (p. 116). Other recent scholarship will be more useful for those readers interested in randomized field experiments and GOTV work.

Overall, Mobilizing Opportunities is well worth reading and discussing. Ramírez raises provocative questions about the future of American politics and the role that Latino voters will play in various states. For example, he attributes the lack of Latino political power in Texas, despite a large population, to bloc voting by white Texans and to the lack of political threat, exemplified by the centrist stances on immigration and education of governors George W. Bush and Rick Perry (p. 138). The lack of political threat may logically predict fairly low political participation by Latinos in Texas, but does it also predict that they will possibly support the Republican Party if and when they do become mobilized to vote? Ramírez notes that Democrats are spending heavily on Latino registration efforts in Texas, hoping to use Latinos to turn the state purple (if not blue). The $20 million Obama spent to mobilize Latino voters in swing states in 2008 was a symbolic pittance. In contrast, because Democrats are currently pouring “tens of millions of dollars” (p. 139) into efforts to register and mobilize Latinos in Texas, then perhaps we will soon see Texas Democrats and Republicans mobilizing and fighting for the Latino vote.

There is a lot to like about this book. Ramírez presents clear arguments and data that emphasize the need to look at Latino politics at the sub-national level. His holistic approach to the subject pulls together a discussion of political threat (reactive mobilization), external (proactive) mobilization, and state context. This book is sure to be turned to in the coming years by all students of Latino politics, including scholars and practitioners, as we continue to see the United States, and the electorate, transformed by a growing Latino population.