WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden had a question.
“Is it true?” Biden asked Sen. Alex Padilla, referring to the roughly 25% of U.S. students in kindergarten through high school who are Latino. Padilla said the question came as he was waiting with the president in a back room of a library in Culver City, California, before an event in February.
It was exactly the kind of opening Padilla hoped to get with the Democratic president. Biden weighed his reelection campaign, executive actions on immigration and what to do about a southern border marked by historic numbers of illegal crossings during his time in office.
Padilla wanted to ensure that Biden also took into account the potential of the country’s immigrants. “Mr. President, do you know what I call them, those students?” Padilla recalled saying, “It’s the workforce of tomorrow.”
It was just one of many times that Padilla, who at 52 is now California’s senior senator, has risen to the occasion — from private moments with the president to regular calls with top White House staff and sometimes outspoken criticism . – to leave his mark on the Democratic Party’s approach to immigration.
Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants and the first Latino to represent his state in the Senate, has emerged as a persistent force at a time when Democrats are increasingly focused on border security and the country’s attitude toward immigrants is uncertain is.
Illegal immigration is seen as a growing political crisis for Democrats after authorities both at the border and in cities across the country have struggled to accommodate recent increases. The party may also lose favor with Hispanic voters amid disillusionment with Biden. But Padilla, in a series of interviews with The Associated Press, expressed a deep reserve of optimism about his party’s ability to win support from and for immigrant communities.
“Don’t be afraid, don’t hesitate to talk about immigration. Lean into it,” Padilla said. “Because number one is the morally right thing to do. Number two: it is the key to the strength, security and future of our country.”
The senator has tried to rally his fellow Democrats to that position, even as immigration politics grow increasingly toxic. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has said immigrants entering the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of the country” and accused Biden of allowing a “massacre” at the southern border. Biden, meanwhile, has moved to the right at times, both on policies and the language he is willing to use, as illegal border crossings become a vulnerability for his re-election bid.
That was the case when Biden, during his State of the Union address, engaged in an unscripted conversation with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, and a Venezuelan man accused of killing a nursing student in Georgia, an “illegal man ” mentioned. ‘ – a term that is anathema to immigration rights advocates.
After the speech, Padilla discussed the moment with Rep. Tony Cárdenas in the apartment they share in Washington. The men, who have known each other since their earliest days in Los Angeles politics, are now a politically odd couple while away from their families in California. With his height, Padilla towers over many in the Capitol and usually speaks in measured tones, while Cárdenas, who is shorter in stature, is known for bringing himself to tears during debates and worrying that his voice sometimes carries over into the crowd. adjacent apartment.
“I usually talk in 20 sentences by the time he gets his one or two sentences,” Cárdenas said. “He’ll say pretty much what I say, but much calmer, much more methodical.”
And that evening, Cárdenas said, their conversation turned to how they wanted politicians to avoid labeling migrants as “illegals” because it robbed them of their dignity.
Padilla told him he would call the White House.
“He’s the kind of person who steps in and steps up, and you know, he deals with it tactically,” Cárdenas said.
It’s a difficult role to play, especially as Democrats seek to shore up a border security weakness in the battleground states that will determine control of the White House and Congress.
Even in California, Republicans are emboldened on immigration as they try to reassert its relevance to the entire state, said Mark Meuser, an attorney who is fighting Padilla’s 2022 run for Senate and California secretary of state. 2018 lost. He argued that top California Democrats like Padilla are “driving hard to the extreme edges of their party.”
Padilla has urged the president and his fellow Democrats to stick to their position that border enforcement measures should be accompanied by reforms for immigrants already in the country. Padilla expressed frustration over how some Democrats, including Biden, did not keep immigration reforms, such as a path to citizenship for those who entered the U.S. illegally as children, a top priority during a negotiation earlier this year with Senate Republicans over border security .
During those negotiations, Padilla emerged as the leader of the left-wing opposition in Congress, pulling Biden aside for one-on-one meetings to warn of the changes, speaking forcefully at rallies advocating for immigrant rights and organizing a telephone conversation with the top of the White House. aides and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Padilla, along with four other Democratic-leaning senators, ultimately voted against advancing the package, ensuring its failure as Republicans also rejected it.
“He’s a lonely voice, but he’s a courageous voice in the Senate,” said Vanessa Cardenas, who heads the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice.
It’s been a meteoric rise for Padilla, who is just beginning his fourth year in Congress, and it’s no surprise to those who have known him since his days in California politics.
“What he has always been brilliant at is being able to navigate the space, bring people together and be a constructive player,” said John A. Pérez, speaker of the California Assembly while Padilla was in the Senate. “With Alex you don’t get criticism without an alternative.”
Padilla was also known as a determined and effective negotiator. While serving on the Los Angeles City Council, Padilla negotiated a statewide agreement with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will send more money to local governments. What was supposed to be a one-day meeting turned into a ten-day negotiation in Sacramento. Padilla quickly depleted his wardrobe and resorted to washing his socks in a sink, said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who worked with Padilla on the League of Cities. They got the compromises they wanted.
With Padilla involved in the immigration policy debate, Madrid said that “politics has never demanded more border security and immigration reform less.”
But he admitted he could be proven wrong: “If there is anyone in Washington who could make this deal happen, it would be Alex Padilla.”
And for Padilla, this is the reason he entered politics in the first place.
When he graduated with an engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994, it was a dream come true for his parents: his father was a short-order cook and his mother was a cleaner. But he soon became involved in politics when the state’s attention turned to Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot measure passed to deny education, health care and other non-emergency services to immigrants who entered the country illegally.
It was branded by supporters as the Save Our State Initiative. Padilla still remembers the ads for the campaign.
“Trying to blame the hardest working people for a down economy was insulting and shameful,” he said.
Now he sees parallels between California in the 1990s, which passed the ballot measure only to have it invalidated in federal court, and the broader country today: changing demographics, economic uncertainty and political opportunists scapegoating immigrants.
Yet it also spurred the state’s Latinos to get politically involved. For Padilla, it is no coincidence that California, the state with the most immigrants, now has the largest economy in the country and is a stronghold for Democrats.
One of Padilla’s first jobs in politics was running the state Assembly campaign for Cárdenas, who is about a decade older than Padilla and grew up a few blocks away from him in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Pacoima.
The campaign began as an unlikely bid for two political neophytes trying to get the area to elect a Latino for the first time. Cárdenas recalled that Padilla had worked so hard on the campaign trail that one night he fell asleep standing up during questioning.
“We were literally laughed out of people’s offices at the time,” Padilla said. Still, Cárdenas won.
Padilla went on to work for the late Senator Dianne Feinstein and managed other local campaigns until he ran for Los Angeles City Council at age 26. Padilla quickly rose through the ranks of the council, becoming president at the age of 28. Days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Padilla oversaw emergency response while then-Mayor James Hahn was stranded across the country in Washington. Padilla gave interviews in both English and Spanish to reassure the city’s population.
But before he was elected to his first office, he faced skepticism about his age. Cárdenas said his bid for the council seat only got off the ground when Padilla ended a debate with a phrase often used in the San Fernando Valley hardscrabble community: “No te rajes.” Do not give up.