Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez threw their weight behind Lee, as the campaign announced a new Latino-outreach partnership with Solidarity Strategies and BlackBrown partners

LOS ANGELES, CA — Rep. Barbara Lee’s campaign on Friday announced two powerful new endorsements from Los Angeles’s leading progressive City Councilmembers, Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez. 

The endorsements demonstrate a consolidation of Latino support behind Congresswoman Lee as the campaign launches the next phase of voter outreach, with new hires and an explicit focus on building support among Latino voters as one of its core constituencies. 

“Our campaign’s path to win has always run through communities of color and young progressive voters – a base that rarely tunes into mid-cycle races until a couple of months before election day,” said Robert Dempsey, Campaign Manager. “Polling tells us: Congresswoman Lee is the candidate most likely to benefit as voters begin to pay more attention.”

“Barbara Lee is a champion for working families who has dedicated her life to unapologetically fighting for justice,” said Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez. “Her courage, her lived experience, and her tireless commitment to fighting for the most vulnerable among us is what our communities need and deserve. I am proud to endorse her.”

“Barbara Lee has an unparalleled track record of fighting for working people,” said Councilmember Soto-Martínez. “Congresswoman Lee is the progressive champion Californians need in the Senate, and I am proud to endorse her candidacy.”

The endorsements come in tandem with a new collaboration with Solidarity Strategies and Black Brown Partners on the campaign’s voter outreach strategy. The partnership with some of the nation’s top bilingual mail and digital firms will center on focused voter outreach efforts with communities of color. 

“Latinos are not an afterthought on the Lee campaign – they are the center of our outreach strategy,” said Chuck Rocha, Founder of Solidarity Strategies. 

The campaign’s robust distributed organizing program – run by the experts who designed Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential grassroots field strategy – is ramping up, establishing a boots-on-the-ground presence in communities that are often overlooked by traditional political campaigns. 

Focus groups run by the campaign show that Congresswoman Lee’s lived experience, strong progressive values, and impressive legislative record make an extremely compelling case for her candidacy – performing particularly strongly among Latinos. The Congresswoman successfully won over virtually all Latino participants in the focus groups, received unanimous support among Black voters, and held a competitive edge among white Progressives, especially young voters. 

Hernandez and Soto-Martinez join a long list of prominent Latino leaders in politics and organizing who back Rep. Lee’s bid for the Senate, including legendary labor organizer Dolores Huerta, Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, California State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, California State Senators Anna Caballero, Caroline Menjivar, and Susan Eggman, San Diego Supervisor Nora Vargas, Mayor Ulises Cabrera, and some of the state’s foremost Latino organizations, including Chispa.