Mayor for a Minute
Yvette Quiroga: Mendota’s first Latina mayor
Fifteen years ago, my college roommate became her city’s first female Latina mayor. It was a life-long dream fulfilled. But it was short-lived. What she went through both immediately before she became mayor and what she has done since then have made me proud.
I helped Yvette go door-to-door in the months before the election. She had a list of every registered voter in her town and she visited every single one of them. She had just returned home after obtaining two masters degrees from Sacramento State in public administration and public policy when she ran for city council. She had planned on running since high school (where she was second in her class). Yvette campaigned after work every night and on weekends for several months.
Mendota is a small, rural town in the Central Valley of California where the majority of residents are farm workers. When I met Yvette, I thought that Mendota was like my father’s rural community in Hawaii where my grandparents were farm laborers. With dirt roads, barefoot children, wooden shacks, and outhouses. I was surprised to find paved roads and modern housing in Mendota. But there were large fields in the area full of laborers working under harsh conditions.
On election night in 2001, preliminary results were provided over the phone. Yvette had an early…
