Arkansas' first Latina legislator brings education background to table
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Diana Gonzales Worthen. Photo: Alex Golden/Axios
Arkansas' only majority-Hispanic House district is now being represented by the state's first Latina legislator.
What they're saying: "I'm the first but I won't be the last," Democratic Rep. Diana Gonzales Worthen, who won her Springdale seat in November on her fourth bid for public office, told Axios in a wide-ranging interview.
The intrigue: House District 9 was also the only seat to flip from Republican to Democratic in the legislature, which is overwhelmingly Republican.
How it happened: "We thought we had it," Gonzales Worthen said of her 2022 run for the seat when she lost by 109 votes. This time around in a rematch with former republican Rep. DeAnna Hodges, her campaign identified 377 supporters who didn't vote and went back to learn why they didn't turn out.
- They found that most of them were first-time voters including new citizens who weren't familiar with the voting process, like that open times for polling places are inconsistent.
- Her campaign reached out to inform voters on how to vote and created bilingual information cards, which she found were helpful to many voters, not solely Spanish speakers.
Background: Addressing gaps is not new for the legislator, who is an educator by profession and began teaching biology to students speaking English as a second language at Rogers High School in 1996. She said the area wasn't prepared for the increase in Latin American immigrants.
Zoom in: Gonzales Worthen became a resource for Hispanic students, who often had language and transportation barriers. Her classroom doubled as a mini library with encyclopedias students could take home.
- She remembers when the scholarship coordinator providing information on applying to college skipped the ESL classes, assuming those students wouldn't be going to college. Gonzales Worthen explained that the students were learning English and still deserved the same information. Years later, the same scholarship coordinator thanked her.
- "Sometimes it does take time, but eventually people will come around, and I have a strong belief in people," she said. "Maybe at the time she didn't know, but I'm going to treat her with respect and give her the best knowledge that I can and try to help her in the process because ultimately we're both here for the students."
State of play: Gonzales Worthen said she wants to focus on policies that can help working families and strengthen education and schools. Some potential policy changes include:
- Increasing pay for school staff like nurses, bus drivers and paraprofessionals.
- Addressing the shortage of special education and multilingual teachers plus nurse educators.
- Affordable childcare and increasing access to preschool.
- Mental health issues like requiring school resource officers to receive mental health training.
- Accessible dental care.
Zoom out: Gonzales Worthen co-founded two NWA nonprofits, the Hispanic Women's Organization of Arkansas which encourages civic engagement and provides scholarships, plus OneCommunity which largely focuses on education-related initiatives like child literacy.