Gloria Romero, candidate for California Lieutenant Governor, spoke at the Madera County Republican Women’s meeting last week.
A former California State Senator, Romero is a nationally recognized leader on education reform and school choice. She was first elected to the State Senate in 2001, and represented East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. She became the first woman to serve as Senate Majority Leader in California history.
Prior to the Senate, Romero served as Majority Whip in the California State Assembly, on the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees, and on the Los Angeles Elected Charter Reform Commission.
Romero has been a consistent advocate for charter schools, parental empowerment, and merit-based education reform, believing education to be the central civil rights issue of our time.
Her father worked on the railroads, and her mother had only a sixth-grade education. Romero knew education was important, and earned a PhD from the University of California. She served as a professor at Cal State Los Angeles, where she was named Professor Emeritus.
Now, Romero is running for Lt. Governor of California to continue her legacy of fighting for quality education reform, as well as to reduce our state’s cost of living so that Californians can restore opportunity, affordability, and the California Dream.
In 2024, she switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, because she felt the Democratic Party had abandoned working-class families and removed parental rights.
“Most people have no idea what a lieutenant governor does,” she said in her speech Thursday to the Republican Women. She explained that most people think this position is just one that takes over if something happens to the governor.
“But there’s a lot more to the Lieutenant Governor’s position,” she said. “The Lieutenant Governor is the President of the Senate, which is the body that confirms all the nominations that come from the governor. What else does the lieutenant governor do? The lieutenant governor serves on every board of education in California, our universities, our Cal States, and our community colleges. And this is the part that inspires me. My mother had a sixth-grade level of education. I have a PhD. I understand that education is what lifts us out of poverty. It’s what makes us equal in America.”
Romero is Hispanic, and she talked about the Latino community and the need for them to become more proficient and educated.
“Here in Madera, when we take a look at the Latino community, only 38 percent of Latino children in the Madera schools today read at basic levels of proficiency. In math, it’s only 28 percent. That is not acceptable anywhere,” she said.
One educator she has admired was Jaime Escalante, made famous by the movie Stand and Deliver.
“He inspired us never to accept that kids, because of their skin color, or ethnicity, or the language they speak, what zip code they come from, cannot do the work. Escalante worked with Latino children in East LA and he showed that when you bring about teachers with the strong credentials, we can reform the system of education. There’s a lot to reform,” she said.
“Jaime Escalante really emphasized, not only to the students, but to the parents as well. First thing I’m going to do is to connect the systems,” she said. “TK-12 through higher education. We have a problem now. We are admitting students into the University of California, one of the most prestigious systems in the world. And the kids can’t do math. The professors have had to basically dumb down the curriculum.
“It can’t happen. We will never compete with China or India or Russia or the world. They are being pushed through the system.”
She went on to explain that Escalante challenged us never to give in to the soft bigotry of low expectations. He didn’t care if these kids were poor. He didn’t care if they came from East LA. He didn’t care that many of them lived right off the freeway. Many of them had just single mother homes, but he said, “You’re in my classroom. You’re going to work. You’re going to learn.”
This is the kind of reform Romero is trying to make as lieutenant governor of the State of California. She has been fighting for school choice for years, which put her at odds with the Democratic Party. She explained that the executive boards of the teachers’ unions are what is causing the education systems to fail.
“We’ll find every reform possible,” she said. “Even from the teaching of phonics in our school system. When we talk about the low reading levels, it’s not because a kid is dumb. You have to have the right system of teaching. Phonics is internationally recognized. It’s probably what most of us grew up learning. You’ve got to have phonics.”
Though her main passion is education, she explained that the role of Lieutenant Governor is more than just one facet.
“As lieutenant governor, you’re basically looking at the chief ambassador for the economy of California. And we know today that California is number one in homelessness in the nation. We’re number one in poverty in the nation. We’re number one in taxation in the nation. And the governor walks around saying, we are the fourth largest economy in the world,” she said. “Because you’re large doesn’t mean you are good. We have a lot to change in California. This was not the California we grew up with. We are losing families, especially young people, out of California. Home ownership is basically the key to entry into the middle class. If any of you follow Central American or Latin American politics, these are one-party rules. We talk about banana republics, we’ve had one party rule in California for 16 years.”
Romero is hopeful to team up with Steve Hilton as lieutenant governor and governor of California. Hilton is a Republican who has been campaigning throughout California, touting his plans to make California a better state.
“And that’s what you’re going to find with the Steve Hilton and Gloria Romero. But you’ve got to have the Gloria with the Steve,” she said.
She explained that Hilton is relatively new in politics, so he will need someone like her to be his teammate.
“He’s a reformer,” she joked. “But I know where the bodies are buried. I know the rules. In the Bible, we have images of leadership, whether it’s Proverbs or Jeremiah or other chapters. There are many places in the Bible that talk about good leaders. They look out for the people.
Romero grew up in a home that was solid Democrat, a very Catholic home.
“We had pictures of the Pope and John F. Kennedy,” she said.
Today, she believes there are no more Democrats. The party she knew has changed through the years, and she believes she did not leave the Democratic Party. She believes the party left her.
“They are socialist communists today,” she said, with disappointment. “So, I began to leave the party. I worked in Sacramento, and when I left in 2010, I was considered to be an honorary Republican back then. It was mostly because I believed in school choice.”
Romero speaks for much of the Latino community, who stand for faith, family, and freedom.
“It’s a very patriotic community,” she said. “We want fairness in immigration. We support law and order.”
She wants to get the message out in Spanish, so the Latino community will be more informed about her messages to them.
Romero stated that the Central Valley is overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking, and the backbone that holds up California, noting the vast community of Hispanics in this area, and the conservative nature of the Central Valley.
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The Madera Tribune does not endorse candidates. This article is not an endorsement, but information about a candidate who has come to our community to speak to Maderans.