The count is starting to climb.
Two Latinas now represent New Jersey in Congress. U.S. Rep. Nellie Pou (D-9th) took office in January 2025, and U.S. Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-11th) followed in 2026. In Trenton, Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz (D-Newark) is the highest-ranking Latina legislator in state history.
But the gap is still wide.
Latinos make up nearly a quarter of the state’s population, but Latinas hold only about 5% of leadership roles across state and local government, according to a 2024 report from Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics.
Closing that gap was the theme on Oct. 9, when the Latina Civic Foundation held its inaugural Latina Excellence Breakfast at The Rutgers Club in Piscataway. The morning marked five years for the foundation. It brought together women who broke barriers at every level of government, from Congress and the Statehouse to county boards and town councils.
Pou said the progress has come faster than anyone expected.
“It took 200 years of this country to get the first Latina ever to be elected to office in the state of New Jersey, so imagine it took less than two years to get two women Latinas to be in Congress,” she said. “Things move slow, but then it goes very fast hereafter.”
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The speed wasn’t an accident.
Patricia Campos-Medina, president of Latina Civic Action, hosted the program. She said the group was founded after the 2020 census showed Latinos had grown to about 23% of the state while Latina representation had slipped. So, the founders set a goal: a Latina in Congress within 10 years.
They did it in five.
The group works in three parts. Latina Civic Action handles advocacy, and the Latina Civic PAC raises money for candidates. The foundation handles training through programs such as ELLA Wins and Latinas Building the Bench. At the breakfast, the foundation announced it is naming a year-long leadership academy for Zulima Farber, New Jersey’s first Latina attorney general.
Mejia, Campos-Medina noted, is a founding board member of Latina Civic. When the 11th District seat opened, Mejia called her.
“She said, ‘Patricia, I live in this district. I think I’m gonna do it,’” Campos-Medina said.
Campos-Medina’s message to the room was simple: no seat a Latina could win should go uncontested.
“Now we need three,” she said. “We need four.”
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Ruiz has spent nearly two decades in a building where, she said, Latinas have often been on their own.
She became the first Latina in the state Senate, and she is now its majority leader. She also chairs the Legislature’s Latino Caucus this year. She credited Farber with clearing the way when she arrived at the Statehouse.
Groups like Latina Civic matter, Ruiz said, because the women who get elected so often find themselves alone.
“A lot of times we are alone by ourselves in spaces where people don’t want us to open our mouths, express ourselves, or fight for the communities that we represent,” she said. “Having an organization like this gives us the strength, the power, and the foundation to continue the work moving forward to bring people up with us.
“And it doesn’t happen alone or in a vacuum.”
Her message was blunt: Latinas who are prepared deserve a shot.
“If we are equipped and we are in excellence, we deserve a chance,” she said. “If you’re not in the room and you’re not at the table, we’re part of the menu.”
Campos-Medina also credited Ruiz with helping fund a Hispanic women’s resource center that supports Latinas statewide with workforce development. She also helps women who are victims of domestic violence.
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Pou and Mejia sat down for a fireside conversation about how they got to Washington. Both said someone else opened the door first.
It took 200 years of this country to get the first Latina ever to be elected to office in the state of New Jersey, so imagine it took less than two years to get two women Latinas to be in Congress.”
— Nellie Pou, U.S. Rep. (D-9th)
Pou got into politics young, working on campaigns for Puerto Rican candidates. When she first ran for the Legislature, she said, there was only one Latina there: Assemblywoman Nilsa Cruz-Perez. Pou also credited Farber, who became attorney general in 2006.
Mejia’s path ran through Rutgers. She is first-generation, and she said her family was working poor and food insecure. Her parents couldn’t help with homework past about first grade, because they couldn’t read English well enough. Teachers filled the gap.
“It was my counselor here at Rutgers EOF that, frankly, gave me the belief that I can be something,” she said, “but that I then had a responsibility to when that door opened up a little bit to kick it open and drag people in.”
Mejia spent 25 years as an organizer before running for office; Congress is the first office she ever sought. Her advice to young people is practical. Find someone doing the job you want, she said, and ask them to reverse engineer it for you: what they did before, what prepared them and what mistakes they made along the way.
Pou described the job of being first as holding the ladder for others.
“Our job is making sure that we do everything within our power to really hold that ladder still and hold it firm, because we want you to climb that ladder and not let anything rock that or let that fall down,” she said.
Mejia said it in fewer words.
“Somos las primeras, pero no las últimas,” she said.
We are the first, but not the last.
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The foundation honored Ruiz as one of five “Las Primeras,” along with four other women who were first in their roles:
- Assemblywoman Annette Quijano (D, Elizabeth): the first woman and first Latina to serve as speaker pro tempore of the Assembly;
- Wilda Diaz: the first woman elected mayor of Perth Amboy;
- Yolanda Garcia-Balicki: the first Latina elected to the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners;
- Silvia Catalan-Culnan: the first Latina elected to the Mount Laurel Township Council, now deputy mayor.
Their stories showed how much work is left at the local level.
Garcia-Balicki won her seat by 139 votes. Cumberland County is about 40% Latino, she said, and she is its first elected Latina.
“We have to change that,” she said.
Catalan-Culnan came to the U.S. from Colombia 10 years ago without speaking English. Mount Laurel is about 5% Hispanic, she said, but that’s changing. She hopes to be mayor someday.
“That accent is who I am,” she said. “It represents my story.”
Diaz, who served 12 years as mayor, said the climb is steeper than people admit.
“When you are a woman and a woman of color, it’s 10 times harder for us,” she said.
Quijano traced her start in public life to her teenage years, when she helped organize a grassroots fight against a cable company that dropped Spanish-language programming.
“We were not raised to be quiet,” she said. “When someone tells us no, that’s when things get interesting.”
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For years, the goal was to be first. Ruiz said that era should end.
“It is 2026,” she said. “It is time to stop talking about firsts. It is time to start celebrating the many.”
For information about Latina Civic Foundation, go to latinacivicfoundation.org.
