Blanca and Susan Rubio were deported as kids; now they’re California lawmakers

They spent their childhood on both sides of the Mexican border, on both sides of U.S. immigration laws. Dad was a factory worker, mom a housekeeper. The family spoke little English.

In high school, in the 1980s, when Blanca and Susan Rubio expressed interest in college, a high school counselor suggested they look instead at home economics classes to get ready for marriage and children.

The Rubio sisters did not grow up imagining careers in elected office.

“I used to believe you could only be in politics if you were related to a Kennedy,” Susan Rubio said recently.

What a difference education, persistence and a lot of teamwork can make.

When Susan Rubio, a Democrat, defeated a more established Democrat in last November’s election for a state Senate seat representing the San Gabriel Valley, she and second-?term Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio, also a Democrat, became the first sisters to serve together in the California Legislature.

It might take a while before the Rubios are thought of as a political family on the level of the Kennedys, or the Bushes, Browns, Hahns or Sánchezes. But one political analyst is already calling the Rubio sisters two of the 25 most powerful political figures in the region - emphasis on two.

“Those are two of the new power brokers in L.A. County,” said Alan Clayton, a Democratic redistricting expert who has worked to elect Latino candidates but wasn’t involved in the Rubios’ campaigns. “Because they’re a duo.”

Clayton noted that either of the Rubios could be well-positioned to run for the 32nd Congressional District seat if Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-El Monte, who’s 82, were to retire.

Powerful duo

Blanca embraces the idea that they can be a potent team.

“We are going to be a force to be reckoned with,” she says. “I’m tenacious and Susan’s tenacious. Can you imagine us together?”

Blanca Rubio, 49, and Susan Rubio, 48, both born in Juarez, Mexico, attribute their political success mostly to hard work.

“We knew we weren’t the anointed ones,” Blanca said. “We knew we had to work harder.”

While Blanca, D-Baldwin Park, ran unopposed in last year’s race for the 48th Assembly District, she walked precincts to help Susan, D-Baldwin Park, defeat Mike Eng for the 22nd Senate District. Blanca says she lost 35 pounds in the effort.

Susan’s victory was a surprise to most observers, even in a district where more than half the population is Latino. Eng, a former Monterey Park mayor and six-year state assemblyman who is the husband of U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, had the support of the California Democratic Party, many of the area’s top Democratic elected officials and labor unions.

But Susan Rubio made the fundraising race competitive by drawing donations from business groups that saw her as their best option in an election without a Republican contender.

1 of 4 Latina victories

Susan Rubio’s personal story helped her in an election year clouded by the sexual misconduct charges that forced three L.A. County Democrats to resign from the state Legislature. In divorce proceedings in 2016, she received a three-year restraining order against then-Assemblyman Roger Hernandez of West Covina, whom she said had assaulted and attacked her during their marriage. Susan Rubio’s biggest campaign contributions from political organizations came from the L.A.-based Women’s Political Committee and Sacramento-based Women in Power.

Her victory was one of four by Latinas in the state Senate, which started the year with zero Latina members.

Now, she wants to act on her experience with domestic violence by developing legislation to make lessons about healthy relationships part of the middle-school curriculum.

It’s one of the issues on which the sisters can team up: Blanca Rubio is chairwoman of the Assembly’s Select Committee on Domestic Violence.

The sisters say they want young immigrants to see them as the kinds of role models they lacked as children.

In a story familiar to many immigrants, the Rubios didn’t know they were in the United States illegally. Their father, Sabino, had been in the Bracero program, working on bridges along the Texas-Mexico border, and the family stayed in the U.S. after the program ended.

Then came a day when Blanca, then 5, and Susan, 4, were enjoying a traveling carnival in Winnie, Texas. Their parents, Sabino and Estela, were confronted by immigration agents demanding papers.

Susan Rubio got emotional last week when she recalled her parents’ “look of fear.”

“The feeling of knowing that you will have to go back to a country that doesn’t provide much opportunity. and possibly not being able to feed your kids, is heartbreaking,” said their mother, Estela Rubio, in response to emailed questions.

The Rubio family returned to Juarez before moving back to the U.S. legally, using papers available to the family because younger sister Sylvia Rubio had been born in El Paso. Choosing California because the state was more friendly to immigrants, they settled in the late 1970s in Los Angeles.

The four - later five -children had to overcome low expectations. Not only was there the school counselor who couldn’t see a future for the girls beyond raising kids. Susan’s twin brother, Robert, was mistakenly put into a special needs class after testing poorly on a test presented in English, and he eventually dropped out of school. The youngest sibling, Bryan, 27, is in the Army.

‘Valuable contributors’

Susan and Blanca, who became citizens in 1994, earned master’s degrees in education at Azusa Pacific University. They say Robert’s setback was motivation for them to become teachers.

“Every time we fight for a child in a classroom, we feel it’s something we owe our brother,” Susan said.

As a teacher, Blanca said, she often lectured students and parents who thought being immigrants prevented them from succeeding.

“I was just like you,” Blanca Rubio said she told them. “My parents didn’t have any money. We were undocumented. But I learned early on that education was the key. If you left your country for a better opportunity, demand more of your kids.”

Their experience informs her view of border politics.

“I believe the United States is the greatest country in the world, where someone like me can have a seat - and now my sister can have a seat - and be two of the 120 people in the state who do what we do,” Blanca Rubio said.

“(President) Trump says immigrant families are rapists, we’re criminals, we’re all of the things he said. We’re not. We’re valuable contributors, not only economically but socially.”