Nicole Maldonado is an articulate and poised young woman who is currently a candidate for the Oklahoma House of Representatives District 88 on the Democratic ticket. At a recent event held at the Toast and Coffee establishment on Robinson Avenue in the Mid-City area of Oklahoma City she told of her origins as well as what brought her into a life of public service. She currently serves as a legislative assistant to Democrat Mauree Turner who represents the district but is leaving office in November of this year, and in that role she has learned much about the lawmaking process and has also become concerned as to the increasingly authoritarian and divisive nature of the Oklahoma Republican Party that currently controls both houses of that legislative body. The candidate is an openly gay woman, and is committed to ensuring the rights of the LGBTQ and trans communities in the state. While she was born in Texas, the political aspirant reports that she was raised primarily in the South American state of Columbia by her mother and grandmother in a working class home, and that experience served to engrain in her a compassion and concern for the less fortunate. A star athlete as a child, she came to the Sooner State on a tennis scholarship to attend Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant where she studied political science among other subjects and decided to remain here after her graduation. The election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress from New York City prompted her as another Latina of working class origins to contemplate a venture in electoral politics. In addition, after the election of Donald Trump she felt that as a brown woman who spoke English with an accent that she had been subject to occasional acts of discrimination, and was determined to ensure that others should be protected from such mistreatment. Like many other Hispanics in the state, she was disappointed in the passage of a recent legislative enactment that makes it a crime for undocumented individuals to be in the state, House Bill 4156, and is among those, including the Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma City, who have urged Governor Stitt to veto it. Maldonado sees herself as part of a new cadre of Democratic office seekers who are responding to the electorate’s growing unease about the direction of the ascendant Republican Party that has seen fit to demonize minorities while ignoring it’s obligation to adequately fund education and state agencies that assist the less fortunate. After a group of her supporters had gradually materialized, Maldonado departed the place with them to begin the process of knocking on the doors of her potential future constituents and distributing materials in support of her candidacy.
Against the Grain 