State Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, 34, is the Democratic lieutenant governor candidate for Nevada’s June election, which will pit her against Republican State Senator Mark Hutchison. Whomever wins this election will most likely be promoted to governor when Gov. Brian Sandoval steps down to challenge Senator Harry Reid in 2016.
But life for Flores has been more about survival than politics. She was born into an impoverished family of 13 children and found herself at the wrong end of the law numerous times. She was affiliated with a gang before ultimately pursuing dreams of becoming a lawyer and state legislator after college.
Flores’ father, a mariachi singer, moved his family from California, where she was born, to Nevada after two of her older brothers were killed in gang violence. When Flores was 9, her mother abandoned the family, and things got much worse.
Flores dropped out of school, turned to crime, and often clashed with the law, which resulted in her being imprisoned as a juvenile before she became an upstanding citizen. She has admitted to once leading cops on “a low speed chase through half of a neighborhood,” which she currently represents in government, in an interview with MSNBC. Upon realizing that her lack of education created a glass ceiling in corporate America, Flores obtained her GED. She had been working as an office manager for an accounting firm in Los Angeles.
Should she win the June election against Hutchinson, Flores will become the most high-profile Hispanic Democrat in the U.S.
But regardless of the election outcome, as a juvenile inmate turned an assemblywoman, Flores is a true testament to the phrase “dream big.”