YAKIMA, Wash. — Dulce Gutiérrez heard the angry voice as she was speaking in Spanish to a group of students who had volunteered to hand out leaflets for her City Council campaign.

It came from across the street, where an older white woman stood on her front porch. Ms. Gutiérrez had endured the taunt before, but this time, in front of hopeful teenagers, the words felt like fire. They actually made her hot.

She wanted to scream back. She wanted to call the woman a racist. She wanted to let her know how hard she, a daughter of migrant farmworkers, had worked to be here, offering Latinos the chance to have a say in a community where they had felt shut out for so long.

“Go back to Mexico!” the woman had yelled.

“Ouch,” was all Ms. Gutiérrez remembers being able to muster in response. “That hurts.”