After losing to Hillary Clinton in the 2006 primary, the Sanders camp in California tapped people like Joesé Hernandez (center) — local activists that just happened to be Latino, with deep community connections — as field organizers and volunteers. They, in turn, asked their networks to come out and vote for someone who breathed the same progressive fire they had for years. He and other longtime activists were crucial to the senator’s 2020 triumph in California. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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Bespectacled, lanky, with an impressive ponytail and a Van Dyke beard, 35-year-old Joesé Hernandez is a reason why Bernie Sanders won California’s Democratic presidential primary last night.

He has spent most of his adult life in el movimiento, throwing himself into causes like citizenship classes and district elections in Anaheim. He hosts an online radio show and used to serve as an emcee for Santa Ana’s Day of the Dead festivities.

In 2016, the Santa Ana resident volunteered for the Vermont senator’s 2016 campaign — his first-ever foray into electoral politics. Hernandez gamely tried to get the city’s overwhelmingly Latino electorate to side with Sanders, an East Coast septuagenarian that few of those voters had ever heard of and who seemed to have no explicit plan to court voters of color.

That perception sank Sanders statewide: he lost the 2016 primary to Hillary Clinton by a 53-to-46% margin, and by an even larger gap among Latinos.

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