Good morning.

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Let’s turn it over to Adam Nagourney, our Los Angeles bureau chief.

Santa Ana is a quick eight miles from Disneyland and 40 miles from Los Angeles City Hall — in the heart of Orange County, once a symbol of white, suburban, Republican California. If you want to understand how California is changing, indeed, how the nation is changing, this city of 334,000 people is a good place to start.

And Santa Ana is the anchor for the second installment of a New York Times series on rising Latino power in America. The city is 78 percent Latino. All seven members of the City Council, including the mayor, are Latino.

It’s worth remembering that three decades ago, Republicans posted uniformed guards at polling places to keep Latino voters away. By contrast, most of the signs in this city’s handsome downtown are in Spanish, and the sounds of Spanish can be heard on the street.