On a Sunday, in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise, state legislator Steve Montenegro stands behind the pulpit and preaches with confidence.
"Hermano, hermana, en su vida él no va dejar que se burlen de usted," he says in Spanish before transitioning into English. "Brother, sister, in your life he won't let anyone put you to shame."
An audience of about 40 people, mostly Latino, listens to him attentively as he punctuates every sentence with a wide smile.
In his second term in the Arizona state Legislature, the 29-year-old immigrant from El Salvador is the only elected Latino Republican in the Arizona House, and politicos on both sides of the aisle view him as a rising Republican star. Montenegro, who is running for reelection in 2012, is the product of a national effort by Republicans to recruit and train more Hispanic candidates for office—including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez—because they say Latino voters are shifting to the right.
Conservative Latinos praise him for immigrating legally, "the right way," as others called him a
vendido, or sell-out, for supporting legislation like SB 1070, which makes it a state crime for unauthorized immigrants to be in Arizona. (Federal courts have stayed key parts of the law, pending a final decision on its constitutionality.)
Montenegro said he never mixes politics with his role in the church and vice-versa. But his family's church, the name of which he asked not to be mentioned in this article, has been an integral part of his life. He grew up looking up to his father, a Pentecostal pastor, speaking Spanish, and watching immigrant families like his struggle to make ends meet. "That's where my values come from," he says. "It's who I am."
Steve Montenegro's support for an extremist racial-profiling bill has earned him cred
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