In heavily Latino East Los Angeles, a bastion of support for Sanders.
LOS ANGELES — Looked at one way, Lorena Vellanowth’s family is the embodiment of the American dream. She came to Los Angeles from Mexico as a baby, and her daughter went on to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, and then to attend graduate school at the University of Southern California.
But all that success came with a big caveat: Her daughter, who works in public administration for the city of Anaheim, is struggling under the weight of almost half a million dollars in student loans.
“Bigger than my mortgage,” said Ms. Vellanowth, 43, who works in health care. She said her daughter is getting married this month, and she worries about how her daughter will be able to afford to raise children or buy a home.
That reason alone was enough for Ms. Vellanowth, and many of her family members and friends in the Latino community, to support Bernie Sanders, she said, drawn by his message of fighting the type of inequality they feel every day in Los Angeles.
“I’m Latina, and you’d think that’s not someone I’d vote for, an old white guy,” she said on Monday afternoon outside a polling center at a park in the heavily Latino East Los Angeles.
But she worries about her candidate’s future, now that the Democratic establishment is coalescing around Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“I just hope the Democratic Party doesn’t screw him,”
she said, of Mr. Sanders.
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