Ana Navarro Is Engaging Across Party Lines

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Ana Navarro didn’t plan to go into politics; she thought she would spend her life as a lawyer. “I like to argue. I liked understanding the law,” says the co-host of The View and CNN political commentator. “All I could do was talk and fight.” But growing up during a time of upheaval in Latin America drew her to the political world.

Navarro, 52, was born in Nicaragua. In 1980, she and her family immigrated to Miami—at a time when hundreds of thousands of political exiles were fleeing to Florida from Latin and Central America—because of the Sandinista revolution. “I think you go one of two directions: either you realize that democracy matters and being involved matters and politics matters and become engaged, which is what happened to me, or you want nothing to do with that,” she says.

Navarro went to law school, during which she successfully fought to prevent thousands of Nicaraguan refugees from being deported. She then became a political consultant in the Republican Party, serving in former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s administration and working on former Arizona Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “Many, many times, I was the only Latina in the room,” she says.

Navarro made her debut on The View in 2013 and was named a permanent co-host of the talk show in 2022. She has worked at ABC News, Telemundo, and CNN, becoming one of the leading Latina political voices on television. Navarro is known for her blunt and ruthless commentary, and she’s become an influential avatar for disaffected Republicans.

The formerly self-described staunch Republican made national headlines during the 2016 election, when she spoke out against Donald Trump, quickly becoming one of the most vocal Trump critics within the party. That year she voted for the first time for a non-Republican candidate: Hillary Clinton. It was a decision she struggled with at the time, but one she’s proud of nearly eight years later. While she’s still a registered Republican, she doesn’t identify with the current state of the party. Navarro celebrated when Vice President Kamala Harris announced her 2024 bid for President. In August, Navarro hosted the second night of the Democratic National Convention.

Reflecting on differences in the media industry and politics since she started her career, Navarro says that “you hear more people with accents like mine on national TV” and it’s no longer uncommon to see more than one person of color on a political panel.

“Things have changed—I think dramatically—in the way that people see diversity and embrace it and value it,” Navarro says. “People don’t just see you as a Latina commentator or a Latina host, but as a host of The View who can talk about any political topic [and] current affair.”