State Senate

Caroline Menjivar is a clear progressive choice in Senate District 20.

First elected in 2022, she has governed as a strong ally of working-class communities, tenants, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants.

Her lived experience as a queer Latina, Marine Corps veteran, and daughter of working‑class immigrants has grounded her work on mental health, economic justice, and services for families who have been left out of California’s prosperity.

In Sacramento she has backed renter protections, expanded behavioral health and youth supports, and stood with labor on key fights, including raising standards for low‑wage workers and safeguarding reproductive freedom.

On Courage California’s annual progressive scorecard of legislators’ voting records, Menjivar scored a 95 out of 100. She’s endorsed by California Working Families Party and California Environmental Voters.

Voters in SD 20 should keep her in the Senate to continue pushing for stronger tenant protections, more affordable housing, and a safety net that works for the San Fernando Valley and beyond.

State District 22 covers much of the San Gabriel Valley. Incumbent Susan Rubio is a leader of the corporate Dems in the Legislature and the district deserves much better. She consistently sides with fossil fuel companies and special interests over the people of her district. Unfortunately, she faces a conservative Republican candidate. No one is worth your vote here.

John Erickson is the strongest choice for State Senate in District 24 for voters who want a pro‑tenant, pro‑worker, pro‑climate champion with a proven record of bold local leadership. He’s endorsed by California Working Families Party and we recommend voting for him.

Senate District 24 is a big, powerful district that runs from the South Bay up the coast through Santa Monica and Malibu, across the Westside, and into Hollywood and the northwest Valley. It includes communities on the front lines of the housing crisis, climate change, and growing inequality—and it sends someone to Sacramento who will shape state policy on housing, transportation, climate, and education for years.

With Ben Allen termed out, this is an open seat. That makes it one of the few genuine opportunities in 2026 to send a clearly progressive, movement-aligned leader to the State Senate instead of a cautious insider.

John Erickson is a West Hollywood City Councilmember and former mayor who has already helped turn his city into one of the most progressive municipalities in the country. As councilmember and mayor, he championed raising West Hollywood’s minimum wage to the highest in the nation, capping rent increases, creating unarmed mobile crisis response teams, and investing heavily in social services for the LGBTQ community.

Before running for office, Erickson worked as a senior staff member at West Hollywood City Hall and served as Vice President of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles and Chief of Staff at Alliance for a Better Community, where he fought for reproductive freedom, immigrant rights, and equity in education and economic opportunity. He was part of the statewide “End Statute of Limitations on Rape” campaign, which helped repeal California’s statute of limitations on rape and sexual assault in 2016.

Erickson also serves on regional and statewide bodies that matter deeply to SD 24, including the Clean Power Alliance, the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, and the California Contract Cities Association Executive Board. That experience means he already understands how Sacramento, local governments, and regional agencies interact—and where the levers are to move resources and power.

Erickson is running on a platform grounded in what he’s already done in West Hollywood: build a more just, sustainable, and livable California for working‑class people, tenants, and marginalized communities.

- Housing and tenants’ rights: Erickson has championed pro‑housing policies on the West Hollywood council, including moves to remove parking minimums citywide and make many smaller housing projects ministerial, while also supporting strong rent protections and social services. In Sacramento, he supports expanding tenant protections and accelerating affordable housing production, not letting corporate landlords and NIMBYs dictate policy.

- Economic justice and workers’ rights: As mayor, Erickson backed the highest minimum wage in the country and policies that prioritize workers and small businesses over corporate chains. In the Senate, he’ll push to strengthen labor standards, expand paid leave, and ensure the green transition creates good union jobs rather than precarious gig work.

- Climate and coastal protection: Representing a coastal district, Erickson has emphasized climate resilience, fire prevention, and coastal protection, and he serves on the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission and Clean Power Alliance. He wants to bring the climate programs he’s helped build locally—clean power, resilience planning, and sustainable transportation—to the state level.

- Reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ equality: With a background at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles and a lifetime of LGBTQ advocacy, Erickson has been on the front lines of fights against attacks on abortion and queer and trans people. He’s made clear he will treat protecting reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights as core parts of his job in the Senate.

- Public safety without mass incarceration: Erickson has supported alternative crisis response, gun‑violence prevention, and measures like drink‑spiking test strip distribution, showing a commitment to safety strategies that reduce harm without expanding mass incarceration. In Sacramento, he’s positioned to back reforms that focus on prevention, treatment, and accountability, not carceral theater.

Erickson’s opponent is Democrat Brian Goldsmith, a well-connected political consultant.

The contrast in their financial backers is clear. Erickson’s campaign is not getting donations from the fossil fuel industry, the real estate industry, corporate PACs, or the police. Goldsmith’s donors include McDonald’s, Los Angeles Police Protective League, California Apartment Association, and California Association of Highway Patrolmen.

Erickson has built a coalition that reflects the district’s progressive base and its diversity. He is backed by L.A. County Supervisors Janice Hahn, Lindsey Horvath, and Hilda Solis, who cite his record of investing in housing, public safety alternatives, and social services while maintaining fiscal health in West Hollywood. He has support from local elected officials and regional organizations that have watched him govern and are betting on him to deliver the same values and results at the state level.

Aside from Working Families Party, his endorsements include Courage California, Equality California, ACCE, National Organization for Women - Hollywood, HONOR PAC, and Stonewall Young Democrats, plus unions such as National Union of Healthcare Workers, UNITE HERE Local 11, SEIU California, CA Federation of Teachers, and CA Teachers Association,

Residents of Senate District 26 deserve a state senator who comes from the community, and is deeply rooted in immigrant neighborhoods, environmental justice, and working-class Los Angeles. That candidate is Sarah Rascon.

The district stretches across some of the most politically dynamic and economically pressured parts of Los Angeles, including Boyle Heights, Downtown, Chinatown, Eagle Rock, East Hollywood, Cypress Park, and Atwater Village. It is a district where questions of housing, immigrant rights, environmental justice, public health, and displacement are not abstract policy debates but lived realities.

With Senator Maria Elena Durazo running for Los Angeles County Supervisor, this open-seat race is a real contest over what kind of Democrat will represent communities that have long powered progressive politics in Los Angeles. The district needs someone whose politics were formed in the struggles of the communities she seeks to represent.

Sarah Rascón offers exactly that kind of candidacy. A first-generation candidate raised by her immigrant grandmother, Rascón has described a life shaped early by children’s court, social workers, and the public systems that families rely on when they are struggling. That background helps explain why her campaign is centered not on technocratic abstraction but on the practical question of whether government actually helps ordinary people survive and thrive.

Rascón has spent her career in public service and community-facing work. She has worked in voter engagement, served in local government offices, and most recently worked at at the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, where she focused on revitalizing the LA River and preserving natural space. She has also highlighted work bringing social services and mental health resources to Eastside families, including support tied to Los Angeles County’s Prop 1 investments. That mix of neighborhood-level service, environmental advocacy, and government experience makes her especially well suited to a district where quality of life is shaped by both economic precarity and environmental neglect.

Just as important, Rascón appears to understand the difference between being adjacent to progressive politics and actually being accountable to it. She has said plainly that “a status quo Democrat isn’t good enough,” and her campaign frames itself as a challenge to politics built around careerism rather than service. In a district like SD 26, that distinction matters.

Another candidate, Sara Hernandez is, by any fair measure, an impressive and well-qualified candidate. She’s whip smart, incredibly hard-working, has raised a ton of money and is running the strongest campaign of any candidate in the district. She is an educator, nonprofit founder, housing attorney, and current Los Angeles Community College District trustee, and she talks fluently and persuasively about the housing crisis and many other topics. On paper, that makes her look like a strong fit for a district drowning in unaffordability. She has assembled a truly impressive set of endorsements including legislators of diverse ideological leanings, all kinds of labor organizations including the teachers union, several YIMBY groups, Jackie Goldberg and many more.

The problem is not that Hernandez lacks progressive positions; she supports some tenant protections, talks about social housing and community land trusts, and clearly understands the scale of the housing crisis. The issue is that her overall political profile and alliances do not line up with the kind of grounded, movement‑based progressive representation this district has come to expect. Her support from newer “abundance” and “new liberal” formations, and her appeal among more technocratic, professional‑class circles, speak to a different political center of gravity than the one rooted in tenant unions, immigrant‑rights organizations, and long‑time working‑class base‑building groups.

In forums and in her own messaging, Hernandez often frames herself as a pragmatic problem‑solver who can “get things done” and “make government work better.” That has obvious appeal, but it also tends to flatten the power questions that define truly progressive politics in places like Boyle Heights, Chinatown, and East Hollywood: who is at the table, who is being organized, who is being asked to compromise, and who keeps winning. Hernandez is a very strong Democrat who would be a productive legislator, but she has not made a fully convincing case that she will consistently side with tenants and grassroots organizations when their demands collide with the preferences of donors, institutional players, and the political establishment. It’s especially concerning that the real estate interests like the landlords and realtors associations are spending significant amounts of money to support her and that she won’t commit to overturning roadblocks to supporting tenants like the Ellis Act and Costa Hawkins.

That is why, in this race, progressives should appreciate Hernandez’s strengths yet still give the edge to Sarah Rascón.

Rascón’s campaign and pitch is less polished than Hernandez’s, but it is more grounded in the district’s political soul. She is speaking directly to working families, immigrants, excluded communities, and neighborhoods that are tired of being treated as raw material for other people’s agendas. Her emphasis on environmental justice, housing affordability, social services, and community-rooted representation fits a district that has always demanded more than Democratic politics.

The contrast between Rascón and Hernandez gets at the larger question before voters: who best represents the next generation of progressive leadership in central and East Los Angeles. Rascón is making a credible case for it through biography, values, and the constituencies she seems most intent on serving and who she’ll ultimately be accountable to.

Rascón is endorsed by the California Working Families Party, CA Environmental Voters, National Union of Healthcare Workers, CA Nurses Association, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, CA Legislative Progressive Caucus, CA Faculty Association, Communications Workers of America, Pilipino American Los Angeles Democrats, Workers United Western States, ACCE, Initiate Justice Action, Courage California, Women’s March Action, CA Democratic Renters Council, Project Super Bloom, La Defensa, Northeast Democratic Club, Moms Demand Action, Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, Latino Coalition of Los Angeles, Food & Water Action, and Black Women for Wellness Action Project.

She’s gained support from elected officials from LA Controller Kenneth Mejia, LA Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Ysabel Jurado, and LA Schoolboard members Rocio Rivas and Karla Griego.

The incumbent, Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, deserves your vote for another term. She faces no substantive challengers and she’s endorsed by the California Working Families Party. She has been a reliable supporter of progressive initiatives. She five standing committees, including Budget & Fiscal Review; Business, Professionals, and Economic Development; Governmental Organization; Health; and Labor, which she chairs.

According to Courage California, “her priorities included 35 bills about workforce development, social services, and public health. Of these, six were successfully chaptered into law. She sponsored and passed legislation to expand the collection of payroll data, improve employment bias training, and investigate employees’ gratuities theft by employers. She scores a 95 out of 100 on Courage Score, our annual analysis of legislators’ progressive voting records.”

The incumbent, Bob Archuleta, is a Democrat but his record has been disappointing. Unfortunately he’s only facing a challenge from a Republican to his right. Archuleta is a lock to win.

He was first elected in 2018. According to Courage California, in 2025, “he failed to support bills to eliminate racial bias in criminal courts, allow judges to offer diversion programs and services, pause evictions for people whose Social Security payments are disrupted, or protect waterways under threat from the federal administration. Sen. Archuleta’s campaign has raised $720,000 and is funded by police, fossil fuel, real estate, and corporate PAC interests. He has received problematic donations from Chevron, California Real Estate PAC, Occidental Petroleum Corporation, California Association of Highway Patrolmen PAC, and PG&E Corporation.

On the Courage Score, an annual analysis of legislators’ progressive voting records, he scored a 45 out of 100, earning a place in the “Hall of Shame.”

This is an open seat as Tom Umber is termed out. The race is between Democrat Avelino Valencia and Republican Rhonda Shader. Valencia has been a member of the State Assembly since 2022. He scored 41 out 100 on Courage Score, frequently voting against progressive legislation. According to Courage, he “failed to support bills designed to put more AI protections for workers and consumers in place, prohibit firearms dealers from selling pistols that are easily convertible to automatic machine guns, prevent utility companies from using customer money on lobbying and advertisements, and strengthen environmental protections for offshore drilling. Prior to his election to the legislature, Valencia was an Anaheim City Council member and served as a district director for former Asm. Tom Daly.”

His campaign has contributions from police, fossil fuel, real estate, and corporate PAC interests including, California Real Estate PAC, California Association of Highway Patrolmen PAC, and Edison International,

Valencia is sure to win but he’s not worth voting for.

In District 36, Democrat Chris Duncan is challenging Republican incumbent, Tony Strickland.

He was elected to the San Clemente City Council in 2020. During his time on the council, Duncan has supported initiatives to protect the coastline, increase public and fire safety, and address homelessness.

He’s backed by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, Unite HERE 11, and Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, plus elected officials like Attorney General Rob Bonta, Rep. Robert Garcia, and OC Supervisor Katrina Foley.

He hasn’t taken campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, the real estate industry, corporate PACs, or the police.

His Republican opponent has gotten campaign cash fromPG&E, Sempra Energy, California Association of Highway Patrolmen, California Correctional Peace Officers Association, Phillip Morris, Valero, and California Real Estate PAC.