Thank You, Lorena Gonzalez + Two January Club Meetings!

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has enjoyed the long holiday break with family and friends!

We want to wish a heartfelt congratulations and thank you to Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez.

By now, many of you have heard the exciting (although, legislatively sad) news that she is resigning from the legislature to take on a new role leading the California Labor Federation.

Her leadership and legislation in Sacramento has had a significant impact locally, throughout California, and on national politics that has come to define progressive policies for the better part of a decade.

I mentioned on my personal Twitter that she is the personification of patience and faith.

Buoyed through her political wins (she never received less than 70% of the vote in the 80th Assembly District since she was first elected in 2013), through her legislative accomplishments (permanent motor-voter and mail-in voting, worker protections, etc.), and personal triumphs (fighting caner, winning, and in recovery).

Again, all a testament to patience and faith. On behalf of San Diego Democrats for Equality we all wish her well for her next chapter as a statewide, and dare we say, national labor leader.

Of course, her leaving the legislature will bring about a special election sometime this Spring, and we'll have more on that in a second.

We want to notice our club members that there will be two club meetings this month, mostly because of the number of endorsements we need to catch up on due to the late December finish of redistricting at the state and local levels.

We will have our regular club meeting on Thursday, January 20th at 6:30pm where we will consider friendly incumbent endorsements for County Board of Education in Districts 3 and 5 (Alicia Munoz and Rick Shea, respectively). We will also consider endorsements for San Diego City Council District 6, Chula Vista City Council District 1, and San Diego Unified Districts B and C.

Register for our regular January 20th meeting here.

Also, as I mentioned at last month's meeting, we will be considering a Bylaws amendment to formally add two new Freedom Awards named in honor of our founding club president Robert Lynn and past president Larry Baza who both passed away last year. Please review the proposed Bylaw language here.

Then, in a quick turnaround we are going to have a virtual "Endorsementpalooza" a few days later on Sunday, January 23rd at 12:00pm where we will consider our last statewide race for Controller, and as many of our congressional and legislative races as we can. This will include the aforementioned special election for the 80th Assembly District, and we'll be endorsing for the 2022 regular election -- so we will be doing the 80th twice.

All of our legislative incumbents will be considered as friendly incumbent endorsements.

We've already heard from Congressman Mike Levin's team that he won't be able to make the special meeting but would love to speak to our club members, so we will schedule that friendly incumbent endorsement at our February meeting.

Also because of redistricting, Joseph Rocha announced this week that he will be running against noted anti-science Brian Jones for State Senate. So, we will re-consider his endorsement as well as an endorsement for the Darrell Issa congressional district at this special meeting.

Register for the "Endorsementpalooza" special January meeting here.

Have a great rest of your week and please stay safe!

Ryan Trabuco (he/him/his)
Club President
San Diego Democrats for Equality