Lorena Gonzalez Fights for California’s Workers

of working as a labor leader. She's a progressive Democrat who supports working in middle class Californians with an impressive list of wins, including paid sick leave, overtime for farm workers, protecting janitorial workers against sexual assault, automatic voter registration at the d m V diaper tax relief. The list goes on and on. Growing up, Assemblywoman Gonzalez saw first hand what government can do or not do to help working

class families. She was raised by a single mom who put in long hours as a nurse to support Gonzalez and her two older brothers. Today, Lorraina Gonzalez has five kids in a blended family with her husband, Nathan Fletcher. He's also in San Diego politics as a county supervisor. Gonzalez and Fletcher are both Democrats, but that wasn't always

the case. He was a Republican. He was actually a Republican assembly member, and at the time I was the head of the a f l c I O in San Diego, and he was always a much more moderate Republican. But through the process when he ran unsuccessfully for Mayror, we had a ton of discussions. This is before we started dating or anything, and he saw the light. He became a Democrat. Then we started dating, then we got married.

That makes sense to me. The first thing I think about when I look at your biography and so forth, beyond your family, the thing that strikes me most is my goodness. You have the trifecta of academic credentials here Stanford undergrad, Georgetown Masters, u c l A. Law school. You have the credentials to have done a lot of things for yourself. You know, you're certainly the whole Goldman Sacks material academically and everything, and yet labor organizer, state Assembly.

What is it? What was the calling for you that you wanted to forego taking care of yourself in order to take care of other people. I put a lot of that on my mom. So my mom for most of my life was a single mom. She just worked her ass off. I don't know else to put it. I don't ever remember her having a forty hour work week.

She worked fifty sixty seventy hours a week, multiple jobs at times, all to make life better, not just for me and my brothers, to give us an opportunity to go to college and do things, but also to make life better for her patients, for people she was serving. She taught me that in life, what actually matters isn't how much money you have in your bank account or how many trips you get to go on, but how

much you do to save the world. And we laugh now, my husband and I, and it's it's a question do you want to savor the world or save the world. We're still on the save the world trajectory. At some point, you know, it's everybody's right to take a step back and savor the world a little bit. There's just so much work to do, and I think that I saw that, and I saw hard working people and saw what they go through, and just wanted to ensure that I could

try to make other folks lives a little easier. I moved to l A three for the first time, to work. I lived in l A. I remember coming to California then and it was very much a dialogue and very much a part of the culture was migrant workers, and the California was the great state of the migrant worker in Chavez and all that legacy in the central California thing. Now in northern San Diego County, you have a migrant worker a labor community. Correct. We have small family farms

in San Diego. When I say small family farms, they have somewhere between twenty five and fifty maybe up to a hundred farm workers. So it's not like the massive farms that you have in the central Valley. But we do have small strawberry fields, flower fields, um in farm workers where your father worked, Correct, your father worked in the strawberry was it a migrant worker community by and large.

There it's less migratory, if you will. Um, it's more farm workers who stay there, but they're immigrants primarily from Mexico, and they often stopped in me their homes. In North San Diego County and San Diego County, we have avocado groves as well. So my father, like like most of the workers even today, his father was Brasseto so it was part of a program during the World War two to ensure we had enough farm workers. They brought individuals up from Mexico to work the farms at substandard wages

and sent them back home. And so my grandfather's Brasseto. So my father, after hearing the stories, also wanted to come to the United States. Uh, so he came. He started in the straw fields in north San Diego County. Yeah, I asked, because and you say the preferred world is migratory workers, not migrants. Correct, Well, there's different. They're considered

immigrants or migrant workers. But I sometimes people think of probably in the eighties, and there was a time when we had workers who would come and they might work in the fields and Imperial during certain seasons and then migrate north and work other seasons in the pistachio or almond fields, you know. And so they would travel throughout California and all the way up to Washington for the

apple season. And that was a little bit different than what we're seeing today when a lot of immigrants come in and work one farm. Now, my friend Christina since Soon, who once ran and I think co founded the Workers Defense Fund. She mean for the Senate in Texas this last election, and Christina since soon has run organizations to

protect migrant workers in Texas. In the construction industry, people would would they would lose a limb, they would have their their hand chopped off in an accident, and if no benefits and nobody sources to help them deal with their unemployment or whatever or workers compensation. So she worked very hard and very successfully to address that. Is that still a problem in California, whether it's in northern San Diego County or up north of there, that these workers

lacked the protections that other workers have. It is and there. So you brought up construction. So let's take it in two different ways. And I think it's important for people to understand this. Farm workers in the United States don't have the same rights as other workers. There are two sets of workers. Way back in the FDR days, right when they pass a Fair Labor Standards Act, there are two sets of workers that were taken out of that.

The Fair Labor Standards Act is what gives us minimum wage, overtime protections, what we assume is kind of workplace protections we have today. They took out farm workers and domestic workers and if you think why, at the time, it was a vestige of slavery. So the work that was being done at that time by rural Southern African Americans and then later by an influx of immigrants, was taken out of basic protections, not even the right to organize and so um in California, we've done a lot to

put those rights back in. So uh five years ago we create the ail Er B which allows farm workers to organize. We had minimum wage requirements, and just a few years ago, in fact, I passed the bill to ensure that farm workers also get over time. We're the only state in the nation that has passed that. There's only a couple that allow farm workers to organize or pay minimum wage even to this day. The construction trades,

they have those protections. But what happens with a lot of our immigrant workforce in construction, in particular janitorial work, is employers just cheat the system. So they pay them under the table, they don't pay them the right benefits, they don't sign them up for workers comp so they're violating the law. But when it comes to farm workers and domestic workers, they don't even have to violate the law because there are so few laws for most of

the country. Now there's a variety of bills and so forth that you've authored or co authored, and I wanted you to hopped through a couple of those, because I find all this stuff very fascinating. Assembly Build five requiring workers classified as employees rather than independent contractors for more labor protection. Take me through that. What's the difference. Well, over the last maybe decade, a lot of employers have taken advantage of loopholes in the law and classified what

would be traditional employees as independent contractors. And yes, it's cheaper for the employer, but the cost that it puts on both the employee and society is a large has to be taken accounts. So when you're an independent contractor, the employer does not pay their person of your Social Security or Medicare that's seven point five percent. You're responsible for the full fiftent of those two things. They're not

required to provide healthcare. They're not required to give you paid sick leave, paid family leave that we have in California. They don't have to provide you with workers compensation. You don't have the right to a lot of civil rights and and sexual harassment laws. As an independent contractor, you're viewed as an individual small business, not a worker of the company. So obviously there's a number of benefits and most important during COVID, which we found is nobody's paying

into unemployment insurance for you. So if you lose your job, you're on your own. So it is this idea and I can imagine and for some people it's an important piece to be an independent contractor, to be a true small sole proprietor small business, and we have those. You know, you may be a plumber, you might be a doctor that has your own business and you're on your own. So for example, a doctor as an independent contractor, he would then become whose employee to qualify for the benefits

you're enumerating here. Well, in doing a B five, we took what was called in California a decision by the California State Supreme Court dynamics, and we applied that it was going to be presidential basically, and so we applied it to our entire labor code, and we said, but there will be exceptions, and we took the reasoning and the decision that said, if you have the ability to bargain for yourself, if you truly require a certain certificate education,

you have the ability to provide these things for yourself. Were less concerned, right, because what happens is a doctor doesn't need these benefits necessarily, they self ensure they self provide them, and then if something goes wrong, society is not on the hook, right, It's not like some taxpayer funded program. They can actually take care of themselves. If a janitor is classified as an independent contractor and doesn't have those benefits and they lose their job, they're going

to end up on state sponsored support. We we don't want people to to be homeless or go hungary, so we do provide a safety net, but they don't have somebody paying into the system. There's no social contract that was established. And those companies who are misclassifying workers are at a competitive advantage over companies who are biding by the law. So this is just strengthening the existing law.

And a lot of this came about because of the upswing of all these tech companies that think if you're hired through an app, you're an independent contract or your own business, right, And that's what I'm curious about is that is that let's say I have a building an office building, but you're telling me that they will hire janitorial staff and call them independent contractors and not call

them employees. So usually what would happen if you hired a building is you hire janitorial company and you don't know you have the building. You hire a company. That's all fine, But the people working for the company, they would be independent contractors when they're actually just employees who have been misclassified. Give us the most vivid example of who the bill was aimed to help. The bill was aimed to help delivery drivers for Uber. For example, right yep,

I carry my Uber Eats bag. I'm being told where to go, when to go. I can't negotiate with Uber over my pay I can't negotiate with Uber over whether or not I want to take a certain job. And uh Uber says, I'm a small business and I have to pay for my own expenses, for my own insurance. UM, I have to pay my own taxes. There's no payroll taxes taken out. Uber investors and Uber owners get very very very wealthy and billionaires and the workers making submimum wage.

Another area is in two thou in seventeen. This one was very sensitive to me because I was involved tangentially, but I was part of drafting and circulating petitions in terms of lead paint in the schools of New York and in two thousands seventeen, you would have be requiring all K through twelve schools to test their drinking water for lead. Did your concern for this issue in was the trigger that you're a mother? What was the genesis

of that? Obviously A lot of what I do is the fact that I am a mom, and I'm a mom first, right, So I approach a lot of issues that we're facing as any mother would. Yes, you send your kids, I send my kids public school. I hope and pray um that they're safe, that nobody's going to gun them down, that nobody is going to um poison them, that nobody's gonna sexually abuse them, and that they'll get a good education at the same time, So there's a

lot of trust we put into our schools. And we had a situation in my district where it was a really odd situation. A dog, they put water out and the all that reacted to it, and so they end up testing the water and um, the water had lead in it. And this is like New York City. We've we fought for years in my community in particular, which is a Latino working class community, to replace lead paint

in the houses. We took lead out of candy. We know that it poisons children and disproportionately poor children, and so when we found it in the water fountain at school, it was a shell shock for me because the one thing you sent your kid to school and you're like, don't drink the sugary drinks. Go have some water, Go drink some water, drink for the water fown, drink more, you know, and like how many times drink diet code exactly?

And I thought, oh my gosh, for my own kids, you think of that thought, like how many times do I say, okay, after pe make sure you drink some water from the water fountain, you know, hydrate? Well a little did I know We're sending kids to poison themselves. So what we did is in some of these schools are very, very old, and we said it's time to test it for lead. And we got a lot of pushback. Everybody's like, well, is it makes sense to test? I'm like, how can we not test when we know that there's

lead in the water. Who on earth would be opposed to testing the drinking border of your children in the school? Who people who know that if it's positive, they're going to have to pay to replace the pipe? Right? What was the upshot of that in two thousand and seventeen, Did the testing lead to any remediation of the problem that they ripped the pipes at a certain schools? Or what happened? They filter? It was filtration the answer filtration um.

They replaced, they brought in water stations to some And what happened is there there had already been a number of school bonds that had passed, both statewide school bonds as well as local school bonds. And what happened as soon as they started finding this then you know, when you pass the school bond, there's a lot of things

you can spend it on. In in San Diego Unified, for example, had well, we had some football fields and some lighting that needed done, and we wanted, you know, some hvac um done in the classrooms, all important things. But if you find lead in the water, guess what replacing the as water fountains gets to the top of the list in money that was already going to be spent it becomes prioritized. So the world didn't end. The waters has been tested, and now it's being fixed. California

Assemblywoman Lorraina Gonzalez. If listening to interviews with up and coming politicians gives you a sense of hope, be sure to check out my conversation with Texan Christina since Soon, who co founded the Workers Defense Project. I think that there's an image of Texas that people have that is not the true Texas story. When people think about Texas, they usually think about us in a singular way of

people like my white grandfather, which was a cowboy. And the truth is that the state is you know, you have a city like Houston, it's one of the most diversities in the entire country. You have one in three Texans that are immigrants, were children of immigrants. The state's population is Latino. It's majority people of color. At this point, here more of my conversation with Christina since Soon in

our archives at Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Lorena Gonzalez talks about cheerleaders and her fight to get California's biggest sports teams to pay them like the professionals they are. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to here's the thing. In two thousand eighteen, Lorena Gonzalez co authored a bill which put California on a path to generate of its electricity from clean, carbon neutral energy sources by two thouty five. She says, the state is on

track to meet its goal even sooner. We're already almost there. I gotta be honest, We're gonna get renewable quicker than we had imagined or hoped. But that's because we required it by way of what. By way of large scale solar farms that you're seeing go up wind energy that you're seeing. We're exploring other forms, biomass, pub stations, things

to provide renewable energy sources throughout California. Obviously rooftop solar plays a role in that, but we have really adopted in California an approach that is getting us on any given Saturday, about of the energy coming through a grid

is now coming from renewable sources. Well, the reason I mentioned this is because I was involved with a group of people who were this was all theoretical, No, nothing was getting to the legislative phase where we were saying how we wanted the federal government to withhold you know, the classic withholding of transportation dollars. And there's always the threat of withholding those dollars if you don't this or

that or this or that. And what we wanted to do was we wanted to demand that the states do

the two following things. That any construction over a certain size, over a certain square footage of any public building, college, dormitory, high school, airport, library, hospital, you name it, anything that was funded by state or local or federal dollars, that any refurbishment over a certain size, and any new construction over a certain size, you would demand that they had some photovoltaic element built into that construction where there was

solar panels on the grounds, solar panels on the skin of the building or the roof of the building, something. And the second thing we wanted to demand was that any purchase of or any maintenance of fleet vehicles over a certain size, and exempting emergency vehicles like fire and ambulance and police because you can't have them have to plug in. You have to have hybrids there at best, but any of the fleet vehicles you had to go fully electric, fully plugged in by a certain year or

you were going to get the transportation dollars. Is there anything like that on the drawing board in California? I love that, But we're moving towards that naturally in California, not with withholding funds. Under our previous governor, Jerry Brown, he mandated that all new construction of houses have to have roof top solar private homes, private homes, new construction and private homes have to have rooftop solar. Unfortunately, there's

not a lot of new homes being built. You have that now in California, yeah, yea through executive order, through the governor, and so we we naturally have some requirements that were put in. Tom Steyer did an initiative a few years ago, Prop thirty nine, which provided for schools to be able to put solar on their rooftop. You know, it's good green jobs, and it's good for the environment, and it pulls down the cost of their energy bills. So it really did work. We had money available for that.

We are going towards a gasless society. We have goals um hopefully we'll be codified. I think in the next few years that will say, by by this year, we're going to have all electric vehicles, but we have to do the hard work with that. It's not enough to say that we've got to have more charging stations. I always give example my husband. I. We have an electric vehicle and we live in my district. It's one of the poorest districts in California. It's a porst coastal district

in California, and there aren't charging stations. You know. Luckily, we can charge at work. He works at the county building and work at the State building. Um, we we have rooftop solar and we can charge at home. But a lot of apartments in multifamily complexes and working class communities don't have charging stations. And so as we moved electric vehicles, we really have to think about that piece as well, the infrastructure necessary to get us off of

fossil fuels. How did you get involved with the cause of the cheerleaders in the NFL as you lost I guess you lost your box seats at the Chargers game. I was not a popular person at the Chargers I'll tell you that. Uh what happened, to be honest, is you got a figure. I was actually a Stanford cheerleader, so I was a cheerleader and a labor leader, right, I know how to use a bullhorn and a megaphone. Um,

it's it's a rare combination. So when I had read at the time the raider at the cheerleaders for the Raiders had started a couple of them start a lawsuit against the Raiders for not paying the minimum wage because they were classified actually as independent contractors. And so I talked to the attorneys, and I'm an attorney, so I talked to their attorneys and I was like, this is outrageous.

They're basically almost pain to do this fantastic job. Yes, it's a job women want, it's a job that that is respected to a certain extent, but it's still a job everybody else on the football field. It doesn't matter if you're the physical trainer. It doesn't matter if you're the person picking up the trash. It doesn't matter if you're selling the peanuts, if you're the coach, if you're the player. You're all being paid like an employee. And

these cheerleaders were being given a stipend, being penalized. They signed an employment contract with the NFL. So I said, this is easy. We're going to make them by code employees so that they have basic labor protections in California. And so I remember the first time I introduced it, and of course a lot of journalists were more fascinated with fact that I was a cheerleader at Stanford and one of those pictures, and so we're like, all right, here's a picture, now can we talk about this really

important issue? And and then my favorite part of the story is having to go to then Governor Jerry Brown. And he's anyone who knows he's a little I don't want to say crotchety. You just never quite know what you would get with a no nonsense guy. No nonsense, and I mean, I'm like, God, I got to talk to him about cheerleaders, like this is gonna And so I said, um, we were at a dinner together, and I said, Governor, when you have a chancel and talk to you about this bill I'm working on. It has

to do with professional cheerleaders. And he said I was a cheerleader, and I was like, are you kidding me? He apparently he was a cheerleader in college or high school. And so I was like, oh, I think I'm going to get this one. But we did. I'm very proud of that. So what was that path? Was it directed at an individual team or was this league why you wanted the NFL to recognize. Was the situation in San Diego duplicated at all the NFL teams, Well, none of

them were getting paid. None of the NFL cheerleaders to this day, only in California do they have rights as an employee. There was a bill actually introduced in New York as well, but it never made it through. So it was any professional sports teams in California, the dancers or cheerleaders have to be treated and have the basic labor protections of an employee. So that includes, of course the Chargers, the Rams, the Lakers. It was basketball and football.

So I was going to ask about that because I go to Knicks games where I used to and those women were out there not getting paid either now and a lot of them, but they are now only in California. There's a national fight still against the NFL. There's been a lot of lawsuits, a lot of the teams have lost lawsuits, and there's been a lot more attention to it. There's a couple of documentaries and issues pertained to it. We'd like to see it, of course, on the national level.

So I had the lawsuit work in California and not in the other states. Well, it was settled, and so in other states it's been settled as well. But so often when you settled these lawsuits on worker issues, the judge accepts a settlement, so it makes whole the workers who were suing, but it doesn't force companies to fix the problem. So it's kind of like an ongoing invitation to sue without fixing the problem. And that's why sometimes you need legislation to come in and say, all right,

nobody can do this, this is enough. Now, in two thousand nineteen, you passed legislation that extends the statute of limitations for survivors of sexual abuse who are seeking justice in court. Now, I think most of our listeners know what a statute of limitations is, but I want you to explain, as an attorney, the reason for a statute of limitations In most cases, and there are some crimes I believe, like murder, where there is no statute of limitations.

But where there is a statute of limitations in place, why is there one? There's often a statute for a variety of reasons. One, um, you can't preserve evidence. So you know, I could say, hey, when twenty years ago you stole this TV from me, Well, that TV doesn't exist. Witnesses probably don't exist. It's hard to pin that down.

People die, they move away exactly, or or they forget I mean quite frankly, you know, I can't remember ty years ago probably, So to have integrity in the trial of the witnesses, you need to do it in a certain time frame. But childhood sexual assault is unique. So there's some things that made it unique and made the

Statute of limitations very damaging. Number one. So often the primary witness, the child themselves, uh, suppresses it, basically doesn't think about it, doesn't come to terms with it, and until later in life when they're dealing with a failed marriage or depression that it comes out. And so sometimes you know that's the primary witness is a person who was assaulted, if you will. And what we had with childhood sexual assault is actually a lot of people knew

what was happening. We actually have official documents, like the church, the Boy Scouts, they actually had complaints that were filed that were put away that there still exist and you still need all of this proof if you will, to establish a case, but it allows time to have passed and yet still victims to get some sort of justice. I want to go back to you as a mom because you do have five kids, correct five. We we have five together. It's a blended family. But our two

youngests are adopted. And then I have an eighteen year old who is just graduated and headed to college. I'm a stepmother to a twenty two year old who's deployed in the Marines. And then I have a twenty five year old and she works in the industry, a little kind of working her way, clawing her way up from I think she's an art coordinator. Now what does she want to do? She's on the production side. She works for Netflix. Well, what do you want for your kids

in this world? You know, my children, probably like yours. I feel, in some ways, are really lucky. They were born into a privilege I could have never imagined. They will never know for want. They will always have healthcare, and that's a good thing. I want them to continue to have the basics in life that allow them to be happy. So for me, I think what would make my kids happy and I don't know. I have a ten year old, a thirteen year old, and eighteen year old.

I want them to be able to love and marry whoever they want to love and marry. I want them to be able to work hard and get paid a decent living. I want them to be able to have help care. I want them to have air to breathe. I want them to be able to choose a life for themselves that brings them joy. And that's all it comes down to. My mom expected and she's past, but you know what, she expected so much out of me. She expected me to make the world better for other people.

I think I'm to a point where I want them to contribute positively the world, and I think they'll do that if they're happy, and all the things that we work on is to get them a society where they can live and let live and enjoy life and hopefully put a hand out and help other people as well. California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

While you're there, please leave us a review when we come back. Lorena Gonzalez pushes back against rumors of an exodus among California's wealth East two states with lower income taxes. Gonzalez makes the case for why they should stay. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. California Assemblywoman Lorraina Gonzalez speaks her mind. In a tweet from May. She had some choice words for Elon Musk after she found out he was moving his Tesla plant from California

to Texas. Look, my mouth gets me in trouble. I'd lie if I said otherwise. I say exactly what I think and what I mean. But you have to look in context. Elon Musk has made a crapload of money off of California taxpayers. And if people don't understand why, it's because everything he makes is subsidized by taxpayers. So the Tesla's that flew off the market, those all had taxpayer rebates on a hundred thousand dollar cards. I mean, people who didn't need the rebates were given them because

we want to encourage electric NICs. His solar panels and solar storage had been highly subsidized by the state California, so taxpayers have helped make him a billionaire. In California. We have really supported Elon Musk, and coming from the labor movement, he hasn't really been too good on worker issues, so he's been slapped down by the n l r B. He's he's anti worker. He's had really some big safety

problems in his facility. So I've always been a little irked, like, here we are giving you taxpayer dollars and you can't even abide by the law when it comes to union organizing. That upsets me. Well, during the pandemic, he decided, forget it, I don't like these orders. I'm going to open up my factory in Fremont. It doesn't matter what the county public health officer is saying. And you're talking about an area where we had tons of Latinos dying from COVID.

We had the spread. It was at roaring at the time. So he brings back his workers and he says, if anyone stops him, he's going to take his jobs to Texas. I mean, at some point, look, every elected official in California should be saying I won't say it here, but go go away. Elon mus There is a point where

where as elected officials. And this kills me. It doesn't matter who it is who is getting things from us, right, Leadership is also being able to make those tough decisions and say, hey, al right, we like your product, we like what you're doing for the environment. But by the way, we've got rules and we're going it doesn't matter who you are, you're going to stick by the rules too.

And it it irks me that so many of our rules in California, in this nation, we apply them disproportionately to communities like mine and not to billionaires like Elon Musk. And I think we have to be stronger about that. He has a lot of fans on Twitter, and I got a lot of lush comes with the territory. It does. I'm assuming that California is similar to New York, where the COVID has driven some measurable amount of businesses out of the state. Correct, it's a high tech state. New

York is really struck. I got friends of mine who I mean, people that I never dreamed I mean in the EBB and flow of the fiscal health of New York. Now when the city most needs the money, they're gonna have the lowest income tax revenue. They're raising taxes and everybody. It's really really painful, but a very very measurable and healthy number of people, at least from my optics, who I never dreamed they would leave New York as their home. They might keep a little piano tear there, but who

New York was their home. New York City was their home, and they were willing, maybe not happy, but willing to pay the taxes because New York was They're gone. They sold their homes huge apart, moved to Florida. Moved, they moved. Then they figured, while I'm gonna move, I'm gonna go all the way. I'm gonna move to a no tax state. So they mean people who would say they'd rather die than live in Florida, they're going to Florida. The same

problem in California, people leaving. Well, I think that that's a storyline. I think if you look at the numbers that that doesn't quite add up. And I don't know exactly what's happening in New York, but I will say California had its best budget year ever because we have created more billionaires during this pandemic than ever before. And

so unfortunately, what we're facing in California. There's a lot of talk about the exodus, but it's not quite as real as as people like to say when you look at the actual numbers, and in fact, our income tax revenues are out of control. They're so healthy because of the very rich that we have, good for you, But

income inequality has become a real threat. So as we continue to build billionaires in California and Silicon Valley continues to create new billionaires, we've got to figure out how we take care of people who just work for a living, right, the people who service the tourism industry, the people who serve people fast food, the folks who really are just struggling gift by, like I always say, the people who

inspired me. The reason I am in politics is because you have folks who are on their feet, working forty sixty hours a week, multiple jobs, especially in immigrant communities like mine, and and the fact that they cannot afford housing or to put a little money away from retirement or to send their kid to college is is something we've got to address. So, yeah, I get it. Moved to a no tax state, Go ahead, and you get

what you pay for. Look, I don't want to be in Florida, where building codes are and in their approach to climate change is so bad that that we have a mass catastrophe happening. You know, I'll pay my property taxes. I just I want to make sure that we have an equitable society for everybody, not just those at the top. I want to live in the state and its good building codes. Yeah. God, it's just devastating. Just a brief question, Why Secretary of State, have you announced or you don't

want to say that on the air. I did announce with then we had a little bit. I actually it's on hold because I announced a few years ago early. There have there's never been a Latina in statewide office, and so it is the only demographic in California that has never achieved statewide office. So we announced, we raised money, and then our Secretary State, Alex Paedia, was appointed by the governor to be a U S Senator, and the governor appointed Dr Shirley Weber, an African American icon, to

the position of Secretary State. So my plans are a little on hold, and until she finishes up now it won't be an open seat in two like I had hoped. But the reason I am interested in Scretaria State and I've done a lot of work on voting. In fact, I authored the bill to have automatic registration and we are now at eight percent registered voters. I think the more people who vote, the more we open up democracy in in California. In the world, you have elected officials

who reflect real people. You have people who remember what it's like to have a mom who works sixty hours a week. You elect people who remember what it's like to talk to to the workers at the bus stop on the way to school. You know, remember what it's like to have a father who immigrated here in whose papers um don't quite match things the way they should. So when you have a broader electorate, you having more

diverse elected officials, and then you have better policy. So that's that's why I want to be Secretary State eventually and UH and continue to push the idea of having as many people participating elections as possible. Well, thank you for the update. Are you going to go back to the Assembly and run again next year? You're gonna run for another office? I'm running for re election in two and we're seen what's out there. I mean, there's congressional

seats are in the future. I don't know we're redistricting right now. There's statewide seats. The bottom line is this, and I talked about this a lot. Latinas are of the population California, right Latino's overall ourt but Latina's female Latinos are of the population, and we are the most

underrepresented in every form of life, including elected office. And so my job and my goal is to continue to push for regular folks and to also service hopefully a time when when I won't be the first Latina to do or serve as something, but we've got to continue

to push that. Well, let me just say this because we wrap up, and I really mean this, Jenemy, you were such an amazing woman and all your credentials and your accomplishments and your passion, you're somebody who it's still your task to save the world, I'm afraid, and not savor the world. You have to have to postpone the saving of the world a little bit longer. You and your husband. You have to keep going. There's no turning back. You've got to keep running and keep doing this great

work you're doing. You've been doing a amazing work and you were such a role model. We wanted you on because people spoke so highly of you. Andrew Day, the actress, was talking about the work you did with that school down there. Robert E. Lee. Yeah, in San Diego, you can imagine, Yes, because we care about our history, you had the name of the school changed. You and other

people were working on that cause I did. And this was before we kind of started attacking the Confederate name issue, so I got to see what people said before they realized it was politically incorrect. But you don't have a school in San Diego named after Robert E. Lee in the nineteen fifties, the same year that we ended segregation in the schools, and it not be tied to racism.

So that school today is over kids of color and they finally don't have to go to school that is named after not just the biggest traitor in our in our history, but somebody who was fighting to keep people segregated, in keep people enslaved. Well, what an honor it is to get to meet you. I know your time is valuable. Thank you so much, thank you, thank you. California Assemblywoman Lorreina Gonzalez. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought

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