Cara Brown McCormick
The future of socialism in America will not be decided in New York. It will be decided in places like East Los Angeles, 3,000 miles away.
Senate District 26
Sara Hernandez (D) vs. Sarah Rascón (D)
Socialist candidates have gotten very good this year at winning closed Democratic primaries, where a small, motivated electorate can carry a race, and no one outside the party is ever asked to weigh in.
But California does not hold closed elections. Every registered voter was given the same ballot on June 2; the top two finishers advanced to the general regardless of party, and in the state's bluest districts, that sometimes produced two Democrats in November and no Republican at all.
Senate District 26 is a prime example.
No Republican is on the ballot, so the 144,000 independent voters in this East LA district will be the deciders in a general election matchup between the DSA-recommended Sarah Rascón and Sara Hernandez, a moderate Democrat.
This could definitely be a DSA pickup seat. State Senate District 26 in East LA contains the highest concentration of DSA-LA members in Southern California, and Rascón carries the DSA endorsement.
In the June 2 primary, Hernandez emerged with a commanding 34 percent to Rascón's 21 percent.
Hernandez, a trustee of the Los Angeles Community College District and a housing, immigration, and environmental attorney who began her career teaching middle school for the Los Angeles Unified School District, holds degrees from Duke, Loyola Marymount, and Loyola Law School and lives in Eagle Rock. She has the endorsements of the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Labor, IUOE Local 12, and much of the elected Democratic establishment, including sitting state senators who would become her colleagues.
Rascón, who grew up in El Sereno and lives in Glassell Park, comes out of sustainability and environmental justice work: she served as director of county and regional affairs for Mayor Karen Bass, worked for then-Assemblymember Jimmy Gomez and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, sat on the East Los Angeles Planning Commission, and served on the board of CicLAvia. The Democratic Socialists of America, the California Working Families Party, and the New Deal Democrats endorsed her.
The California DSA voting guide recommended Rascon because “she supports Single Payer healthcare via CalCare, repealing the Ellis and Costa-Hawkins Acts and reforming Proposition 13.”
Rascón also supports the “full liberation of Palestine.”
According to votercount.ai, Democrats hold just shy of 60 percent of registrations and Republicans just 11 percent, leaving 144,000 voters, or 29 percent, registered with neither party, 116,000 of whom are No Party Preference (NPP).
The unaffiliated bloc in SD26 is nearly three times the size of the Republican electorate. With no Republican on the ballot and two Democrats offering sharply different politics, those voters are the swing.
If independents and NPP voters turn out, they will decide it.
Senate District 26 runs through central and eastern Los Angeles: Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, Highland Park, Los Feliz, Koreatown, and the industrial city of Vernon. It is heavily Latino and immigrant, and at candidate forums this spring, residents asked about immigration enforcement, public health, and the environment.