Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...Incumbent Rep. Lateefah Simon has built an early massive lead over challenger Jamie Joyce in the Congressional District 12 race.
Simon was leading with 80.9% of the vote against Joyce, who had 18.9% of the vote, with 7.6% of the total number of registered voters reported as of 9:26 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office, offering a glimpse at two differing views of progressives politics in one of the most Democratic districts in the country.
The June 2 primary is the first chance voters have had to grade Simon’s performance during her first term in Washington, where she has prioritized delivering material difference to her constituents despite a Republican-controlled Congress. Joyce said problems that afflict Washington require a deeper, more systematic change.
“I’m confident we’ll do well in this primary,” Simon said at Mills College in Oakland, where she cast her vote Tuesday afternoon. “That being said, so much of my work still has to be on the ground, bringing money home, and to the people who I report to and I report to these voters.”
In Congress, Simon affirmed her positions as a member of the new generation of progressives in the House of Representatives from her predecessor and mentor, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee. Simon has made it a priority to “deliver” for her district — even in a Republican-controlled Washington — and making a material difference for the grass roots supporters that elevated her to Congress. Simon began her organizing career at the Young Women’s Freedom Center.
Prior to her run for the House of Representatives, Joyce oversaw international humanitarian projects before transitioning over to technology-driven civic reform in the U.S. Joyce said she aims to take this same approach to Washington if elected through her proposed legislation she called the “MAD Act,” a 650-page proposed bill she’s drafted that serves as a blueprint to rebalance power between the government and people.
Because both candidates will advance to the November general election under California’s top-two primary system, Tuesday’s election serves as a barometer for their support among the Democratic base in the deep-blue District 12.
The district has been hit hard by state and federal cuts to healthcare and food assistance programs, in addition to canceled federal grants for research annd development and energy infrastructure. For Joyce, fixing those issues requires addressing the foundational corruption of government power first.
Simon said her past two years in Congress have changed her views of power in some ways and that “democracy requires math.” Her beliefs that people deserve healthcare, immigrants deserve due process and women deserve access to reproductive healthcare have not swayed, but the slim margins of political power have changed her approach.
“I learned that being in Congress means working with 434 people. Many of them who you don’t agree with, you need to move the needle,” Simon said. “My job is to change the material conditions of the folks who need me the most here in the country.”