On election night, Santa Ana City Council member Jessie Lopez found herself in third place, far behind fellow Democratic council colleague David Penaloza and Republican business owner Mayra Ruiz in the race to represent Orange County’s 68th Assembly District.
Tearful supporters at a California Working Families Party shindig at the Mission Control bar and arcade in downtown Santa Ana hugged Lopez, gifted her flowers and wished her well.
If the 37-year-old was sad, she didn’t show it. Lopez had seen this game play out before.
In 2023, the councilmember decisively beat back a recall attempt funded by Santa Ana’s police union and apartment owners who didn’t like her unabashedly progressive views in a city where centrist Democrats have dominated politics for decades and lefty ones were long ostracized.
I wrote a column shortly after, heralding Lopez’s overwhelming victory as a new era for Latino politics in Orange County, where Latinos make up a third of the population but still wield little power.
Lopez spent the next three years along with her fellow progressive Santa Ana council members shoring up the city’s rent control policies and its immigrant defense fund. Nevertheless, few gave Lopez a chance in her assembly race.
Penaloza — who declined to vote when the council deadlocked on whether to cancel Lopez’s recall election — had the backing of the Orange County and California Democratic Party establishment, from current 68th District Assemblymember Avelino Valencia (who’s running to represent the 34th Senate District) to Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas to Katie Porter, a former Orange County congresswoman who ran unsuccessfully for governor this year.
Penaloza’s campaign mailers and video ads were so ubiquitous these past few weeks that they filled up my mailbox and interrupted my binging of Hulu’s “Vanderpump Villa.”
So did anti-Lopez mailers and commercials, funded by nearly $2.7 million in independent expenditures. Yet Lopez once again beat back her well-funded opposition.
As of Wednesday evening, the latest Orange County Registrar of Voters election results had her in second place — less than 1,000 votes away from Penaloza.
“Voters proved that while money can influence politics, it can’t buy community support,” Lopez said this week as she unsuccessfully tried to enjoy tacos and guacamole at Lola Gaspar in downtown Santa Ana, where well-wishers kept calling her or congratulating the candidate in person. “This race is about the future of California — whether we answer to corporations and insiders or to the hard-working people we’re elected to serve.”
With Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento easily winning reelection and Unite Here Local 11 co-president Ada Briceño currently coming up short in her bid to represent the 67th Assembly District, which includes parts of Los Angeles County, Lopez may be the sole O.C. Latino progressive running in November for a seat beyond the local level.
Expect Lopez versus Penaloza to become a referendum on whether the leftward trend of Latino voters in Orange County continues — or whether its center holds.
“I’ve chosen my side,” Lopez told me. “I’m proud to stand with working people.”
Then she excused herself — someone else wanted to say what’s up.
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