Lateefah Simon jumped to an early lead against Jennifer Tran in the District 12 California congressional race in early returns Tuesday night in a race that will pass the torch to a new generation of California progressives.
Ballot returns from the Alameda County Registrar of Voters show Simon with a sizable lead to take over Rep. Barbara Lee’s seat in a race that some critics have called a “coronation” for Simon due to her institutional support from leading Democrats in the state.
“We out-raised and outworked and out-knocked our competition,” Simon told Bay Area News Group last month in the lead-up to the election.
Updated results were expected to be released later in the evening.
Simon has been the heavy favorite in the race after receiving nearly 56% of votes in a crowded March primary and an appearance at the Democratic National Convention in August, where she gave a stump speech for presidential candidate Kamala Harris. But a poll by the University of Southern California and California State University taken in September showed that most District 12 others remained undecided, which Tran seized as giving her a chance to upset Simon come election day.
The open congressional seat in District 12 opened up after Rep. Barbara Lee lost in her run for California senator and did not seek reelection. District 12 includes Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, Piedmont and San Leandro.
Simon has split her time between District 12 and Washington D.C. in the months leading up to the election as part of an effort to form relationships with congressional members before she is elected to office, she told Bay Area News Group. She said she’d spoken with more than 3,000 District 12 voters in the weeks leading up to the election, adding that she is working 15 hours each day to secure victory.
Tran has been going door-to-door in District 12, and attending community events like Oktoberfest to introduce herself to voters as a candidate. She’s used these moments to criticize Simon’s closeness with Democratic leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and California Senator Alex Padilla.
“We are backed by local residents, immigrants and small businesses, who are all living in fear of not just public safety, but fear of retribution, fear of speaking out against the establishment,” Tran told Bay Area News Group last month. “We’re challenging people to choose policy over popularity.”
Simon did not have a documented policy platform until last month, when she published her policies supporting universal healthcare, enhancing education to stop crime at its source and investing in permanent affordable housing. This platform, she said, is the result of meetings with both field experts as well as residents across the district, adding that she “underpromises and over-delivers” in her past leadership positions as the leader of a San Francisco-based nonprofit and BART board member.
“It’s been really important for me to get community consensus,” Simon told Bay Area New Group last month. “I wanted to make sure that what I was promising and what I was talking about are actual, viable solutions that will move in my first term in Congress,” Simon said.
Tran offered a different version of consensus, pledging to utilize technology that would allow voters to decide her position on every bill in Congress as part of her effort to “democratize the district.” That policy, she said, would increase the level of transparency and empower voters in the 21st century.