Caroline Menjivar, 32

What was the best piece of advice you received before running for office?

Little Caroline Menjivar wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up. When she couldn’t, she was determined to serve her community another way. After serving as one of the few queer women of color in the Marines, she is using her diverse experiences to represent the diverse community in the San Fernando Valley.

Make sure you do some mental health and self care throughout this. I was told to get a therapist to talk to someone about this process. I was told the campaign was going to challenge me, not just from running the campaign, but more individually, it could definitely hurt your ego as you're seeing your opponents getting endorsements that you thought you were going to get. That was my biggest takeaway - make sure you have a therapist to talk to.

When did the lightbulb go off? When did you realize you wanted to run for office?

This has been my five year plan that I've been working towards to ensure that I was prepared. So often women apply for jobs when they have over 100% of the qualifications in job descriptions. But men apply for jobs when they have 50% of the qualifications. 

I was born with a calling to serve people, and being in the military fit that calling. In my opinion, the ultimate way you can serve others is to serve your country.

Unfortunately I fell into that stereotype of wanting to cross off every checkbox that I could before I launched. So in the past five years, I went to the school that gave me a fellowship at the Mayor's Office, got a higher education, strategically got jobs that would help me run for this office.

Tell me about California’s Senate District 18. What issues are facing your constituents?

Senate District 18 holds about 1.1 million people according to the 2010 census. While we saw a huge increase in Latinos in the state of California, this area had the 3rd highest amount of population loss in the City since the 2020 census. This is a result of the previous President who put so much fear in the immigrant population, predominantly the Latino population, and a lot of Latinos did not fill out the census. Senate District 18 has 42% registered Latino voters, a huge base that saw a big decrease. 

This area holds one of the most low income communities and one of the richest and most affluent areas in San Fernando Valley. So you have people on one side of the district that have several families living in one household, to the other side where you have $2 million homes. The spectrum is very wide. As you can imagine with redistricting now, we could see some changes to make sure the representation aligns with the community here.

We have two out of the nine community colleges and one CSU in this district. We have the orange line and the only access to the Redline in this area. Of course, that is not enough public transportation, but that's where it is. We're surrounded by mountains, and unfortunately there are areas that are disproportionately affected by fires and climate change almost every year. We are also impacted disproportionately by climate change. This is one of the hottest areas in the city of LA. Compared to  anywhere else in the City, the Valley is always around 10 degrees hotter. On top of the fires, on top of the hot summers, Senate District 18 has the Valley Generating Plant(which had a recent link) two airports within 10 miles of each other, Van Nuys and Whiteman Airport, and a waste management facility here. There are endless amounts of auto repair businesses that are often part of the blythe problem, and open recycling plants polluting our air. 

You talk often about overcoming barriers during the 2008 economic crisis. As we live through the economic downturn spurred by the pandemic, how can we better serve residents during economic recovery?

Growing up, I felt I had no one to turn to for help. I'm a first generation college student, first generation high school graduate for that matter. I am the firstborn of immigrant parents who met here. For any other firstborns out there, we know there's an even bigger burden and pressure on us. I'm always turning back to little Caroline, teenager Caroline, remembering what it felt like to be in her shoes, and then bringing that back to adult me and thinking about the children now. I think of the children of immigrants now and realize not much has changed. 

So often I feel that we're very reactive to matters that are affecting our society, instead of taking a couple steps back and seeing through a bigger picture lens. We know the variables fueling homelessness, the things that are fueling poverty. Why is it that we're meeting people already at their final straw, after they’ve climbed mountains and stepped over hot rods? Instead, why don’t we say, I feel like you're inching too close into uncertain territory, let me step in right now before it gets real bad.

I'm a social worker, and I am always going to advocate for mental health. That's the number one thing I'm going to advocate for because it can be the deterrent for so many things. So this pandemic only further showed the things that we already knew. It was just now placed right in front of our faces so that we couldn't move it away. 

We already knew that we had individuals on the brink of eviction. We already knew there were individuals that didn't have worker protections, who had to go to work while they were sick because they had no access to childcare. Individuals who, if they didn't go to work, didn't have benefits to utilize sick pay, vacation pay, to then get their full paycheck to put food on their tables. We knew that existed. This pandemic just further proved how many people are at the brink of losing it all. 

I'm going to start helping individuals from the beginning, from kindergarten to ensure that by the time they're seniors in high school, they’ve officially prepared their life toolbox they can use so anything is accessible, whether they're going to college, a skill set through vocational school or they're going into the military. We have set them up to make that decision, and they're better prepared for whatever route. 

That's what I think is needed - support in the beginning, support for trauma that's going on in the household. We recognize that trauma for children is then showcased as adults in other ways like substance abuse, depression, and anxiety. So we need to work on that small kid, and ensure we provide them everything necessary to have an 18-year-old graduating from high school, ready to take on the world.

A huge source of your knowledge about these issues comes from your experience working directly in the community as an EMT and a social worker. How did you get into public service?

Little Caroline wanted to be a firefighter since she was nine years old. That was my ultimate dream. My mom will tell you how many burn marks I left on our carpet. How many trash cans we had to go through because I would start little fires in my room and then learn how to put them out. In one incident I almost burned down our backyard because the fire got out of control. But I saved it! 

I had never seen a female firefighter. I don't even know how this idea came to my head. I think I was 16 years old when I came across a female firefighter. I wanted to be just like her. I trained for it. I was a Firefighter Cadet all throughout high school. I went to wildland firefighter training in the mountains as a high school student. I was doing everything right. I went to Valley College and East LA College to get my Fire Tech Associates degree to then transfer to Cal State LA.  I wanted to be a firefighter with a college degree. Back then the requirements were only to be 18 years old but I wanted to get my education too because I wanted to be promoted quickly within the fire department. 

Then the recession hit and all the municipalities nearby did a hiring freeze, so no one was hiring to be a firefighter. I was just so sad. What am I going to do with my life now?

That's when things started to change for me. That's why I joined the military because I thought firefighters would love that I'm a veteran. The Marine Corps was top notch, and I wanted to be top notch. It was a way for me to continue serving by being there at people's most vulnerable moments. I wanted to be that for people. I was born with a calling to serve people, and being in the military fit that calling. In my opinion, the ultimate way you can serve others is to serve your country. It was there that things started to change for me. I started being exposed to injustices as one of the few females in the military, you get to see some things. 

Everyone talks about military sexual trauma, the most recent unfortunate events in Texas with Vanessa Guillén, the Army soldier who was killed after coming forward with her sexual harassment. That's something that I started to see in the military, and these injustices just kept happening. I knew I didn’t like this, but I didn’t know what to do with it just yet. So I went to school to learn more. 

You said earlier that military service to you was the best way to serve your country. But you also served in the Marine Corps during the final years of Don't Ask Don't Tell. How did you reconcile serving in a body that didn’t necessarily want to serve you?

This year is actually the 10 year anniversary of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. 12 years ago when I joined the military, Don't Ask Don't Tell was still in effect, and I served in the military for the last two years of its ruling. It was tough because I was in my early 20s and I was still coming to terms with my own sexual orientation. I come from a very conservative, very Christian household, so I didn't think it would be that hard to hide who I am. I hide who I am with my family, I could do this in the military now. 

But I did struggle and that affected my leadership skills. Marines were hanging out with each other, and I had started dating my girlfriend, now wife, and I wanted to talk about her. People were going out and asking, "Menjivar, do you have a boyfriend?"

I never brought my girlfriend around. I struggled with utilizing the correct pronouns to ensure I didn't get caught. And unfortunately in the Marine Corps, people drink a lot. So I was always worried about drinking with my Marines and it coming out accidentally.  It really made me isolate myself a bit, and made me not be the true leader that I knew I was ready to be in the Marine Corps.

It was hard for me to call out these horrendous jokes around me. I would call it out sometimes but it was more difficult to call out homophobic jokes because I was worried that they would think I was coming out. 

When the repeal happened, I was over the moon. I was excited that they got to finally meet the person that makes me laugh 24/7. I just immediately shared it with everybody. I had a really great experience with how they reacted to it. They didn't care at all. 

I said I was sorry. I was apologizing, as if I had done something wrong. They said you're fine. You're still our marine. We still love you, and it did change for the better because now my unit was getting 100% of Menjivar. This is who she is, this is all she is, and it made me a better leader. It made me closer to my Marines. I'm happy to celebrate this 10 year anniversary. 

As someone who grew up closeted in the Valley, how can we better support LGBTQ youth in the Valley today?

We need to do so much more in the San Fernando Valley. Currently there's no physical space for LGBTQ+ in this community. You have to cross over the freeway to get to the LA LGBT Center or to the ones in East LA or South LA. But we don't have anything here. We're a queer desert. 

I talk to so many queer kids who always ask, “Where do I go to meet people like me? I didn't know there were other people like me.” They would tell me that and it shocked me. They would say, “You're a lesbian who works for the Mayor's Office? I didn't know we could do that.” 

It breaks my heart. I thought it was 2021. We're in the city of LA. I've done “Queer in Your Career” professional panels for queer kids to let them know that any professional job is within their reach. I've done field trips to UCLA to show queer kids that access to higher education can be affordable. We went to see their Pride Center to show that there's safe and affirming universities for them. Then a trivia night for them to learn about LGBTQ+ history.

I also do the annual San Fernando Valley Pride Car Parade, where we take over the streets and just bring presence to non affluent areas. West Hollywood has events, LA has events, but we need representation in the Black and Brown communities. That's where we need to bring some pride.

One of your projects within the Mayor’s Office was "Putting Angelenas on the Map", an effort to get more streets named after women. How did that project come together?

For me, inequities are just an overall passion but more specifically issues affecting gender, gender-specific violence, gender specific issues are the closest to my heart. I actually provided therapy to domestic violence victims in this district, in Van Nuys. I couldn't do that anymore because to be honest with you, it was so upsetting. There's so much impacting women. Women were the number one demographic who lost a lot of jobs during the pandemic. Women who put aside their careers because there's not affordable access to childcare. 

There's so much that we can talk about this, and on the other side, there are so many phenomenal women who have done so much for this country. Women who've impacted, created change, who led the way - the trailblazers. And yet only about 10% of landmarks, facilities, and streets are named after women. But we have hundreds of streets named after Christopher Columbus across the country or other male figures. I did a project called “Putting Angelenas on the Map” where I curated a list of influential Angelenas, so when people ask, “We have a new street to name after someone, who do we name it after?” There’s a list.

If little girls don't see it, they won't know that they can be. We did a huge push on women being able to run for president. Fantastic! But we need to do that for everything. Little girls and little boys need to see that anything is possible for them. If we don't see male ballerinas on TV, they're never going to think that they can get into ballet. It cuts across the same. 

Growing up in a conservative environment and serving in the Marine Corps, not exactly progressive spaces, do you think those experiences will affect how you approach differences of opinion in the Legislature?

I'm a progressive candidate. I'm a queer woman of color. I have to be progressive, I am fighting for my rights here. My rights are always on the chopping block. Whether it's because I'm a woman, whether they're trying to take away my right to marry, or whether they're calling my heritage racists and gangs. I'm always on the chopping block. But I'm also a veteran, and that's something that you don't really see within progressive candidates. Somehow we draw this line that if you're a veteran or pro-service members you're conservative. But that's not the case. 

My military experience has made me a well rounded individual. In 2018, we saw the largest number of female veterans running for office across the United States, more for Congress than locally. So many people who run are wonderful leaders, I'm never going to take that away. But I personally feel, as veterans, we've worked with all types of people. We look at a mission, and we're not distracted by the drama or by ego. We go by what is better for the country, for our constituents. This is better for my community, this is better for my state, and I'm not going to deviate from that to entertain Twitter storms. I'm going to be focused on this mission. 

My district has all types of people from all spectrums. I appeal to people as a veteran. They see a patriot. She loves her country. Yes, I love my country and that's why I want to fight for the most vulnerable people.

Then in other communities, they don't really care that I'm a veteran. But I get to tap into my other identities. I get to tap into the four identities that I have which open a door to different networks. And by doing that, I get to talk to people who are only interested in my veteran side, then I bring them to the table. All I need to do is bring different people to the table because once they're at the table, they're going to listen. That's how I'm looking at it. Bringing different people to the table that normally didn't really talk to each other, and I've done that as a staffer for elected officials and I'm planning on doing that as a Senator.

What perspectives do you think are kind of missing in the State Legislature? And what do you think are some unique perspectives that you're bringing?
This isn't to take away anything from our representatives now. But there are some times that we often forget where we come from. My first exposure to local government was working for the Mayor's office a couple years ago as a fellow. I was overseeing programs and policies being brought to the table. I would ask, “Have you been to the community that you're trying to do this program for? No? When was the last time you even walked around there.” So often policy makers and decision makers haven't even exposed themselves to the community. 

I'm not a candidate that comes in saying, "I spent the last 10 years in a different state or working outside of the valley. I was born here and that's my only connection.” When a constituent tells me, Caroline I'm on the verge of being evicted. I'm not here saying, “Well, I can only imagine how that must suck. I can only imagine how you're struggling to pay for your bills.” No, I'm going to be a representative who's going to go to Sacramento and say, “I've been through that and let’s ensure no one else has to have this experience.”

I know what it’s like to be evicted, I know exactly what it feels like to have to work double jobs to pay the bills. I'm going to be a representative who can speak to the actual experiences of my constituents, not because of the stories they've told me, but because I've also lived through it. 

When you look at me, you're looking at a mirror of the community. Not someone that's just oblivious and taking on these stories. I live these stories. I'm bringing the perspective of a frontline worker from the past few years, especially during the pandemic, fighting alongside the community. I haven't been behind closed doors behind a computer this whole pandemic, I've been on the frontlines with the community. I've broken bread with them. I've cried with them. I've laughed with them. That's the perspective I am bringing to Sacramento. Someone that IS the community.

Do you feel like you have any advantages or disadvantages as a young candidate?

The average age of a woman in California is in her mid 30s. As a 32-year-old, I am mirroring what the average age of a woman in the state is. That’s an advantage.

While I am young, I don't have the background of a young person. I've done quite a lot of things in my life, from military, EMT, working as a staffer, I've been evicted, I've done odd jobs. I've experienced a lot of things. I've experienced loss and happiness. So often we're waiting for older people to run because they have those experiences, but then they forget about the younger demographic. I'm a young person who has the experiences of a much older person, who's still young and can still resonate and talk about the issues of younger voters, who can appeal to the younger voters. 

But on the other side, a disadvantage is the people that I'm calling right now in my campaign are older people. They're the ones who are involved heavily in politics. It's trying to find that connection there and say, “I know you're looking at someone who probably is the same age as your granddaughter or daughter but don't look at me that way.” However, to be honest, my supporters so far are made up of older people. A lot of older women groups who have come out in loud support of me. So, it looks like I am doing good in that demographic. 

What is the best piece of advice you would give to another young Dem considering a run for office?

So often you hear women of color saying we need more women of color in politics. We need more people of color. I don't know if once they get to the point that they're trying to get to, they forget what they said back then. They need to remember the difficulties they’ve had. As we get older, we need to ensure that the future generation doesn’t go through those barriers. So when you get to that point of being elected or being the CEO, bring as many people with you.  If young Dems are trying to run for office, all those people that you've mentored will then support you. That's really key. 

Remember that more and more younger people are voting, so we have a bigger base. Younger voters are getting involved because of climate change. So, we want more young representatives, we need young people to vote. We need other Carolines to vote, to run for office. In the state of California, there's only 32% of females in the state legislature even though there's over 50% of women in the state. 

We need you. We need all the young people. We've been stuck on the sidelines. We need more progressive younger people to bring their perspectives and fresh out of the box ideas to create sustainable change.
The views expressed in this interview are those of the candidate, and do not reflect the beliefs and views of Ballot Breakers or its staff.