Jennifer Esteen Aims to Heal Assembly District 20
Assembly candidate Jennifer Esteen talks with voter Roan Bontempo near downtown San Leandro on May 12.
There are no nurses currently serving in the California state legislature, and Jennifer Esteen, running for the State Assembly in District 20, would like to change that. She’s a psychiatric registered nurse who lives in unincorporated Ashland and who serves on the board of the Alameda Health System.
She is also a member of the Eden Area Municipal Advisory Council (MAC), as well as being vice president for organizing for Service Employees Local 1021, which represents many health care workers.
If elected, she’d be the legislature’s first-ever Black, lesbian, and Jewish member. She said her program goes far beyond her personal identity.
The open seat in Assembly District 20 came up when long-time incumbent Bill Quirk decided not to run for re-election. The district includes Castro Valley, San Leandro, Ashland, Cherryland, San Lorenzo, Fairview, Hayward, Sunol, and Union City. District lines were recently redrawn, and parts were shifted away from District 18, represented by Mia Bonta.
Esteen says she probably has a better perspective than most on how to bring about affordable health care for all Californians, starting with a statewide single-payer health plan.
While often thought of as a new idea, California’s legislature passed a single-payer plan twice—once in 2006 and then in 2008. Both times, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bills.
Esteen says she sees mental health care as a very necessary part of health care. Her entry into politics came through her work as a transitions director for recovering mental health patients in San Francisco. She helped stop the evictions of former patients who had just found permanent housing and wrote the legislation that became the Mental Health SF program.
“That’s when I went from being a voter and an observer to being an activist and maybe a candidate. I connected the dots on how policy decisions can impact daily lives,” she said.
Esteen said she believes mental health is one area where services should be uniform statewide, and the state should fund any services it demands counties provide.
“Housing, jobs, and transit are an ecosystem,” Esteen said. “We have to think beyond cars, freeways, and fires in sustaining that ecosystem.”
She’s in favor of the California Green New Deal to move beyond fossil fuels and invest in green energy to create jobs.
Esteen supports “deeply affordable housing for all” that addresses the housing needs of working Californians in everyday jobs. This is usually left out of plans limited to building market-rate housing for the better-off and subsidized housing for the very poor, she said.
Esteen also believes the state should have “leadership that produces deliverables,” where people can clearly see the benefits of the taxes they pay.
California’s general election is on November 8. A primary is scheduled for June 7.