In Assembly race, a young perspective

“My age definitely gives a different perspective, and a much-needed perspective,” Coleman said, who is also the only openly LGBTQ candidate. “It’s really going to be our generation that bears the brunt of climate change, that bears the brunt of the affordable housing crisis.”

Coleman is running against Maurice Goodman, a member of the San Mateo County Community College District Board of Trustees; Redwood City Mayor Giselle Hale; San Mateo Deputy Mayor Diane Papan; Tania Solé, a former candidate for Redwood City Council; and Republican Mark Gilham. The Daily Journal will be profiling the major candidates and running a series of stories on the various issues of the race.

The Harvard grad earned a biology degree with a minor in government last year. But he said it’s his family’s working-class background that most informs his ideology. Coleman’s father, who had been a FedEx driver, was severely injured and left unable to work when Coleman was 5 years old, requiring his mother, a lab assistant at Kaiser, to work two jobs to make ends meet.

“It really was my family and working class roots that really informed me and profoundly impacted the way I view the world,” he said.

In college, Coleman said he wanted to learn how government and the medical system could be changed to “work for all of us, not just the very few.” Among other campus advocacy organizations, he became involved with Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, a group that successfully pushed the university to divest from the fossil fuel industry last year.

And while issues surrounding income inequality and climate are at the forefront of his campaign, it was the South San Francisco police killing of Derrick Gaines in 2012 and the City Council’s subsequent handling of youth activism that first spurred him to seek political office.

“Our campaign was a campaign of necessity to bring about that justice we wanted to see,” Coleman said of his run for the City Council. Coleman said he was among hundreds of young people calling for police reform who became angered by then Mayor Richard Garbarino’s decision to block live virtual public comment, effectively silencing hundreds of voices, during the council’s meetings.

“When that happened, we knew that our voices could not be silenced, we had to run for office and hold our elected leaders accountable,” Coleman said, who graduated from South San Francisco High School, the same school Gaines, 15 at the time of his death, had attended.

“Many of my friends and I actually knew him, or we had taken classes with him ... so it was very personal to us,” he said. “We saw how the public health crisis of police brutality was not just a distant injustice but a real clear and present issue in our home community here in San Mateo County.”

Despite his relatively short time on the council, Coleman has already helped bring about some of the changes he campaigned on. The council last year approved the creation of a commission on racial and social equity, tasked in part with policy change recommendations for the police department. Coleman said the council is also working on ways to provide unarmed first responders for mental health and social work.

Coleman also backed an effort to establish a guaranteed income pilot program, which is currently handing out $500 checks monthly to 150 low-income residents. Last year, Coleman made clear his commitment to the environment and labor, pushing a developer of a large apartment building to use electric water heaters, and eventually casting the only no vote from the council after the developer refused to employ union carpenters.

This year, Coleman led the charge to establish a ballot initiative to allow the city to build and operate public housing. South San Francisco would be the first city on the Peninsula to do so if the plan came to fruition. Coleman said he still lives at his childhood home due to how unaffordable housing is in his district.

If he makes it to Sacramento, Coleman said his first piece of legislation would be a tax on “extreme wealth,” to fund resources that working families depend on.

“That means taxes on the biggest corporations and on the billionaires in the state,” he said. “That means fully funding our education system, that means investing in child care and infant care, that means guaranteeing a living wage.”

Coleman said he has so far raised $120,000 for his campaign, and is not accepting donations from corporations, private developers, fossil fuel companies, law enforcement associations, the gun lobby or Big Tobacco.

Among his endorsements are the California branch of the Service Employees International Union, the largest union in the state; the California Legislative LGBTQ caucus; California Young Democrats; the California Legislative Progressive Caucus; the California Working Families Party and the California Democratic Renters Council. He is endorsed also by Bay Area Assemblymember Alex Lee; climate activist Bill McKibben; and Sally Lieber, Mountain View councilmember and former Assembly speaker pro tem.

District 21 will cover much of the current District 22, encompassing portions of Brisbane, South San Francisco, Pacifica, Half Moon Bay, San Bruno, Millbrae, Burlingame, San Mateo, Hillsborough, Moss Beach, Foster City, Belmont, Redwood City, North Fair Oaks and East Palo Alto.