What gubernatorial candidate had to say in small Stanislaus County community
A gubernatorial candidate visited a small unincorporated community southwest of Ceres in a bid for voters Wednesday.
Ian Calderon was a state assemblymember representing Southern California between 2012 and 2020. In 2016, he became the youngest California Assembly majority leader in the history of the state.
At the Monterey Park Tract community center, Calderon addressed potential voters. “We just have this, this box of solutions that we always pull from, and we keep electing the same people pulling from that same box of solutions,” Calderon said. “Nothing is ever going to change, it is going to continue to stay the same.”
Calderon, running as a Democrat, said he quit the Legislature in 2020 to spend time with his family, which now includes four young children.
The Monterey Park Tract is a 31-acre historically Black community in Stanislaus County that has struggled with access to clean drinking water. The community was established as a district in 1941.
Calderon said that before Stanislaus County Supervisor Channce Condit told him about the community, he had never heard of it. “It’s great for him to start with the smallest and probably longest-living community out here to start his campaign,” said Octavia Williams, who has lived in the community for four years.
Condit introduced Calderon as a longtime friend and said he brought him here to hear from community members about the issues they are facing, including cost of living and infrastructure.
“I brought a gubernatorial candidate here today to the tract as a reality check of how some folks in California are living,” Condit said. “And there’s no better people who can show us how average people are living than you folks today.”
Milton Jordan, who grew up in the community, is president of the Monterey Park Tract Improvement Association. “I came out here when I was 4 years old, and when I got married at 22 years old, I moved to the big city, Modesto — Ceres, then Modesto,” he said.
Jordan set up tables and played gospel hip-hop as residents trickled in. Calderon arrived 15 minutes late after a veterans roundtable he attended earlier that day at CSU Stanislaus.
Calderon said he intends to bring jobs to the Central Valley, a place he characterizes as often forgotten. “We’ve got a lot of tech jobs, warehousing jobs, manufacturing jobs that can move out here to the Central Valley,” he said.
Calderon vowed not to attempt to run for any higher office than governor. Instead, he said he wants to focus on increasing California’s self-reliance.
“We’re the fourth-largest economy in the world,” Calderon said. “We talk a lot about that, and what I don’t want to continue to do is be in a position where we’re dependent on the federal dollar.”
Water and pesticide issues raised
Tyrone McKinney is a fourth-generation Monterey Park Tract resident. He runs the community service district that maintains the small water system. He said leaks have gone down, but there are still some issues of rust.
“I’m hoping to talk to the [candidate] today that it needs to be upgraded,” McKinney said.
In the past, the community’s domestic wells were contaminated with both nitrate and 1,2,3 TCP, a remnant of a legacy pesticide. Currently, water is provided to residents through the city of Ceres, but he said they pay 1.5 times more than Ceres residents do.
Bettie Yelder, Jordan’s sister, said she appreciated Calderon coming out. “It’s just good to see that somebody cares about the guy at the bottom of the stack,” she said. She hopes he can address some of her concerns, like the adjacent almond orchard’s pesticide use.
“They come out and spray and it’s like, ‘Oh, my god, they’re spraying again,’” she said. “So then you know, I go in and close the doors and just don’t go out because I don’t know what they’re spraying and they don’t tell us.”
Yelder has been receiving drinking water bottles through the community service district over the past five years due to the well contamination, which she attributes to several nearby dairies.
Candidate talks affordable housing, accountability
Calderon focused his speech on increasing housing stock by removing barriers to affordable housing. One attendee who said he is homeless asked Calderon to look at what is being done with the funds spent by nonprofits, specifying that there should be enough housing vouchers available, but the money isn’t getting where it needs to go.
“There’s been no accountability and no oversight,” said Calderon in response. “There’s been, ‘Oh, look at what we did, here’s the press release in the social media post talking about what we did,’ but there’s no follow-through – and that’s just why people are so frustrated with government, and why people across this country are saying we want new generational change and leadership.”
Another resident said that if successful in his bid for governor, Calderon should focus on education. “There’s no civil liberty without civil literacy,” said the resident.
Calderon said he recognizes disparities in education and wants to look at where the most need is and where more investment needs to be made.
He was also asked about prison reform, which led Calderon to mention his older brother, whom he did not know very well because of their age difference. He said his brother had undiagnosed schizophrenia, which caused him to self-medicate with drugs, leading to crime.
When his brother got out of prison 10 years later, Calderon said, there were not enough support services in place to help him. He went back to drugs and eventually died.
“So, yeah, people fall through the cracks,” Calderon said. “My family has experienced this, and so you’re 100% right that it’s something that we need to put more time and attention into.”
After taking questions, Calderon and his team took group photos and selfies with the attendees.
Before coming to Stanislaus County, Calderon was not aware of the water issues in the Monterey Park Tract. He said his intention in visiting the Central Valley was to learn about the issues and experience how people live their lives.
“This area is very beautiful, and this is a community that cares a lot about each other, and they’re just asking for a little attention to make life a little affordable and a little more livable – and that isn’t a lot to ask your state for,” Calderon said.
