What's at stake?
The winner would help decide how the state addresses — and funds — key issues like agriculture, criminal justice, education, healthcare, housing and labor.
Voters in parts of Fresno, Madera and Merced counties will choose between Democratic incumbent Esmeralda Soria or Republican challenger Joanna Garcia Rose to represent California’s 27th Assembly district.
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What’s at stake?
A victory would give Soria a second term, and take her into her second decade of service as a politician serving the Central Valley. Her first term in the Assembly began after a victory over Republican and former Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin in November 2022.
Though an early-career politician, Republican challenger Joanna Garcia Rose has run for public office before. In 2014, Rose ran unsuccessfully for the state’s 16th Congressional District seat.
The winner of this race will oversee much of western Fresno, Madera and Merced counties, as well as take a seat in the lower-deck of the state’s congressional body. Some of the major cities California’s 27th Assembly district include Chowchilla, Coalinga, Delhi, Dos Palos, Firebaugh, Fresno, Kerman, Livingston, Los Baños, Madera, Mendota, Merced and San Joaquin.
The winner would help decide how the state addresses — and funds — key issues like agriculture, criminal justice, education, healthcare, housing and labor.
What is the state assembly & what does an assemblymember do?
The California state legislature includes two houses, the senate and assembly. The senate is made up of 40 legislators and represents the upper house. The assembly is made up of 80 legislators and represents the lower house. Together, these 120 legislators help create and pass laws and policies that are felt all throughout the state.
Since the 1970s, the Democratic Party has held a supermajority in the state legislature — meaning that they hold a voting majority in both houses.
The senate is currently made up of 31 Democrats and 9 Republicans.
The assembly is made up of 62 Democrats, 17 Republicans and one vacant seat.
A win from the challenger would be considered a major victory for the state’s conservatives, as California’s 27th Assembly district has been a consistent Democratic Party stronghold since the 1960s.
Joanna Garcia Rose
Joanna Garcia Rose, 39, is the Republican challenger to the state’s 27th assembly seat. She is an auditor, and currently serves as a business manager for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Rose grew up in Brentwood, a small city in Contra Costa County. At 19 she moved to Chowchilla, and has been based in the Central Valley ever since. She currently lives in Atwater.
Rose served as a tax auditor for the California Employment Development Department from 2019-2023. Her background also includes experience working as a contractor and a realtor.
Rose got a degree in Agricultural Business from Fresno State in 2008, and a law degree from the San Joaquin College of Law in 2013.
The landing page for Rose’s campaign website greets viewers with a quote saying the candidate believes the state is heading in the wrong direction and that it’s time for a change. When asked about what leads her to believe this, Rose pointed first to the state’s $56 billion deficit.
Rose said that “if we lived in a fairy tale,” such a deficit might be justified. “But we don’t live in a fairy tale. We live kind of in a nightmare, a little bit to some extent. ” The state is prioritizing the wrong things,” Rose said, leading to a number of problems including the rise in the homeless population in California.
She also said the Democratic supermajority in the state has stagnated progress.
“It feels like they’re actually indoctrinating us to want to become slaves or indentured servants to our politics, and that is just not what I was taught about our Constitution.” Rose said.
A victory for Rose would be a huge upset, in part because Soria has an enormous fundraising advantage, but it would also end decades of futility for California Republicans in the 27th Assembly seat.
Still, Rose managed to gain over 1,000 more votes than Soria in the March 5 primary election, along with a growing list of endorsements from establishment Republicans across the state. Though the primaries see lower voter turnout than in the general election, Rose is confident she can do enough to flip a seat that has yet to see red this century.
On Education
Rose said she’s against the state dictating the local district-level policies. Referencing Newsom signing the SAFETY Act – which prevents schools from forcing staff to notify parents automatically when a student states they identify as transgender — Rose said the SAFETY Act “attacks parents rights.”
“It severs my right as a mother to know what’s going on with my child, and it gives the government, a school, the ability to have discretion over what they do or don’t tell me.”
Rose said she is not opposed to people, including children, choosing to transition. However, she said legislation like the SAFETY Act doesn’t address what she believes to be bigger issues like academic achievements in math and literacy.
“It’s not that I’m opposed to people having the freedom to be transgender or whatever they want to be,” Rose said. “That legislation, specifically…the Democrats’ argument is it helps transitioning children be safe from their parents who would hold that against them. No, it doesn’t keep those kids safe. You want to know why? Because a child who is going to get verbally, physically, emotionally or mentally abused at home, because they come home and say, ‘Mom, I want to identify as a little little girl today,’ I bet you big dollars that child is already getting verbally, mentally, emotionally, physically abused by that parent.”
On Water
Rose has campaigned to streamline water law regulations, arguing that current laws, like the Endangered Species Act, punish farmers for things outside of their control.
She cited water issues in the town of Livingston, a small farm-factory community in rural Merced County and home of a large Foster Farms chicken processing plant. Rose noted many wells in Livingston are contaminated with arsenic.
“That’s a natural occurring incident in the formation. It’s not because some dairy polluted it. It’s just naturally occurring in the ground,” Rose said.
Rose, who has experience in water well drilling, said that most people do not understand the financial burden some of these laws place on cities like Livingston.
“They’ve got like 20 different wells, and half of them were contaminated,” Rose said. “They have things that they can implement to eliminate the contamination, but those things are expensive, so it impedes the development.”
On Housing
Like with water, Rose believes that there are too many hurdles to clear for progress to be made on new housing developments.
“We have a housing shortage, part of the reason why is because it’s really hard to get water, it’s really hard to build, it’s really hard to get permits. There’s just too much bureaucracy in California, and we’re now seeing the results, the impacts of it on a real level.”
Rose also said that there should be more accountability for how the state spends its homelessness funding. She also agrees with the governor’s sentiment on rerouting local funding toward jurisdictions that show improved results on homelessness counts and encampment clearings, as well Newsom’s belief that homelessness and housing are issues that need to be solved at the local level.
“I think the local management is important, because things are different in different communities,” Rose said.“Issues are different, and their local government can make those decisions, but I think the state needs to hold people accountable.”
On Crime
Using her experience as an auditor, Rose said she’d try her best to locate money to spend toward legislation to solve some of the most pressing issues her potential constituents have asked her to look at. She says crime is among her most consistent requests.
She was critical of Proposition 47 — a 2014 state measure voters approved that reclassified certain drug and criminal offenses to a lower offense level.
“We’ve seen a lot of reduced prison populations because they’re just letting people out, but we’ve also seen a huge increase in crime,” Rose said. “Our governor will say that we don’t have an increase in crime, and that’s because he changed the standard.”
Voters are expected to pass Proposition 36 in November, a tougher-on-crime law that has garnered bipartisan support, including Rose and Soria.
“We’ve changed our benchmarks and our standards for what we consider to be a crime, so we may have ‘lower crime’ but we don’t have safer people,” Rose said.
Esmeralda Soria
Esmeralda Soria, 39, is the incumbent to California’s 27th Assembly district. A win would lead Soria into a second decade working in politics, with her background including her work as an assemblymember and Fresno City councilmember for District 1 — covering the western portion of the city.
Soria, who grew up in Lindsay, attributes memories of her family and childhood as motivation for getting into politics. She also recalled a time when she was able to see herself first represented in politics.
“Growing up, I had a grandfather that was a Bracero, came here as an immigrant farm worker, ended up becoming a US citizen,” Soria said, “and he was the first one to expose me to politics and to civic engagement.
“Then fast forward, I participated in a leadership program called Chicano Latino Youth Leadership Project, where they took us to Sacramento for a week and we learned about government, about the state legislature,” Soria later added. “For the first time, I actually got to see some Latino legislators…I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is, like, awesome’ to see our voices be represented. Those were the moments that, for me, planted the seed and taught me how important it was for us to be involved in our community.”
Soria said her first major foray into politics was joining the coalition to stop Measure G, a city-wide initiative backed by then-mayor Ashley Swearengin that would have privatized Fresno’s garbage disposal service.
“I, out of just wanting to get involved and wanting to learn about the issue, got deep into the issue and learned about the impacts of what it would have meant to privatize these solid waste jobs,” Soria said.
Measure G was ultimately rejected by voters in 2013 by a narrow margin.
Soria then fully committed to politics by running for the District 1 Fresno City Council seat.
“The timing just kind of was right,” Soria said. “My boss [former State Senator Michael Rubio] had just resigned from office. I was trying to figure out what I would do next, and people encouraged me to look at running for office.
“There were no women on the council at the time,” Soria added, “and so for me, representation has always been big, not just as a Latina, but also as a woman.”
Soria would go on to win the election for the city’s District 1 race in 2014, and also go on to become the first Latina Fresno City Council president.
Soria currently serves as the chair for the state assembly’s agriculture committee. The role, which she took on in 2023, oversees an 11-figure budget that helps lay the groundwork for how the central valley’s agricultural landscape fleshes out.
On Education
Soria voted in favor of AB1995, which banned staff from local school districts from outing trans students to their parents. She said it’s “important” for the state legislature to be able to step in and address issues that she believes can be taxing on educators.
“My take on that issue was that, as a former educator, I already have a lot of responsibilities,” Soria said. “I don’t need to be the LGBTQ patrol. That’s not my role. I’m there to take care of every single student, regardless of what their name is, regardless of what their gender is, regardless of however they identify themselves.
“…I don’t think that teachers should be pressured or forced into following local policies that can be draconian and can make teachers be these, like, gender police,” Soria added. “That shouldn’t be their role…so when I feel like the state has to step in, because maybe what local (districts) are doing doesn’t make sense, I do believe that the state plays a role.”
On Crime
Newsom – a Democrat — maintains opposition to the proposition in spite of swelling support across ideological lines. Like the challenger, Soria is endorsing Proposition 36. She cites angst from her constituents as a driving factor in her endorsement.
“I think people are fed up,” Soria said. “People are fed up about what’s happening in our community. I’ve had the opportunity over the last several years to talk to a number of business owners, a number of residents in the various round tables or community meetings that we’ve had in the district, and people are just tired of seeing the lack of accountability and the fact that they can’t go to store without being concerned that you know, they’re going to experience retail theft happening in front of their nose.
Though the passing of Proposition 47 a decade ago was seen as a victory for progressives, Soria said her support — and those seen among other Democrats — is a course correction that’s necessary for elected officials like her and her peers to take when “something isn’t working.”
“It is important for us, both as a community and then also legislators, to evaluate policies. We’ve done it historically, right? If something is not working, hey, we fix it,”
On Housing
Soria said that while she agrees with the Newsom’s take that housing is an issue that should be handled at the local level, she said jurisdictions should be able to implement policies that best serve their local needs. The state has granted over $1 billion in funding to local jurisdictions to help combat homelessness, leaving the investment of those funds at the discretion of local governments.
With the United States Supreme Courts’ Grants Pass ruling, some local jurisdictions are using funds for homelessness in different ways.
“I think what cities are doing is evaluating what fits in their community and how they can address these challenges that they’re seeing locally,” Soria said. I know that the city council more recently approved this (anti-encampment ordinance), and so I want to see what are the outcomes.
“I think that it’s important that not everything gets shaped by Sacramento, because sometimes the one-size-fits-all solution is not the answer to the problems that various communities have,” Soria added. “We also have to give some flexibility to local communities to shape the policies that they see fit, that will address the challenges that they are experiencing, especially with homelessness.”
Soria said also that while the state has provided the resources for local jurisdictions to solve housing issues through funding, she hopes to find an equitable way to continue distributing funds. She said some of the communities in her district have not received their fair share.
“…the way that we dole out the resources from Sacramento to support the communities, I will tell you, most of the bigger cities have received homeless funding, but Mendota has not received one penny,” Soria said.
On Health
Soria wrote Assembly Bill 2104 which would have allowed for community colleges to grant bachelor’s degrees in nursing to help address the shortage of nurses in the San Joaquin Valley.
The bill was met with criticism from Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, who in a July op-ed published through The Fresno Bee said that he and the Cal State University system oppose the bill. Jiménez-Sandoval argues that the bill could be a financial burden on students and taxpayers alike, while arguing that the CSU already meets nursing needs.
“If we are serious about addressing the nursing shortage, let’s not create unnecessary, costly new nursing programs that will take years to bring online,” Jiménez-Sandoval wrote. “While the CSU was not involved in the original drafting of this legislation, we would welcome the chance to collaborate closely with our higher education partners to collaboratively address California’s nursing shortage.
“The President, his constituency is Fresno State,” Soria added. “My constituency are the people that live in Coalinga, Mendota, Livingston, and all these rural communities, and many of these communities are far away from state universities or any other university that these students can go to, and so if I can make it easier and more accessible for students to get their bachelor’s in nursing, that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Newsom vetoed the bill last month. The governor said he supports legislation like Soria’s but is concerned about its unintended effects on the already established partnership between the California Community Colleges and the Cal State University groups.
Soria’s effort on healthcare has also been directed toward the reopening of the Madera Community Hospital, which she said could open as early as before the end of this year.
“We are looking at a day of opening by the end of the year,” Soria said. “ I’m being, you know, very cautiously optimistic. Everything takes time, but by the end of the year, or first of 2025 it will be reopened.”
Who is endorsing the candidates in California’s 27th Assembly district?
Joanna Garcia Rose
- Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association PAC
- Former Secretary of State Bill Jones
- Senator Shannon Grove
- Congressman David Valadao
- Congressman Tom McClintock
- Congressman John Duarte
- Former Congressman George Radanovich
- Former Congresswoman Connie Conway
- Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher
- Assemblyman Joe Patterson
- Assemblyman Juan Alanis
- Assemblyman Bill Essayli
- Assemblyman Diane Dixon
- Assemblyman Phillip Chen
- Assemblyman Tom Lackey
- Assemblyman Heath Flora
- Assemblyman Tri Ta
- Assemblyman Jim Patterson
- Assemblyman Vincent Fong
- Assemblyman Devon Mathis
- Assemblyman Laurie Davies
- Former Assemblyman Frank Bigelow
- Merced County Sheriff Vernon Warnke
- Kern County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux
- Former Fresno Sheriff Margaret Mimms
- Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig
- Merced County Supervisor Daren McDaniel
- Merced County Supervisor Lloyd Pareira
- Madera County Supervisor Jordan Wamhoff
- Madera County Supervisor David Rodgers
- Atwater Police Chief Michael Salvador
- Chowchilla Mayor Kelly Smith
- Coalinga Mayor James Horn
- Los Banos Councilmember Deborah Lewis
- Coalinga Councilmember Nathan Vosbury
- Chowchilla Union High School District Trustee Brandon Moore
- Mendota Unified School District Trustee Lupe Flores
Soria Endorsements
- California Association of Highway Patrolmen
- California Democratic Party
- California High School Democrats
- California Police Chiefs Association
- California Statewide Law Enforcement Association
- California Women’s List
- Democrats at UC Merced
- EQCA
- Fresno Democratic Women’s Club
- Fresno Deputy Sheriff’s Association
- Fresno Police Officers Association
- HONOR PAC
- Latinas Lead
- Madera Democratic Club
- Planned Parenthood
- Women’s Political Committee
- Biola Community Service District Board Member, Kirk Ramos
- Central Unified School District Trustee, Naindeep Singh
- Central Unified School District Trustee, Philip Cervantes
- Firebaugh Mayor Felipe Perez
- Fresno City Councilmember Annalisa Perea
- Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias
- Fresno City Councilmember Nelson Esparza
- Fresno City Councilmember Tyler Maxwell
- Fresno County Supervisor Brian Pacheco
- Fresno County Supervisor Buddy Mendes
- Huron Mayor Rey Leon
- Kerman City Mayor Maria Pacheco
- Livingston Mayor Jose A. Moran
- Madera City Councilmember Jose Rodriguez
- Madera City Councilwoman Cece Gallegos
- Madera City Mayor Pro Tem Anita Evans
- Madera City Vice-Mayor Elsa Mejia
- Madera County Supervisor Leticia González
- Madera Mayor Santos García
- Mendota City Councilmember Jose Alonzo
- Mendota City Councilmember Libertad Lopez
- Mendota City Mayor Victor Martinez
- Merced City Councilwoman Bertha Perez
- Merced Mayor Matt Serrato
- Senator Anna Caballero
- AFSCME 3299
- CAL FIRE Local 2881
- California Labor Federation
- California Nurses Association
- California Professional Firefighters
- California Teachers Association
- Faculty Association of California Community Colleges
- FMTK Building Trades
- Foremen’s Union Local 94
- Fresno Firefighters – IAFF Local 202
- NorCal Carpenters
- North Valley Labor Federation
- UDW/AFSCME Local 3930
Who is funding the candidates’ campaigns?
Soria has a nearly 10x fundraising advantage, raising about $3.6 million in 2023 and 2024 compared to Rose’s $360,000.
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