Candidate Profile: Corey Jackson for California's 40th Assembly District
Minor update: I somehow failed to mention it in this article, but Jackson was endorsed in the primary for this office by Inland Empire DSA in addition to being a member. IEDSA’s endorsement does not cross over for the general election here, however.
Welcome again to Socialism on the Ballot, folks.
Today’s relatively brief candidate profile takes us to a major state for DSA electoral success, California, where one Corey A. Jackson of Riverside, California has advanced out of the top-two system and looks to become the second DSA member in the California State Legislature.
Who is Corey Jackson?
Corey Jackson is an interesting guy. I wouldn’t say he has quite the lengthy history of our last profilee, one Megan Ellyia Green, but he’s not a nobody either. Most of his life to this point has been public service in one form or another, beginning when he was in high school and served as the Student Board Member for his native Rialto Unified School Board. Since then, he’s bounced around quite a lot: he has degrees from two schools (CSU San Bernardino and California Baptist University) and he was a trustee for California State University under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for three years. He also does quite a lot of political and social justice work: he is a founder and the current CEO of Sigma Beta Xi Youth and Family Services; he serves as the political action chair for the Riverside NAACP; he leads the California Democratic Party Black Caucus; and he is both a state executive committee member and an elected member of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee. In his spare time, he works as the youth minister for the Moreno Valley Church of Christ. I would characterize his self-description as a “local nonprofit leader and civil rights leader specializing in youth development, culturally responsive interventions and social justice issues,” as pretty accurate.
Jackson has been at the forefront of quite a few issues in the Inland Empire region, from mentoring black students through SBX to suing Riverside County over its “Youth Accountability Team” (which threatened and policed hundreds of minority students for their “pre-delinquent” and “delinquent” behavior) and successfully getting the county to completely change how the program works. (Later, such programs were effectively made illegal by a California law passed after the George Floyd protests in 2020.) But most visibly in the community, he has served as a milestone for diversity: in 2020 he was elected to the Riverside County Board of Education with 65.67% of the vote, in the process becoming the first Black person to ever serve on it. In doing so, he also crushed a candidate backed by the California Charter School Association, Dominic Zarecki. This race was also where his interaction with Inland Empire DSA began—while at this point Jackson was not a member as far as I’m aware, Jackson received their unanimous endorsement, and was not only one of their first endorsements as a chapter ever but their first win.
For the most part, Jackson’s time in office has been quiet—his time outside of it, however, has not been. Shortly after becoming a trustee-elect, he was a founding member of the Riverside County Alliance of Black Elected Officials which has sought to address local racism and political inequality. In this capacity he and other Black elected officials managed to get Riverside County and San Bernardino County to declare racism a public health crisis, alongside the Inland Empire cities of Banning, Fontana, Moreno Valley, Redlands, Rialto, and Riverside. Into 2021 the group was looking into expanding police accountability in the Inland Empire and better health access for minority communities. Individually, Jackson himself also had quite an eventful 2021, meeting with anti-racist activist Ibram X. Kendi at an anti-racism summit organized by Jackson’s Center Against Racism and Trauma (CART) and then with Black Panther Party activist Bobby Seale in April and May. In October, he spoke out against Riverside County’s choice to partner with an advertising company that opposed California’s vaccine mandates to… produce an advertising campaign encouraging minorities to get vaccinated. Presumably because of his campaign, though, his 2022 activism has been muted.
The Assembly District and the election
So, where is that campaign taking place? And what’s it like?
The district
Assembly District 60, is anchored by the city of Moreno Valley and also covering the neighboring cities of Perris, Mead Valley, San Jacinto, and Good Hope. It’s an overwhelmingly non-white district, with a voting-age population that’s nearly 60% Hispanic and 13% Black, and even in a big Republican wave year—which this by all accounts is not shaping up to be—it would be likely to remain in the Democratic column. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden both received about 62% of the vote here, and Gavin Newsom rung in at 59.5% in 2018.
This seat is also open thanks to an interesting shuffling of lines in redistricting: the old Assembly District 60 was west of Riverside, and has for all intents and purposes been replaced by Assembly District 58. Previous District 60 incumbent Sabrina Cervantes is seeking re-election there as a consequence. Meanwhile, the new District 60 takes the place of the old District 61—which has been shifted to Inglewood (not a joke!)—and District 61 incumbent Jose Medina is retiring. Thus, an open seat, and a prime chance of advancement for any politician. It’s not that much of a surprise Jackson jumped at the chance here; while Jackson is serving in a comparatively “low-level” political office, said office means he already represents over 350,000 constituents, many of which are eligible to vote in Assembly District 60.
The primary
It might go without saying, but representing that many people already was important for his advancement out of the primary. Despite being the Democrat that advanced out of this primary by a substantial margin, Jackson did worse than his districtwide average in non-incorporated areas in the district, and in areas of the district he hasn’t represented to this point (particularly toward San Jacinto). He took third and in a few isolated spots fourth in parts of the district. This, however, was easily offset by Moreno Valley and Perris—both covered by his district on the Riverside Board of Education and which cast substantial chunks of the district vote—where Jackson averaged close to 31% of the vote versus the 27% he saw districtwide.
The endorsement of California’s Governor, Secretary of State, one of its two Senators, several state-level representatives (including DSA member and socialist Alex Lee), twenty local officials, the state’s Democratic Party, most of the state Democratic Party caucuses, several labor unions, and a plethora of state progressive groups and PACs probably didn’t hurt his chances here either. In addition to having represented and received the votes of many of his constituents, Jackson—by a fairly wide margin—garnered the largest number of endorsements and the most extensive support on the Democratic side of this race. Given the circumstances, it might even be a little bit surprising that the other Democratic challengers in the race—Esther Portillo and Jasmin Rubio—received 20% and 13% of the vote respectively. But it is a very Hispanic district, and both are Hispanic Democrats, so perhaps not. (Rubio even received two endorsements from congresspeople herself, and Portillo had no shortage of State Assembly and Senate endorsements.)
Can Jackson win? and Jackson’s platform
Without question—this is actually the likely outcome here. This district is, as I noted before, a fairly partisan Democratic district that would be hard to flip even in a heavily Republican year. Two-party share of vote in blanket primary states also tends to be a good indicator of how the district will vote in the general election, and going by this metric the Democratic share of vote in AD-60 this year was about 60%. Despite what worried liberals and angry centrists might try to argue, there is also little reason to assume Jackson will underperform here in any meaningful sense of that word. When Alex Lee was elected in 2020 and shared the ballot with Joe Biden, he underperformed Biden by… 0.4%. As a result, I would anticipate a map that looks very similar to the 2020 presidential map here, although I also would not be surprised to see Jackson outrun other Democrats in Moreno Valley and Perris specifically. San Jacinto is not likely to be decisive in any sense, but it will also be interesting to see how Jackson does there; it is a nominally Democratic region of the district—in the primary it was about 52% Democratic—but Jackson has never represented it and it is quite far from his base.
As for what to expect from Jackson in the legislature if he wins, his platform is pretty explicitly progressive, if vague in some places. Explicit details are pretty good: he calls healthcare a human right and supports universal healthcare, and does the same for affordable housing, noting that the cost of housing is directly causing homelessness among working people. He actually identified cost of housing as a major issue in his January campaign launch, noting that the Inland Empire region was experiencing the same rise in housing costs that have made other areas of California unaffordable for working people. Jackson also explicitly supports universal childcare. The rest of his platform is more ambiguous but also points in a good direction: he believes people should be able to support themselves on just one job; improving education for minority and marginalized students and specifically incorporating anti-racism into education; protecting the environment; and “returning power to the people” generally.