DFA Celebrates Wendy Carrillo’s Victory in California’s 51st Assembly District Special Election

Today, Democracy for America (DFA) celebrated Wendy Carrillo huge victory Tuesday evening in her East L.A. special election runoff for California’s 51st Assembly seat.  This is DFA’s 49th election victory in 2017.  

The national progressive organization endorsed Carrillo back in June, since that time, has helped the campaign make over 20,000 calls with the DFA Dialer and assisted with on-the-ground staffing.

A community organizer, award-winning journalist, and activist who came to California with her family as an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador when she was a young child, Carrillo won the competitive race for the seat previously held by Jimmy Gomez, who vacated the seat to serve in Congress.

DFA Senior Electoral Campaign Manager Alejandro Chavez on Carrillo’s State Assembly victory:

“California’s 51st District chose Wendy Carrillo to serve them in the Sacremento because she’s an unapologetically feminist Latina community organizer who has fought for progressive values from Standing Rock to her East LA home and knows first hand the struggles of undocumented immigrants and unrecognized refugees.

“As Republicans try to ram through their immigrant-bashing tax scam in Washington and run some of the most white supremacist, misogynist slates they can find for state legislatures, values-driven inclusive populist leaders like Wendy Carrillo are showing the Democratic Party how to fight back and carving out their own space as it’s next generation of leaders.” -- Alejandro Chavez, Democracy for America Senior Electoral Campaign Manager and grandson of civil rights leader Cesar E. Chavez.

California Assembly Member-elect Wendy Carrillo on DFA’s support for her campaign:

“I am truly honored that the people of the 51st Assembly District have placed their faith in me and given me the opportunity to continue serving them in the State Assembly. I am grateful for Democracy for America’s early and strong support and look forward to continuing to work with them to preserve and promote our shared progressive values. At a time of unprecedented attacks on women, immigrant communities, communities of color, our LGBTQ friends and family, and others, we need to stand together to ensure our progressive values are protected. We must not be deterred nor divided, we must come together, resist, persist and overcome.” -- Wendy Carrillo, CA Assembly Member-elect, 51st District

Democracy for America is a member-driven, people-powered progressive PAC with 305,710 members in California and more than one million members nationwide committed to taking on income inequality, money in politics, and structural racism.

Since its 2004 founding, DFA members have raised and contributed more than $40 million and made more than 11.1 million volunteer calls to help successfully elect 918 progressive candidates nationwide.

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