Platform

Healthcare

Marisol was inspired into public service after seeing the many ways our health care system wasn’t working for us. Marisol spent years of her life battling private sector and government bureaucracies to ensure her daughter had access to quality health care, and she’s driven to take all that she’s learned to make health care better for all of us.

Marisol’s health care priorities include:

Expanding Medi-Cal eligibility and the Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, and pursuing other options to achieve health care for all.
Investing more in preventative care, which saves money system wide.
Investing more in and destigmatizing mental health care.
Incentivizing more students to enter the healthcare field to address our health professional backlog.
Capping prescription drug costs to the fullest extent possible under state law.

Our Environment

An Executive Committee Board Member of Sierra Club California, Marisol is proud to be the environmentalist running for State Senate in District 9.

Marisol’s environmental priorities include:

Preserving our open spaces and holding firm on urban limit lines.
Keeping California to its 100% clean energy commitments. We need to transition away from fossil fuels as quickly as feasibly possible and invest rapidly in more clean energy and electric vehicle infrastructure.
Building new homes close to amenities, services, and transit and places where people work and thrive. This reduces vehicle miles traveled, encourages healthy living, and helps small businesses.
Investing in more transit, bicycle infrastructure, and safe streets. All of us, including seniors and people with disabilities, should feel safe on our sidewalks.
Preparing for catastrophic weather events. Climate change is creating a more unpredictable environment, and we need to be prepared for these events.
Protecting the Bay and the Delta. The San Francisco and San Pablo Bays and San Joaquin Delta are state treasurers. We need to make sure that we protect local habitat, while trying to meet water demand across California.
Cracking down on polluters. All of us deserve clean air and clean water.

Education

Marisol’s mother taught in a high-need school district for over 30 years and Marisol herself was a K-5 bilingual science teacher. She learned from an early age the value of a quality education.

In California, too many of our public schools are woefully underfunded, and our students, teachers, and support staff are suffering from inadequate facilities, large class sizes and low wages. There was once a time when a UC or CSU education was essentially free for qualified California students; today, far too many families choose other options because they can’t take on the student debt. Marisol is proud to be the candidate endorsed by the California Teachers Association, California School Employees Association, California Faculty Association, California College Democrats, and California High School Democrats.

Marisol’s education priorities include:

Working to make California a top 10 state in per pupil investment, lowering class sizes, hiring more teachers and support staff, raising teacher wages, and preserving extracurricular activities that enrich students.
Holding the line on college tuition and expanding grants for lower and middle income families.
Expanding counseling and social services in public schools to identify and help at-risk youth early.
Encouraging more labor apprenticeship and career development programs in high school.
Helping student parents and vulnerable students attend college through increased financial aid and housing assistance.
Investing more in pre-K and afterschool programs to help working parents meet the needs of their children.

Housing

Housing is a human right. Marisol is committed to an all of the above approach toward housing affordability that guides California to a future where all of us can afford to live here and build roots in the communities we live in.

Marisol’s housing priorities include:

Increasing housing production, especially affordable, near transit, downtowns, and places of employment.
Holding the line on urban limit lines to prevent sprawl and encourage more housing where it’s most needed.
Investing in statewide funds to help communities invest in more affordable housing and solutions to help the unhoused find stable housing and employment.
Pursuing policies that help all Californians secure a living wage that helps them afford their housing payments.
Helping first time home buyers achieve the dream of home ownership.
Protecting tenants from unjust evictions.

Justice and Fair Employment Practices

No human should be discriminated against because of who they are or their life circumstances. Marisol has and will always fight for every person to have equal rights to jobs, housing, education, medical care, criminal and civil justice, safety, and privacy, regardless of their race, religion, sex, age, or gender identification.

Marisol’s priorities for justice and fair employment practices include:

Ensuring that employers are upholding fair employment practices whether in wages or in opportunities and benefits. Contra Costa County has one of the highest rates of fair employment abuses, and it's time to do something about this!
Elevating the voices of people often unheard - the disabled, elderly, and low-income working families - from unjust rent hikes and displacement.
Extending paid family leave and paid sick leave.
Investing in wraparound services for the unhoused and people recently incarcerated to ensure they have the support and services they need to lead fruitful lives.

Transportation

A world class state deserves a world class transportation infrastructure. Marisol is committed to making Alameda and Contra Costa counties places where all of us can live, work, and thrive.

Marisol’s transportation priorities include:

Investing in more frequent and reliable BART service and improving BART cleanliness and safety.
Investing in safe sidewalks that make seniors and people with disabilities comfortable using them.
Strategically deploying safe bike infrastructure that makes more riders feel comfortable bicycling on our streets.
Expanding electric vehicle charging infrastructure throughout the district and state and incentivizing implementation of electric vehicle charging stations in multi-family housing developments.