Bakersfield Vice Mayor Manpreet Kaur officially launched her state Senate campaign over the weekend, and told The Californian Wednesday affordability will be her top issue.
“Themes are common across the various roles that I hold, and that is that it is far too unaffordable to sustain life in the southern Central Valley,” Kaur said.
A Bakersfield City Council member since 2022, Kaur is a lecturer in political science at Cal State Bakersfield and political director for the civil rights advocacy group Sikh Coalition.
Representing Bakersfield’s Ward 7, Kaur is the first Punjabi Sikh woman elected to the council.
Kaur, a Democrat, filed paperwork to run in the 16th Senate District in January but said at the time she was still weighing her options. On Wednesday, Kaur said encouragement from local leaders across the region moved her to officially declare her candidacy.
The district is currently represented by another Democrat, Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Bakersfield, who’s served in the state Senate since 2018.
Hurtado told The Californian at the time she welcomes additional candidates as being healthy for democracy.
Kaur said Wednesday communities in the district are struggling to make ends meet and need solutions from a higher level than the City Council.
“While at the City Council at the local level, we can’t do much in alleviating the utility costs,” Kaur said.
“But at the state level, a state senator has meaningful leverage over utility costs because the utilities are heavily regulated at the state level, and while they don’t set the rates, they do set how utility companies can be regulated.”
Kaur has been endorsed by the progressive Working Families Party, which is also locally backing Visalia Unified School District board member Randy Villegas in his Congressional campaign.
Democrats in the Central Valley are often less progressive than their coastal copartisans, earning themselves the moniker “Valleycrat” for their support for the agriculture and oil industries that dominate the region.
Kaur said she believes various actors can come together to find solutions that are mutually beneficial.
“That sort of creativity and solution seeking and partnerships and conversations have happened at the local level within the city of Bakersfield where we have piloted different programs as we’ve seen new industry and infrastructure enter our region,” Kaur said.
“I believe that there are systems that are working that can be scaled across the Central Valley.”
Kaur said first and foremost her goal in office would be to communicate the needs of the working people who drive the industry in the valley.
“For me, this is about who has a plan to address what folks are experiencing in this political and economic moment,” she said.
“As a local elected official, I am both a community organizer and an elected official, and every day I’m receiving calls that go beyond the call to action of a city council member.”