California State Senator Monique Limón talked to students at the Student Resource Building on Jan. 30 about her journey to becoming a politician, bills she passed and the status quo for politicians in California right now — dealing with a budget deficit and damages from the recent Los Angeles wildfires.
Senator Monique Limón represents the 21st Congressional District, including Santa Barbara and Ventura County. Wesley Haver / Daily Nexus
“There are still everyday things that we can all be doing to improve the quality of life for yourself and for others, and so I don’t want you to lose hope,” Limón told around 45 attendees. “Those of us that are in office won’t be in office forever. We will need folks in every single industry, in every single sector, who are subject matter experts, who can contribute to leaders.”
Limón represents the 21st Senate District, which includes Santa Barbara County and a majority of Ventura County. She previously served as the senator for District 19 from 2020-2024 until it was redrawn to become District 21. Prior to that, she served as the assembly member for District 37 from 2016-2020. Before then, she served on the Santa Barbara Unified School Board at-large and worked at UC Santa Barbara as the McNair Scholars program assistant director. With her election to the 21st district this year, she returns to work within her hometown, Goleta.
UCSB Lobby Corps invited the senator to campus after emailing her office about the Cal Grant Equity framework, which helps simplify financial aid processes and expand aid to more students.
“It’s an issue that the legislator hasn’t really fully focused on. It started with wanting to do it just on Cal Grant and financial aid,” Lobby Corps co-chair and fourth-year political science and history major Esther Mejia said, who read questions to the senator during the panel. “And then it turned into getting more issue areas that are affecting students and giving students the opportunity to voice [their concerns].”
Beginning that evening, the senator answered a set of questions prepared by UCSB Lobby Corps, who organized the event and took questions from the audience on immigration, food insecurity, passing bills and the state of the Democratic Party. It has been “a long time” since the organization brought a congressperson to campus, after rolling back on plans to bring Congressman Salud Carbajal to campus due to an “intense campus climate,” Mejia said.
Limón portrayed herself as initially being an outsider to the world of politics. She said she didn’t have any “awesome” internships in D.C. while she was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, but that she was “involved in the community.” In high school she was the student class president and at UCSB she held several administrative roles.
She noticed how repeatedly, issues like food insecurity, housing and unprecedented emergencies would get in the way of students achieving their goals.
“And that’s when I started getting more interested in policy. I understood that in order for the students that I was working with to be successful, other things needed to be different in the community,” Limón continued.
She served on several nonprofit boards and, after receiving encouragement from her peers, ran for the Santa Barbara Unified School Board and won on her pathway to becoming a state senator.
“And so one thing really led to the other, and I’m really thankful for all the experiences that I did have coming up along the way, because I think all of those experiences were meaningful, and they were part of a journey to get to where I’m at today, to give me the experience, to give me the ability to be a voice for the district,” Limón said.
She said that her title doesn’t indicate what goes into passing bills and how many failures she faced trying to pass them. Sometimes passing a bill can take up to three years, she said. Last year, Limón withdrew Senate Bill 1036 prior to its hearing before the State Assembly Natural Resources Committee after getting enough votes in the Senate. She cited difficulties getting support from market participants, who would be largely impacted by the bill.
The bill would have made it unlawful for anyone to sell voluntary carbon offsets if they knew the projects were not actually reducing or removing greenhouse gas emissions as claimed by the distributors. It previously passed largely unopposed through the state Senate but was vetoed by Governor Gavin Newson.
“Every time I came back, I came back stronger. And when I say I came back stronger, not just me as a presenter, as someone who was moving the bill forward, but the bill came back stronger,” Limón said. “It came back with a broader coalition, with more support, with a different strategy, with a different tactic, you know, with better arguments to help us get the vote.”
She said her main policy areas include environmental policy, healthcare, education, women’s issues, natural disasters and consumer protections. But as an elected official, she says her community influences what she does.
“When this community experienced the Thomas Fire and Montecito debris flow, my policy package had to change,” Limón said.
The 2017 Thomas Fire was the largest recorded fire in California history when it occurred — it was active 39 days, and the fire burned over 280,000 acres of land across Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, destroyed 1063 structures and resulted in the deaths of two people. Due to a torrential downpour on the burn-scarred Santa Ynez mountains just a few weeks after the fires began, mudslides in Montecito ravaged homes and left 23 people dead.
Both of these disasters set back the community and required a unified state effort to rebuild infrastructure, similar to how rehabilitative efforts in response to the Los Angeles fires last month will require a large amount of the state budget, Limón said, which is already experiencing a deficit.
“I think one of the challenges continues to be the budget because anytime you reform to open up a program that’s funded by the state, you have to figure out where you take it from. Last year we had a very big deficit, and this year our deficit was not as bad as it was last year,” Limón said. “However, the wildfires in Los Angeles have put us over significantly, and I think it’s going to make it very hard to expand programs where we don’t have a dedicated funding stream.”
Many groups, including the California State Student Aid Commission, have been calling for a broadening of the Cal Grant Equity framework to include nontraditional students. The current framework limits students based on age and time out of high school. A proposed solution includes creating a dedicated funding stream in the budget, which voters would have to pass on the ballot.
Limón said any effort that asks voters to pay more on their taxes is “an extremely difficult vote.” She added that after the election, there has been a lot of talk about affordability and the state of federal financial student aid going forward.
“We are all on standby in California to see what happens in terms of any of the federal money as it relates to higher ed. I think we’re all on standby, just kind of waiting to understand what implications that has. Sometimes that’s an opportunity for us. Sometimes it’s a limitation,” Limón said.
Another question centered on food insecurity across the UC, as well as what is being done to address basic needs and make the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, or grocery vouchers, more accessible to students. Working with students at UCSB, Limón’s first bill in 2017, Assembly Bill 453, raised funding across California college systems for food pantries and designated employees to help with CalFresh applications.
When Limón worked on campus, there was no food pantry for students. She said staff on campus at the time sent out emails to pitch in food for students around the time of midterms and finals. This was one of the issues she sought to address after working in higher education.
“In almost everything we do, there is room to be better and room to serve more people. And I think creativity and redesign is one way to look at it. But I also think funding. Some of it, even with as creative and as much as you redesign programs, at some point you need money, and so that’s going to be part of it.” Limón said.
When asked about immigration-related concerns across higher education, she said that California must be compliant with federal law. However, she noted that Senate Bill 54 says that no state or local resources can be used to assist federal immigration enforcement. Also, last week, the Senate allocated $25 million to the Attorney General for a Legal Defense Fund to protect immigrants.
“From 2017 to 2014, California had about 122 lawsuits and won the majority of them when we questioned what was or was not happening, or interpretations in the law,” Limón said, regarding the state Attorney General challenging federal decisions. “Sometimes you go to court not because someone’s right or wrong, but because you need clarity and interpretation and outcome.”
Attendees questioned why there had not been a report from the UC as required by recently passed Senate Bill 1287 — a bill introduced by Steven Glazer and co-authored by Limón and 13 other senators — on how they were to administer and implement training on what constitutes “violent,” “harassing” or “intimidating” conduct. The bill required the UC and CSUs to submit such a report by Jan. 2.
“I don’t think that we have a report [due] by January 2, because the law went into effect January 1. So the law was passed in August of 2024, it was signed by the governor within 30 days. But it didn’t go into effect till January 1 of 2025,” Limón answered. “And I think that that will likely start to apply next year.”
She also discussed issues that contributed to the declining power of Democrats, including “mixed messaging” she saw in the general election results, including voting blocs who aren’t loyal necessarily to a party but to issues and the increasing popularity of politicians with populist rhetorics – which emphasizes the idea of a common people in opposition to a perceived elite.
“Even when we pass good laws, if those laws don’t translate to a positive experience in everyday life … I think that that’s a problem. As we’re beginning to talk to people, the cost of living in California, I think, is one of them,” she said.
After an hour, Limón closed the panel with a positive message to the audience.
“If there are things that you want us to know about, whether it’s a problem or a solution or something to think about, we really do open our office to your thoughts. We want to know what you’re thinking,” she concluded.
A version of this article appeared on p. 1 of the Feb. 6, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.
