Isaac Bryan
Isaac Bryan is the Majority Leader of the California State Assembly.
Assembly run
Five Democrats and a Socialist Workers Party candidate will appear on the ballot for the May 18 2021 special election to fill the 54th Assembly District seat, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced.
The Democrats are Isaac Bryan, an educator and community organizer; Heather Hutt, a former state director for then-Sen. Kamala Harris; Dallas Fowler, a businesswoman and nonprofit executive; Samuel Robert Morales, a financial advisor and entrepreneur; and Cheryl C. Turner, an attorney and state commissioner.
Retail grocery worker Bernard Senter will appear on the ballot as a candidate with no party preference because there are not enough voters who have registered as members of the Socialist Workers Party for it to qualify as an official party.
The special election was necessitated when Sydney Kamlager won the March 2 special election to fill the 30th Senate District seat that was vacated by Holly Mitchell’s election to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.[1]
Isaac Bryan boasts proud support from Rep. Karen Bass and the Assemblymember he would be replacing, Sydney Kamlager. In addition, four L.A. City Council members, County Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Holly Mitchell and Culver City Mayor Alex Fisch, the California Teachers Association, SEIU California, and two other unions, BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors and a host of others.
Bryan rose from a highly troubled early life as a kid adopted into a family of a dozen children and foster children. He earned a master’s in public policy at UCLA, was Kamlager’s senior advisor and is the founding director of the UCLA Black Policy Project. He recently chaired the Measure J Campaign to Re-envision Justice, which L.A. voters passed. Bryan is skeptical of charter schools and does not believe police unions are comparable to other unions in the labor movement. He advocates for reallocating police funding to trained crisis professionals. Asked about environmental racism and solutions, he is quick to underline that “this issue intersects with all the other issues.” He also points out that he is the only candidate in the race to earn a place on the ballot from voter support; all the others paid a fee to get on the ballot.
On the affordable housing question, Bryan points out that there are more vacant housing units in L.A. than the numbers of unhoused people in the city: “Affordable” is not enough. What we should be seeking is “economic justice.” On single-payer, Bryan says, it is critical to building a groundswell coalition for AB1400, and if we seek change on this as on other issues, it’s “no more politics as usual.” [2]