Last week, KQED and the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at the University of San Francisco convened some of the Bay Area’s youngest elected officials — Assemblymember Alex Lee, Hercules Mayor Alexander Walker-Griffin, and Sunnyvale Councilmember Alysa Cisneros — to share their experiences in conversation with politics correspondent Guy Marzorati and USF student fellow Caitlin Kennedy.

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Episode Transcript

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Ericka Cruz Guevarra I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra, and welcome to the Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. Young people are underrepresented in all levels of government. But take a look at what’s happening locally. And you can see that things are changing even if it’s happening slowly. Just take a look at Assembly member Alex Lee, who made history in 2020 when he became the youngest Asian-American, first openly bisexual and first Gen Z legislator in California history. And he’s not the only elected leader injecting new life into halls of power.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra Last year, the City of Hercules swore in Alexander Walker-Griffin as mayor, at 25 years old. And in Sunnyvale, residents elected 33 year old Alysa Cisneros to city council, where she would become the first openly queer woman to hold the title as vice mayor. It’s a unique perspective. And today we’re going to hear from these young electeds. Last week, they sat down with KQED Guy Marzorati and USF student fellow Caitlin Kennedy to talk about things like running for office during COVID, how to balance working in government with your personal life, and to share their visions for our region’s future. Stay with us.

Guy Marzorati Well, thank you all so much for taking the time to join us tonight. I know Tuesday night is usually city council night, so I know you all are, you know, missing some important stuff. But we appreciate you being here. And, you know, as we mentioned, a lot of folks in politics are a lot older than you all. You all got into this elected official game at a fairly young age. So we want to start kind of getting to know how that came about, what was kind of the moment or experiences that sparked your interest in public service and maybe Mayor Walker Griffin, we can start with you.

Alexander Walker-Griffin Yeah. Thank you, Guy. And then just thank you, everybody, for having me here. Really For me? You know, I got into politics around the age of ten. My grandmother, who came from the Jim Crow South, came to California and has always emphasized civic engagement. So that was something that was really important to me. And when I was 17, I was walking along our city’s waterfront and I thought it was super, super dirty.

Alexander Walker-Griffin And so I go to our city council meeting, say, Hey, I’ll clean up for free, just give me the paperwork, whatever I need. Our old city manager told me no. And that’s the point really, where I just said, Hey, I have to get involved. And so that’s what led me to want to increasingly just increase my civic engagement and get involved in different things. So from there I went to the States Community College Board, served as my community college student body president, which ultimately led me where I am today.

Caitlin Kennedy Council Member Cisneros, is there a specific moment that really drove you into politics?

Alysa Cisneros So I had my daughter when I was 19 years old, and my life was pretty hard, I’ll be honest. Right? Didn’t have a lot of money. I was doing a lot of things on my own, hadn’t gone to college, didn’t know what I was doing. And I read this book called Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. And reading that book at that point in time in my life made me realize the reasons why my life is so hard isn’t because I’m not capable or isn’t it because other people who are living in poverty aren’t capable? It’s because there are systems that are designed to make it more difficult for some people to get ahead.

Alysa Cisneros And that’s just the way society is designed. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. And so I needed a job at the time and there was a candidate that was hiring anyone, no experience, just whoever it is. And that candidate was Barack Obama. Yeah, in 2007. So primary leading into that first election and I just kind of stuck around. I ended up working on campaigns professionally. After that, I was doing some public policy work, consulting on various issues and candidate campaigns, went to college, did all of that.

Alysa Cisneros And so I’ve been doing this for about six years now, and I never thought that I would be elected, thought I have master’s in public policy staff level doing that side of it. But it was actually the pandemic that really propelled me into that opportunity and going to districts in my in my hometown, so.

Guy Marzorati I mean, that’s something that strikes me about all three of you didn’t just wake up into government. You’ve been kind of working in civic issues and working in in government as you led up to become an elected official. But assembly member for you going straight to the Capitol, straight to the state legislature in 2020, what was that moment for you? That was both you know, I’m interested in this. I want to get involved in government. And then what was kind of the push to say, I want to be the candidate?

Alex Lee Yeah, I guess it’s fun enough to tie in with the councilmembers story.

I mean, I for my district where I grew up in the South, we I was kind of the average person that really just wanted to go to class, go home and hang with your friends. I didn’t really do any clubs. I didn’t really do any of those stuff until maybe the last the last part of being in high school because it looked better on your college applications than I did for that. And, you know, at the time, I remember deciding, you know, you’re asking 17 year olds decide what you can do with the rest of your life. And there’s college apps.

And I was deciding between my hobby of doing filmmaking or this thing that started popping into my mind about doing politics and was actually at the time when I was applying to schools. And it shows you how when I decided it was the reelection campaign for Barack Obama. So it was around 2012, right? So the election time was right then. And I thought, well, this seems like a neat thing I could do to help people and probably has more stability than Hollywood. So I’ll try to do this one instead. So I applied for a place I political science at. UC Davis never looked back. I was a student senator, then became UC Davis as president during when Donald Trump became president as well.

Alex Lee And funny enough, I, I tell all young people this is like during those experiences of being in student government I’m sure Alex can relate is I thought I never want to do government ever again because in many ways it’s the same kind of petty disputes, the interpersonal politics that exists. But things just lined up and opportunity happened and I ran a longshot campaign and end up here. But I think it’s something remarkable to say that up here you have people who are very, very young, who are mayors and vice mayors who are changing the way that California is. And I think it’s remarkable. I got to be part of that generation.

Caitlin Kennedy So and I know elections can be hard. Campaigning can be hard if we can talk. Talk about some of the hurdles that you’ve all reached. CISNEROS If we could start with you. Do you agree that we have a Jaron Talkers problem and the government currently?

Alysa Cisneros Well, that’s a really interesting way to put that. I you know, I have some really wonderful colleagues who are from other generations. But there is a problem when you have a serious lack of an entire portion of the population. And that issues really related to the ability, number one, to stay in the community where you grew up and to develop roots, because we have a massive housing crisis and an affordability crisis in our region. So not having that stability makes the idea of engaging on that deeper level really difficult for people.

Alysa Cisneros Additionally, I mean, young young people who are working professionals are disincentivized from joining councils, especially if you get paid at all. And I have the highest part time council in Santa Clara County where we put in a whopping $30,000 a year. It’s not part time. You spend a lot more time than that and you’re having to negotiate, you know, the cost benefit analysis, just balancing your life. So there isn’t a lot of opportunities in leadership. If you’re young, it’s designed for people who are either independently wealthy or retired. So that is a problem because you only get one perspective.

Guy Marzorati Assembly member Lee, how do you see that balance in Sacramento? Because this is one of the arguments for term limits in the early nineties was there you had folks that were at the Capitol wielding influence for decades and decades. But the flip side of that is the Capitol lost a lot of experience. And it turned out that lobbyists and people kind of who worked in the Capitol ended up knowing more than the electeds themselves. So how do you view the balance of kind of needing to get new blood in the Capitol with that kind of institutional knowledge?

Alex Lee Yeah, I mean, I firmly have been public, but I support term limits. And I think now that our new compromise of term limits has worked out, I think it is good. We had the first round of term limits that were very punitive. I think they were designed that way because the public was very angry at the way Sacramento was. Sure, you had a lot of experience, but you also had a infamy from the people up there. And they were doing a lot of shady things that I don’t think would have survived today. But I think now that the term limits are 12 years total, whether you serve any combo or blend between the Senate and the Assembly, I think that’s a good place to be.

Alex Lee I frankly think it could be a little bit longer, but we haven’t. I think we’re we’re seeing a rebalance now where the legislators, their staff and the people we trust in that certain that sense of we want to be in power through democracy are now the ones who have had the experience and expertise. And I’ve come in at a very interesting time because I came in in 2020, obviously dynamic, which is interesting, but in of itself is that the first class of the new term limit legislators are terming out this coming this following election cycle and there’s only like six of them. They came in like 40. So even on average, most politicians turn over in six, eight years.

Alex Lee They either quit. Something happens to them, they’re forced to quit or they get promoted. Right? I think promoted if another job. So it’s this kind of natural turnover like this, frankly, I’ll spend joining the calls that Congress should have at least like an 18 year term limit to. I’m not convinced that someone can start a career and then by ten to end at it becomes from an infant to an adult that it’s not time for you to move on. Yes, there’s a lot of experience, but it’s also important to refresh legislature constantly to have those perspectives.

Alex Lee And if it weren’t for term, it’s for better or for worse, depending on who I say yes to. You wouldn’t have me. You wouldn’t have me in the legislature either. But it also gives stability in that sense, too. So, you know, for me, I term out in 2032 and I’m already thinking about who should replace me and who we should cultivate to carry on that movement. But it creates instability versus, you know, for instance, we had dramatically in the U.S. Senate write someone had to die and then suddenly things change, Right? Like that should not be the way we do things.

Alex Lee We don’t live in a medieval aristocracy. We live in a democracy in which you should be able to safely plan this. And if someone has 20 years, 12 years, whatever is to do the job they’re here for and they’re successful at it or they weren’t successful, I think it’s a good enough amount of time to do a job.

Caitlin Kennedy And Mayor Walker-Griffin, maybe you can speak on the process. Citizens pay for the gerund talker C assured the Trump term is considering term limits and the issues surrounding that.

Alexander Walker-Griffin Yeah, and so similar to my colleagues, I also got elected and became a councilmember in 2020. Craziest time to campaign was during the pandemic, but in my city’s 123 year history and the first councilmember, first mayor to have ever grown up in the city. And so one of the reasons what made me want to run was I always felt like that perspective was missing. And so when we talk about someone who’s been sitting behind the dais for 20 years, usually that person has ran for some other office at some point.

Alexander Walker-Griffin Very rarely have you seen somebody that stagnant and just want that office, but it becomes sort of a relevancy issue. I don’t know what I could talk about of my council 16 years down the road and I’m almost hitting 20 years on it. So and I also think about to life the missing perspective. Every city changes about 5 to 10 years. If you walk around Hercules right now, the average family hasn’t lived in town for more than seven years. So it’s a completely constant new, fresh. Perspective, and I think we want to honor that. Right.

Alexander Walker-Griffin So when we talk about like the next wave, the next people that we want to see in these sort of elected offices, we’re thinking about that new relevant problem, similar to what a family member Lee mentioned. If you’ve been in office for 50 years, how can you talk about being relevant to the problem? How can you sit there having a rifle in your hand and not know how to use it? If your staff has to guide you on how to how Facebook works, you know, Instagram works. I think you might need to check out. We’ll give you a nice proclamation or something like that, but it’s time to go at that point.

Guy Marzorati Well, let’s talk a little bit about campaigning. You all campaigned during the pandemic. For some of you, the first time the first campaigns you were running was during COVID. And mayor, we actually have a photo of you here. I think going out and doing the doing the work of sign holding out during COVID. I mean, kind of take us through that experience. And as someone who I know you had worked for other elected officials in the past, was there something that you may be brought to the campaign where it was like, I’ve seen someone do it this way. I know, I know. I need to carry this forward or I know I don’t want to do this as a candidate or as an elected official.

Alexander Walker-Griffin Well, first thing I would have done if I knew somebody was taking a picture of me, I would put lotion on my elbows to let them do so. But one thing that I told myself that I wouldn’t do was be the elected official that disappears after election time. So people always tell me, why do you give out your number to people when you’re campaigning? Well, I’m like, well, I told them I wanted to be accessible. I told them I wanted to represent them. So why not be accessible, right? Why I do that open door. But it’s not a burner.

Guy Marzorati You’re giving in the real.

Alexander Walker-Griffin My mom, because of my number more than I do. So just let me. But another thing that I definitely did learn was just that connectedness and meeting people where they were. It was so weird knocking on doors and not talking to people physically, I was talking to ring. So for like the first year after, like winning my election, I would be a lucky, safe way and somebody would come up to me like, Hey, we talked to my doorbell and I’m like, Yeah, house you. Yeah, good to see you. But another thing that I that I say that I would not do, that I would have done differently was I wouldn’t have put so much of an emphasis on yard signs.

Alexander Walker-Griffin We had a huge digital presence. But this, again, this is where the generational conflict was happening. You don’t have your yard signs. You don’t have your yard signs out. Well, I just spent three grands on digital ads are going to be running 24 seven for the next couple of weeks. No, that’s not going to win. No, that’s not going to win. So I think I would have worked with more people who are a little more relevant to how technology works. Are things in a place where possible.

Caitlin Kennedy And Assemblymember, do you have anything to add?

Alex Lee Ranger The pandemic was certainly interesting challenge. So I had obviously the primary and the general. I won the primary on March 3rd, 2020. My county, Santa Clara County, was the first county to shut down on March 17th. So sorry. I recount often is on March 11th. I went up to Sacramento. I met with the speaker, Anthony Rendon, at the time and he congratulated me. He said, You did really good. It’s very impressive knowing who you are and how this happened. But and I remember saying to him, This is really nice of you, and to have this nice meeting in the speaker’s office, everything, but I’m going to lose, you know, the data is going to change and I’m going to fall out of the top two.

Alex Lee But it didn’t. And then obviously, the world changed really rapidly. I did not declare victory until April 24th, which was when the results were actually certified. I literally no one in our team could really believe it. But frankly, you know, if we California did not say we want to speak first on the presidential election and we had a June primary, I don’t know if I would have won because most of our campaign was in doorknocking and talking to people face to face. Yes, it got to the point where I’m talking to people through ring and social media, but that was the heart of our campaign. So I don’t know if I would have won without that.

Guy Marzorati And you had the Bernie effect, right? The presidential primary was going on. You were running as a progressive. And it’s interesting. You were running as a endorser, Bernie, and you were endorsed by Bernie. And exactly so. But you were running in, you know, South Bay, parts of San Jose, Milpitas, Fremont, that I think people might not associate with being the most progressive parts of the Bay Area. So how did you make your message, connect with residents or is that outdated? Did you find that people were you know, that that is a place that that kind of message could be embraced?

Alex Lee Yeah, Progressive is all about being rooted in people. So if our message is about being attitudes of people and making sure that everyday families have access to health care, housing, political rights, civil rights, then it actually engages a lot of people. One fact that I’ve always been astounded by and why I didn’t think I was supposed to win was that general wisdom is that the early vote is the more conservative older vote I won on the first ballot. I kept winning as it going on, and then the late vote, if you will, which are generally supposed to be younger, more progressive people, boosted me up even higher.

Alex Lee But I did really well at the early vote. And from what I’ve now, being in office three years is that I think a lot of our message of what we talk about resonates with people of all ages and sometimes political parties, political partizanship that they think they have. Because what I talk about is getting corporate money out of politics. You should not have an elite system in our democracy. We should have housing for everyone. And how we shouldn’t means test to death everything that the government. Comes and helps you with. And even though that’s a broad reaching kind of progressive idea, I find a lot of older folks, even in my community, say, actually, you might have a point.

Alex Lee Or I argue the Republicans at door be like, Well, maybe you’re right about this. And, you know, especially what we know in my district is that and I’m one of two legislators doesn’t take any corporate money whatsoever in the legislature. It’s immensely popular in a district. And people want that source of integrity, even though, of course, in our hyper political world that’s, you know, super far left or whatever it is. I think normal people everyday want those things and that’s what my district connects with.

Alysa Cisneros And to add on to that a little bit, something that we all have in common, right? We were elected in 2020. That’s a presidential election year where I think you see a lot of the difference and you get a skewed, older, skewed conservative voter base is the off year elections. And when I think about that, I feel so fortunate to be in that presidential election year because you do have more people just turning out.

Alysa Cisneros It’s really hard to turn people out and keep people engaged through those less, you know, the smaller campaigns, because I like to say Joe Biden, he did a lot for my campaign. He really turned out the vote for me. I Joe Biden going ahead and reminding people, fill out your ballots, make sure you’re doing that. And that’s a huge help to more progressive candidates. You have people who are turning out for that.

Caitlin Kennedy In council member to follow up. We have a photo here of you on your campaign trail in 2020. What was it like campaigning for the first time during the height of the pandemic?

Alysa Cisneros Like I said, I had worked on many, many a campaign and the first thing I had to do was forget a lot of everything that I’d learned because it no longer applied. I didn’t knock any doors, actually zero. It was not something that my community was appreciative of when other candidates did it. So I kind of listened to that and went full digital. And something that I did during the campaign was I had a, you know, a team of filmmakers. I had my volunteers make COVID checking calls through the election saying, I’m here with Alyssa Cisneros, this campaign, but we’re not here to talk about her.

Alysa Cisneros Do you have the resources that you need? Because a lot of times when you’re speaking to voters, you’re you’re talking to them because you want to know what they’re concerned about and what they care about. And during the pandemic in 2020, we knew what people were concerned about. In that moment. I was just running in the general and really tuning in to that and being responsive in a different way. It was a lot of digital phone banking and text banking huge as well as I have a there in that image.

Alysa Cisneros My my door hangers. We did hang doors, we didn’t do the conversations and then lawn signs, but lawn signs don’t vote. I had some volunteers at the local maker’s center. Go ahead and print up some of those cool Alysa campaign branded masks.

Caitlin Kennedy Assembly member Lee as the first Gen Z Ledger state legislator. Have you experienced any discomfort from your fellow colleagues about your age, and have you ever experienced feelings of imposter syndrome?

Alex Lee All the time. All the time. Oftentimes, my colleagues like to remind us that I am younger than them, even though I don’t bring it up. So they’ll all, though, often hear this right? They’re like, Oh, this thing happened in 1985 or something. Oh, you were born yet? And I was like, I mean, we know. I mean, I’m not going to bring in how old you are that what it’s like. But it seems to be very often that they like to bring those things up and then they’ll be surprised when I understand some sort of like seventies reference or something.

Alex Lee And I’m like, I know what the Internet is. I can search things. And we know pop culture existed too. So it happens a lot. I will say I think oftentimes that what we still struggle with, even from other Democrats, is that I get talked down to a lot. Often I think I’m giving the benefit of the doubt. I think it is that they see their children in me. So it’s like when we have a disagreement, they try to bring down that tone, which I’ve not seen them do to other colleagues. But to be frank, even if every disagreement and I’ve had to have a stern talking to you sometimes that you can’t talk to me like that, like I’m your son or something, I’m your colleague.

Alex Lee So it’s happened, unfortunately, and it’s unfortunately in our space. We have to reassert ourselves that we are equals. I’m not better than you. I’m not worse than you were equals. So it happens a lot, you know, And with imposter syndrome, you know, it’s all the time. I actually don’t think I have imposter syndrome anymore because I’ve just accepted that I’m doing everything I’m doing that I don’t exactly know if this is right, but I feel like it’s right. So I’m just going to do it. And that’s what hey, that’s what got me to win elections. So I said this. I’m just going to embrace that, you know.

Guy Marzorati Council Member Mayor, I saw you both nodding through that.

Alysa Cisneros Yeah. Something I hear a lot and have since I decided to run. And it it really didn’t happen so much in my career. In public policy. You look too young to be a council member. My I’m 35 years old. I don’t feel particularly young or you don’t look like a council member last year. You don’t look like a vice mayor. And it begs the question, what do they look like? You might forget. I have 16 years of experience doing this, right? So age doesn’t necessarily come with that experience. You can be relatively young, unfortunately, like relatively young and still come in more experience than most council members do.

Alysa Cisneros So I do have to reassert that. And the imposter syndrome was really hard because like I said, I’d been treated with a lot of respect in my former roles at the beginning of being elected so hard. But when you realize you have a community around you, you get the people together to hype you up and say like, No, that’s, you know, swear words are there. You should remember exactly how much you know. Right. And and the longer you do it, the easier it gets. I think you develop a thick skin.

Alexander Walker-Griffin Yeah, I totally agree with both of my colleagues up here. I mean, for me, I think where I really was able to, I still experience it, but nip the sort of imposter syndrome in the butt was when I was 20 and we were starting. KALB Right. College and got to talk to Governor Brown. He came to our board meeting. He’s sitting right across from me. And I did tell him everything that was wrong with it. So one of the things is telling them that, hey, Governor, we don’t have the broadband to support this infrastructure throughout the state. This is this is in 2018 before the pandemic and this conversation even start with broadband.

Alexander Walker-Griffin And then so I get ripped apart by some people, like through my email while the meeting was still going on. So it was really crazy experiencing that. But then after that, me and Governor Brown are sitting directly in front of each other having lunch and I’m like, So governor, what are you going to do next now that you’re turning out? He says, Kid, I’m making olive oil with this fork pointed at me. And then so at that moment I was like, okay, all imposter syndrome is lost. But I really had to remember that like when you’re sitting right there, that kind of moments happening. I had to remember to myself that I’m here and now, as the mayor, you’re coming to me for something, right?

Alexander Walker-Griffin More often than not, people will see the age before they see the resume. So, for example, you know, in 2018, for most people don’t know this, I was the campfire in paradise. So when people were hearing about the casualties that were happening, that was me and my friends keeping a tally on that and running those numbers. So people will oftentimes never see that. At 20 years old, I voted to make community college tuition free and I’ve been doing all this stuff before. I was even old enough to drink. They just see how old you are.

Alexander Walker-Griffin Had a meeting with some folks not too long ago. I have this jacket that says Alex Walker-Griffin. Mayor, come up, sit down at the table. And they said, Oh, so you worked for the mayor. And I said, Well, he’ll be here any minute now. So it happens a lot. But you know what? You have to laugh about it, right? And then so if people follow me on social media, you’ll you’ll see my mid-morning rant after the gym. And so sometimes I’ll talk about that kind of stuff. But at the end of day, you got to effort.

Caitlin Kennedy And Mayor, maybe you can speak on some of the sacrifices of the jobs. I know. I’m sure there’s moments where you have to skip some social events and miss out seeing your friends and family.

Alexander Walker-Griffin Oh, absolutely. I mean, being getting elected at 23 now I’m 26. Most of my friends are still going to the club, so it’s not like I’m going to be joining them.

Alex Lee You’re like, there’s this really important sequel appeal that I have.

Alexander Walker-Griffin Right, exactly. So I have to be like, Hey, guys, I can’t join you tonight because I don’t want you guys can take your pictures with your bottle of Hennessy or whatever. I can’t partake in that. But even sort of a little things, right? Like, you know, you just have to be kind of cognizant of how things will present potentially projects to the public, but also to have a full time job. And so just it happens every single week.

Alexander Walker-Griffin You have to have a meeting or you’ll have an event that you have to skip out on simply because the requirements for it, whether I’m talking to my city manager or I’m talking to someone who wants to do something in town, it always collides. But I think the big benefit for me is I’m a bachelor, so I don’t have to think about like, you know, how this is going to impact my children or I think about like my spouse or something like that. So that’s part of the one benefit that’s been in my favor.

Guy Marzorati And Councilmember, did that do the kind of juggling work and family change at all as an elected official versus kind of your past roles, your past work? Did it get more difficult?

Alysa Cisneros Yeah, Yeah, of course it does. It does get harder because before even though like the long hours, right. My my kid, bless her, she is used to that. I know that that’s I have a lot of evening engagements. That’s kind of been the thing. But it’s different when you’re also so public facing in a lot of ways. Your life is an open book, and so the kind of anonymity you could have as a staffer or is just somebody who works in a research firm or in a public policy shop is different. So you have to think about how your actions are going to go ahead and perhaps reflect on your family, like is this going to do it?

Alysa Cisneros Because one of the sacrifices you make is really to your safety, especially women in politics right now. Right. I’ve had stalkers. I’ve had to move into a more secure building because of threats to my safety over things like votes. So just being in the public eye. So the kind of sacrifices that my family have to make for me is is balancing that, like where we’re actually physically safer to the point where we’re packing stuff. Right. And in terms of balancing it on my kids a little bit older. So less of that demands.

Alysa Cisneros But when I talk to people with younger kids especially, there is a lot that you miss there. And because especially around election time, you have a lot of weekend stuff too. So you have to be able to find that time to spend quality time throughout the week as best you can. It’s really easy to lose touch with people.

Caitlin Kennedy In Council member I know we talked about your campaigning during the pandemic. Civic participation changed tremendously during the pandemic. Is there any risk of going back to the old ways, like knocking on doors, having the yard signs, stuff like that?

Alysa Cisneros Well, this I’m running again in 2024 and engaging civically in, as far as I know, at least now. Right. But, you know, with the world as it’s been, I don’t make any guesses for what tomorrow is going to be like or or what’s going to be required of me during this campaign, because we live in unprecedented times every single day. I think we were talking about that earlier, and I am looking forward to getting back to that door to door.

Alysa Cisneros Right. And but we do have more tools in our toolkit. There are some silver linings to the pandemic. I look forward to continuing having a robust digital presence. Right. Especially because young voters are still reached base that way. But there are so many opportunities. When you talk to someone face to face, it’s a little bit irreplaceable because instead of hearing from me on the phone or over text or one of my volunteers being able to talk to me and know who I am builds a really important trust, especially if you have like a a district like mine where you have only about 12,000 voters, you can actually go and talk to everyone if you really get a good pair of sneakers.

Alysa Cisneros So I’m looking forward to that a lot. But we can take a lot of lessons about what it means to reach people who we weren’t able to reach before because of those challenges with COVID. And we all learned both as candidates and as governments, how to do that. And, you know, we’d be remiss not to continue doing it.

Guy Marzorati Right. I mean, city council meetings, the state legislature, suddenly it was all available on Zoom and you could listen to hours and hours of public comment from the comfort of your living room. So, I mean, that kind of access. Is there a concern that maybe that goes away? Is that something, at least in Hercules, that you’re you want to make a part of council engagement going forward?

Alexander Walker-Griffin Well, actually, it’s unfortunate We had to do is we actually had to in so many other cities in the area and actually throughout the country had to do this. We had to cut public comment on Zoom because there’s been a wide variety of people throughout the country calling in and saying some of the most horrible things that you could ever say. So it is unfortunate that that is the case, but that does not mean the accessibility has gone away.

Alexander Walker-Griffin So one way that we’ve definitely stepped up our game in terms of being able to reach our constituents, either from the city council perspective or through the city perspective is we have an app online in addition to every other Well, we have an app that you can download to your phone. So rather than you calling 510245, blah, blah, blah, you just take a picture of whatever problem it is on the street or whatever, and it goes directly to our public works team. But I do think that it is a little scary to think that we have some bad actors who are doing a good thing, and we don’t know when it’s necessarily going to stop.

Alexander Walker-Griffin But up until literally last or last meeting two weeks ago, all of our meetings have been on Zoom and it’s been great to have people who traditionally would have never come in, especially some of the senior populations that can’t make it out and make it out on Tuesday at 7 p.m. or working families have and participate online has been great.

Alysa Cisneros We went to full it. We decided as a council to do permanent hybrid meetings. So we meet in City Hall, but we also had that zoom component and we have not shut down public comment, remote public comment yet and we really hope we don’t have to because that is such a huge way we get participation. In fact, we often get more people participating in public comment on Zoom than we do in person. Actually, that’s most common.

Alysa Cisneros And so what people don’t realize, it’s like you can go ahead and your email, your your congressman and you’ll hopefully get something back from a staff member. But your city council members, your you and your assembly member with your district staff, we’re here and you can talk to us. And engaging the democratic process is so important. So even though that Zoombombing is happening, I’m like, I want to stick it out and see what we can do to curb it. And you know, I’m more stubborn than they are.

Alex Lee So in the legislature, we’ve unfortunately mostly got away with the Zoom comments now to the discretion of committee chairs now. So I think in the Assembly I am one of two committees that still take a Zoom public comment. Yes, it is riddled with people who have very terrible things to say, but that’s I still believe in reducing the barriers for public participation. In my first year in office, I thought I was going to author a slam dunk exhibit. I said, Wow, we learn during the pandemic that Zoom comment and Zoom hybrid meetings work so well.

Alex Lee Let’s just keep this forever. That was one of the hardest rules I ever worked on. The first time the cities opposed it because they said it costs too much, it’s impossible to do. And then suddenly everyone was doing I mean, everyone was basically doing it. So I said, I don’t understand. How you doing exactly? I mean, everyone is doing it. But the city is still said that it was too cost prohibitive, you couldn’t do it, etc., etc.. And then I made this big compromise where, okay, why don’t you just do it for the big cities, Right? Theoretically speaking, even though the technology scale is the same, no matter if you’re L.A. or if you’re Sunnyvale, why don’t we just try to do it?

Alex Lee Yeah, unfortunately, that got vetoed and still hasn’t been been the same since. But I still think it’s important for city councils if you’re able to do it, to do the hybrid method, because it really does reduce a lot those barriers, especially in Sacramento, where you’d really legitimately have to take an entire day to come up to do your 30 seconds. It would means a lot to people. So that’s why I keep it in my own committee.

Guy Marzorati All right. Well, we are going to have to leave the conversation there. Thank you three so much for coming out, spending time with us and giving us some insight into your work.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra That was KQED Politics and Government reporter Guy Marzorati and USF student fellow Caitlin Kennedy in conversation with Assembly member Alex Lee, Hercules Mayor Alexander Walker-Griffin and Sunnyvale Councilmember Alysa Cisneros. If you want to watch, the full live event, will leave you a link in our shownotes. This KQED Live event was produced by Ryan Davis. It was cut down and edited by our senior editor, Alan Montecillo. By the way, there are a bunch of really cool live events happening all the time at our headquarters in San Francisco. For more on all the upcoming ones, go to KQED.org/Live. The Bay is a production of member supported KQED. I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Talk to you next time.

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