With Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs Out, Will His 'Guaranteed Income' Experiment Stay?

Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs may have lost his bid for a second term in office, but many say the work he set in motion will continue. When he was elected in 2016, Tubbs became the city’s first African American mayor — and its youngest at age 27. Since then, Tubbs gained a national profile for testing the idea of a “guaranteed income” in Stockton, where he was also born and raised.

Known as the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, or SEED, the project was meant to be a temporary proof of concept. It gave 125 people $500 a month — no strings attached — for a year and a half. The question it aimed to explore was whether simply giving money to low-income residents was the help they needed. Doubters said cash handouts would lead to bad behavior, while SEED’s website says the experiment would prove that “poverty results from a lack of cash, not character.”

The project was set to expire this past summer, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Tubbs extended the program through January 2021.

How recipients spend the monthly $500 is tracked by independent researchers. Tubbs told KQED in May that because of the pandemic, spending on food went up, from roughly a third of all purchases to half.

“Folks are spending money on real necessities,” Tubbs said. “Folks are really hunkering down and making sure they have the basics to shelter in place.”

Tubbs also started “Mayors for a Guaranteed Income” to bring other cities into the experiment. So far, 25 mayors have signed on to push for guaranteed income at the federal level.

“This is now much bigger than Stockton,” said Natalie Foster, co-chair of the Economic Security Project, which funds a portion of Stockton’s program. “There are cities across America who have picked up this mantle.”

After two weeks of counting ballots, Tubbs conceded the race to challenger Kevin Lincoln, a Republican pastor and U.S. Marines veteran, who held a comfortable 12-point lead.

It’s unclear whether Mayor-elect Lincoln will support the initiatives of his predecessor, but he has said his goal is to focus on the priorities of Stockton residents.

Lange Luntao, executive director of the Reinvent Stockton Foundation, said he’s concerned about losing the gains Tubbs made in improving Stockton’s image.

“We’ve been known more for our illiteracy and economic challenges and crime,” Luntao said. “In the past four to eight years that’s begun to change.”

Still, Luntao said he thinks the programs Tubbs started, or supported, including Stockton Scholars, Advance Peace and Stockton Service Corps, will live on, Tubbs or no Tubbs.

“From a very technical perspective, the programs we’ve launched in Stockton are built to be resilient,” Luntao said.

University of Tennessee professor Stacia Martin-West, one of the researchers compiling and analyzing data about the guaranteed income program, said the research will continue.

“Mayor Tubbs is the visionary and the champion of this, but it is really a community-based organization that houses the project,” she said. “We’re still very embedded in Stockton, very embedded in the community, and have great partnerships with organizations, so we don’t really see anything changing.”