Cheryl Turner, Democrat, Attorney

BP: How would you describe the 30th State Senatorial district in any way you’d like? 

Cheryl Turner: “Well there is quite a diverse population. Starting from the Westside south, Century City, South Beverly Hills, Mar Vista, Palms, cutting across to mid-city all the way to I think the 110 freeway and then all the way down south LA to near the 105 freeway. So it’s a wide range, it’s mostly African-Americans in the district, but you know Westside you know, and Caucusion population as well as a large Latino population. And it’s just mixed. I mean there’s lots of neighborhoods throughout with different socioeconomic levels reflected throughout and I’m very familiar with the district. I grew up here. I was born here, I went to the public schools in the district. And so I feel like you know this is my home and I definitely want to represent the people that live within the community.” 

BP: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the district? 

CT: Well there’s a number of challenges.  If you look at the south side, they’re concerned with criminal justice and policing issues. If you look more to the Westside they are concerned with keeping the police, in contrast to the south where they want to reduce the police. And everybody is interested in housing affordability, everyone is concerned about the homeless crisis that is affecting everyone, and everyone is concerned about Covid and schools. When and at what point will schools be able to reopen. They’re concerned about job security and they are all concerned about healthcare and living in a safe environment.” 

BP: What do you think Sacramento can do about some of the challenges facing the district? 

CT: With regards to the Covid-19 response, we’re beginning to see some action being taken. I believe that we need a coordinated statewide response to the efforts so the local jurisdictions can give their input. Because if you have one area that is open, but then you have other areas that are closed, you have people that are migrating between the areas. There’s more likely to be transmission and passing of the Covid virus from one person to the next. So we need something coordinated, but it looks like everything is coming around as far as schools are concerned. 

We do need to do something about reopening [schools]. I know we have some parents saying that they don’t feel that it’s safe for their children to go back to school and other parents are like, listen — my child is being deprived of their educational opportunities. You know — prom, sports, student travel. All these things they’re missing, and they were looking forward to these things. But we need to figure out how to make sure that it’s going to be safe. 

We need to vaccinate the teachers and the staff there. The administration there. And with the parents’ permission we can also vaccinate some of the students that are there and maintain social distance distancing. But of course, if students go home then we have to be concerned that they, even though they may not experience symptoms, they may pass it on to their family, their parents. So we may have to think about how we’re going to vaccinate the parents of those students as well. 

We talked about homelessness and the state really needs to focus on how we can do more outreach to the homeless. If there is a mental health issue we need to address that. Whether it is through support or whether it is through determining whether they are competent to be out on the street and make decisions, because many of the homeless population did come from mental institutions. Some of them have drug addiction issues, so they need support and treatment. Some come from domestic violence situations. There’s violence at home down the streets. And you have some foster kids to now of age and now they’re out in the street, and you have the formerly incarcerated that are on the streets and don’t have a home. So we need to come up with, I believe, more ways to help subsidise the payment for housing for the homeless.

We can do that by the state funding vouchers to help them pay for their housing. Something like Section 8, for those of you who have heard of Section 8. We can open some of the motels that are in certain neighborhoods and use that for housing. And we can resort to vacant buildings that aren’t in use. We don’t want to force any property owners to have their property taken. But if property owners are willing to sell, then I think that that would be a better use of funds than the local governments trying to purchase buildings, or build buildings themselves at $700,000 per unit, when no investor would ever spend that kind of money for an apartment building. It just doesn’t make sense. 

And we have to reopen, get people back to work. They may need childcare support for those children that are not old enough to actually enroll in school — some sort of subsidy to help get them back to work. We have an issue, especially with mothers, who tend to be the main caretakers of children, but not always the case. You have fathers that are involved in that too, but we don’t want them to be left behind from the workforce. We want them to be able to return to work and everybody to earn a livable wage and businesses to receive the support they need to reopen during this Covid crisis. 

BP:  What are some of your priorities or goals you have if you’re elected to the state senate? 

CT: One of the things that really motivated me is with Covid, people are getting behind on their rents and mortgages. I mean, it’s understandable that there’s an economic shutdown. People are not able to work there at home and so, even though there’s a moratorium saying that they do not have to pay, still those debts are accumulating and eventually they’re going to rise to a level where it’s going to be something that people will never be able to catch up with, and then we’ll be looking at the possibility of massive evictions from apartment buildings, and for people that own their homes, the possibility of foreclosures.

So I would like to be able to go to Sacramento to work quickly to help to develop a rental assistance and mortgage assistance program to help the people, so it’s not just a matter of you don’t have to pay rent, but then you have some sort of subsidy coming in to help you to stay current. So that when this is all over, you can remain in your homes. 

The other thing that I talked about is that the Covid crisis on education. When I talked before about the issues that Sacramento can do, I was also talking about some of the things that I had in mind — like coordinated statewide response to the Covid crisis in terms of with small businesses, and even larger business, midsized business, receiving grants and loans to help them stay in business while we’re going through this crisis. So that they’ll be open and that they’ll be jobs that are still available to people when they’re ready to return to work, we don’t want to lose those. And then I talked about education and coming up with the right response to how we can administer the vaccines and create a safe social distancing program, so that the schools can reopen as soon as possible. 

And the homeless crisis, as I said vouchers — I want to work on that. I also would be interested in looking at ways in which the government can return back to developing or building its own public housing. Many years ago they used to be able to, but it’s my understanding that there is now a constitutional prohibition preventing them from doing that because certain people live in neighborhoods, have the attitude of no, I don’t want affordable housing in my backyard and so a constitutional limitation was passed preventing the government from building public housing. But we need to find a way to to go back with it. That doesn’t mean that communities can’t have the input — they should have input, and I expect communities to have input and that’s always welcome. But still we all agree that we must do something as soon as possible about people that are on the streets and they need a home to live in. 

BP: So what steps or actions do you plan to take to reach out to the other party, not only in the legislature but in the district? 

CT: I have a history of being involved in different organizations, and each of those organizations have a government relations committee, and come up with issues that are important to them. 

And so what we had been doing over the years is traveling back and forth from Los Angeles to Sacramento, and sometimes I even go to the district office. It doesn’t matter to me whether they are Republican or Democrat or Peace and Freedom or independent. The goal has been to sit down and talk to them about these proposed bills, how it’s going to impact the organization, members that I’m involved in or with or with the community, and give them input as to how either it could be improved. The bill could be improved, or if it’s something that we feel is harmful, how it could be defeated. 

And so I’ve already done that. I’m a Democrat. I’ve sat in Republican Senator or Assemblyperson’s office to talk about those bills, and it has never been an issue. That’s why I know that I feel that I when I go to Sacramento. I will be able to work across the aisle, focus on the issues, and work on trying to develop and get the bill passed that best help my district. 

BP: Why should you be elected to the State Senate over the other candidates in the race?

First of all, I’m the one that’s most familiar with this district, because although people have come here from Los Angeles all up from all over the world all across the country, I’m one of the ones that was born here. And so this is truly my home from the time I was born and I have, I believe, the deepest passion and desire and commitment to put all my efforts into representing this district. 

Not only that, I had a law degree. I went to law school and I asked people. I mean what does the legislature do? They create laws and these are the exact same laws that you know if an issue comes up in court. I’m in court. I have to argue these lots. And I can see some of the limitations or some of the problems with some of these laws, what they’re doing. I feel that I can be the most effective of all the candidates in helping to create new laws and in being able to review, analyze, evaluate and negotiate. 

Also I have other attributes. For instance, all these areas that they’re legislating on, I have direct first-hand experience with. For instance, I’m a small business owner. So when they come up with laws that affect business, you know I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. 

I am a housing provider. I’m active in the housing industry. I’ve helped to develop and manage both affordable housing and market-rate housing, and so I’m familiar with the details of all those. I’ve represented those in the medical field. I work with community clinics — I represent doctors. I know how they deal. I know how they work. So when you talk about Universal or Medicare-for-all, I’m the most qualified of all the candidates because I’ve been in that environment. 

If we want to talk about the civil or criminal justice system, as a lawyer, I’ve represented clients in both those areas, those that were facing criminal prosecution, those that had to deal with police abuse or misconduct, and consumer rights. I’ve also been active in the environment through my community service, fighting for clean air and against pollution, and having cases involving pesticides and other issues. So I don’t have to imagine what these issues are all about in trying to create a law. I’ve actually had some direct, firsthand experience in these areas. 

Now, that’s not to say I won’t take advice — I will. I welcome advice from an input from, the district, the community, the stakeholders, because you are my clients or you would be my clients.  And I see it as a similar process — different yes in that I have to work with more people to accomplish passing a law. But it’s still the same thing. 

Like my clients, communities come to me, they tell me what their concerns or issues are and I help them to craft a solution to address that by helping them to create laws that resolve their problems. And so, I think that also my whole history, life, of public service to the community shows how much I am dedicated. I wasn’t doing it because I was always paid. Many of my public service community activities were pro bono. It wasn’t ’cause I worked in somebody’s office and they directed me to be responsive to this or that person. No, I did it because that is who I am as a person. And so that means you can count on me to focus on the community’s needs and not to be swayed by special interests who will take me away from that, when my whole life has been about helping the people that live in this community.