Health care, jobs, workers’ rights: Fresno-Madera Assembly candidates address Latino voters

Madera residents wasted no time when questioning the California Assembly candidates competing to represent the city and northwest Fresno. They wanted to know what the winner will do to make sure Madera Community Hospital’s reopening is permanent.

“Our health became a privilege,” Madera resident Feliza Cruz told them in Spanish. “It should be a right.”

Cruz said her father died last year outside of a hospital in Fresno because there was no hospital in Madera.

The race for the 27th California Assembly District pits Democratic incumbent Esmeralda Soria against Republican Joanna Garcia Rose, of Atwater, who has worked as a farmer and tax auditor, and says she is “not a politician.”

Rose is hoping that will help her win the district, which also covers the Merced area to the north and stretches to the west past Coalinga, Mendota and Los Banos.

“We need to stop electing career politicians who have spent their entire lives working with, for other politicians,” Rose said Friday, speaking through an interpreter to a mostly Latino immigrant crowd on Madera’s east side.

Soria was elected in the 27th District, which is 66.8% Latino, in 2022 and previously served on the Fresno City Council. A first generation Mexican American, Soria told Madera residents she has already spent the past year fighting for “our community” in Sacramento.

This race will be decided in the November election. Here’s what the candidates said about Madera’s shuttered hospital, jobs and resources for farm workers.

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Madera Community Hospital

Soria, whose term began in January 2023, said making sure Madera hospital reopens was the first big issue to make it to her desk.

“It’s been priority number one for me,” Soria said in Spanish. “In the first year, I made sure there were funds available for the hospital.”

Soria worked with State Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Fresno, to help pass the Distressed Hospital Loan Program bill through the state legislature after the closure of Madera hospital in January 2023. It was the only adult hospital in all of Madera County and served a large number of low income Latino immigrants, many of them farm workers.

Once signed into law last year, the loan program allocated more than $50 million to help reopen Madera hospital. It’s now in a position for a potential reopening this summer with its new management partner, American Advanced Management Inc. While AAMI has said its reopening will happen with or without the state funding, receiving the loan is dependent on state approval of its management agreement.

“We have to make sure the new management will be good for the community,” Soria said. “The state still has to approve the deal to make sure its not just a one or two-year thing and is sustainable in the long run.”

Rose, who said she had life-saving cancer surgery at Madera hospital before its closure, thinks the problem is that California’s health care system is broken.

“We need leadership that will be proactive and not reactive,” she said. “This hospital never should have closed.”

Rose said the hospital needs strong fiscal, responsible management, and said there were plenty of warning signs that its past administration was not running it well.

“We need to do something different,” she said. “If we just throw money at the problem and don’t have a change in leadership, the problem will repeat itself ... Doctors that worked there are hesitant to come back if there’s not good leadership.”

Jobs training for young people

Rose said a lack of local job opportunities for high school graduates is a problem the entire state is facing.

“People are seeking opportunities elsewhere because the leadership in California has been the same for decades,” she said.

She wants to focus on policies that spur local business growth and increasing opportunities for trades apprenticeships and tech training.

“We also need to focus on affordable living, gas, housing and costs,” Rose said.

Soria said she has supported programs that provide grants and scholarships for working families. She also touted her support of the California College Promise Program, which provides two years of free tuition for community college students.

“I’ve supported the reforms that have made colleges like Madera Community College almost free for anyone who wants to attend,” she said.

She said she agrees with President Joe Biden’s cancellations of student loan debt, arguing that it’s extremely helpful to the livelihoods of people who want to contribute to the public but have been stuck with large amounts of debt.

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Farm workers’ rights

Madera resident Cristina Gonzalez, who worked in agriculture for many years, told the candidates that organizations that provide resource information to farm workers are often unable to reach them on job sites. Supervisors often deny them access, she said.

Gonzalez, who said she spoke on behalf of the farm worker community, wanted to know what the candidates will do to support the creation of a comprehensive resource center where these workers can access help more easily.

Rose said she used farm labor contractors to hire workers on the 5,000-tree family farm she previously helped run.

“We need leaders in Sacramento that understand the burden,” she said. “I worked alongside them, making sure they had facilities available, shade, water and proper hours.”

Rose said the state needs to do better in enforcing requirements on farm employers and ensuring make resources available for their workers. She repeatedly stressed a need for change in Sacramento.

“I’m a working mother,” she said. “I have a 3-year-old, and I’m trying to keep his American dream alive as well as your American dream alive here in the Central Valley.”

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Soria, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. without documentation in the 1970s and worked in the agricultural fields, said this topic is deeply personal to her. She said she supports the creation of a farm worker resource center.

Last year, Soria said, she supported a bill that would expand unemployment benefits to undocumented farm workers in California.

“In times of great floods, our people stop working for weeks at a time and can’t obtain their pay, despite the fact they work so hard,” she said.

There are bad employers in farm work, Soria said, who “do not follow the law.”

“We also need to make sure our farm workers feel comfortable reporting them to the state,” she said. “That’s what we’re doing. We’re working to make sure our farm worker families feel empowered and know they have rights, regardless of their immigration status.”