Opinion: Angelenos: Don’t send an apathetic message to Washington. Vote for your next congressman — or woman! — on Tuesday

On Tuesday, voters in the heart of Los Angeles will send a message to Washington. How? By voting in the special election to replace Xavier Becerra in the U.S. House of Representatives.

What that message will be depends on which two of the 23 candidates (24 if you count the one qualified write-in candidate) earn the most votes and advance to the June runoff election. Will it be that the progressive movement begun by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ run for president is alive and well? If so, the two Sanders Democrats, Arturo Carmona and Wendy Carrillo, may advance.

Will it be that, all things considered, campaign donations are still the best indicator of electability? If so, the candidates who have raised the most cash, Robert Lee Ahn, an attorney and former city planning commissioner, and Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Eagle Rock) will be the the top two.

Will the message be that we need a woman or an immigrant in this job? More than half of the candidates are women, among them Yolie Flores, Sara Hernandez, Alejandra Campoverdi, Tracy Van Houten and Vanessa Aramayo. And most of the Democrats in the race are immigrants, the children of immigrants or grandchildren of immigrants.

The only thing that’s virtually guaranteed in this race is that the ultimate winner will be a Democrat. The district, stretching north to south from Eagle Rock to Pico Union and east to west from Boyle Heights to Koreatown, is not just solidly blue, it’s deeply progressive. It was one of a handful of congressional districts in California that voted for Sanders in the June presidential primary

The editorial board evaluated the candidates and believes the best message to send is to send the best candidate to Washington: Maria Cabildo, an affordable housing developer in East L.A. and former city planning commissioner. The board concluded that Cabildo has the right mix of leadership, humility, strength and experience to be able to be the most junior member of the Democrats in Congress and still have an impact.

Whatever voters do on Tuesday, hopefully they don’t send a message that they don’t care who wins. That kind of apathy may well be responsible for the election of President Trump. Nationally, about 40% of Americans eligible to do so didn’t vote in November. How many of them are now kicking themselves for not taking the time to cast a ballot? Don’t make that same mistake. Vote on Tuesday, Angelenos.

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