‘He Still Takes Corporate Money’: Progressive candidate Fatima Iqbal-Zubair is at it again to unseat Assemblymember Mike Gipson

The newly drawn California Assembly District 65, which contains parts of North Long Beach, is home to some of California’s most heavily polluted communities. The district also includes West Carson and the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles. Together with West Long Beach, these communities along the 710 freeway have rates of asthma-related emergency department visits over 40% higher than the state average, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Residents in these communities also have higher-than-average cancer risk for the region. 

As the state moves towards a goal of carbon neutrality by 2045, state Assembly candidate Fatima Iqbal-Zubair says the progress is not swift enough and she blames the massive influence of corporate dollars on California’s Democratic-controlled legislature. 

Iqbal-Zubair is making her second run at unseating incumbent Assemblymember Mike Gipson after a defeat in 2020. The two Democrats will face each other in the June 7 primary—but because it’s a “top two” primary with only two candidates, no matter the outcome, the two will face each other again in the November general election.

Iqbal-Zubair taught high school science for over three years in the low-income South Los Angeles community of Watts where she started a first-of-its-kind robotics team that is currently profiled in the Disney+ documentary More Than Robots. She also serves on the Leadership Council for Watts Rising, a coalition of over 40 community organizations dedicated to improving the quality of life and the environment in Watts. 

“We have a lot of progressive priorities and Fatima is on the right side of every one of them,” says Amar Shergill, chair of the California Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus, listing single-payer healthcare, tightened restrictions on campaign spending, and affordable housing— a few of the issues he expects Iqbal-Zubair to champion.

FORTHE spoke with Iqbal-Zubair about the urgency of climate legislation, supply-side housing policy, criminal legal reform, and the role faith plays in her politics.

We offered Assemblymember Gipson the opportunity to sit for a similar Q&A on multiple occasions, but he did not accept. 

Why are you running?

I’m running to try to change the system we live in.

We have systemic classism, systemic racism, happening in too many places in California. Most places, in fact.

[As a result of] my work as an educator and as an organizer, I got to know my opponent and his record and it really saddened me. It angered me. 

We have Democrats that get elected over and over again. We have [a] super majority of Democrats [in the state legislature], and a lot of great policies, like healthcare, like tenants’ rights, they don’t pass. This is deeply problematic. Especially for my district which is largely black and brown [and] working class.

I’m running because [my opponent has] failed on environmental justice. He’s failed on tenants rights. He’s failed on healthcare. And I don’t think the legislature has focused on investing in public education in terms of tuition-free college and investing in our schools in black and brown communities. 

That’s why I’m running, to really make these systemic changes, where people will actually feel that their life is different. 

Right now, the frustration in California is that [there is] barely [a] middle class. We see folks falling into homelessness, and that’s problematic because we live in the state with the most wealth, the most income, and that just simply shouldn’t be the case. 

Based on your teaching experience, what is a program or resource that needs more state funding?

I don’t agree [with] how the funding formula works. Right now it is based on per pupil attendance. We have to think about how we can equitably fund our public schools. We need to move away from per pupil funding and think about how undresourced the community is, and how much funding is needed to lift up the next generation of that community.   

I remember when I was teaching I would have students come in, sometimes with third grade reading levels. Sometimes, as juniors and seniors, with kindergarten reading levels. How is that happening? They go through 11 or 12 years of school and are at that point. So that’s clearly based on the lack of funding. 

The other thing is that, I know from working in [low-income] communities, a lot of these students have to work. I was just talking to one of my robotics students the other day. She was telling me that because of [the] lack of universal childcare, they have to take their siblings to school, sometimes [they] work after school. There’s reasons there [are] attendance issues. One can say there aren’t enough programs in inner-city schools that are engaging enough and there’s too many substitutes but the other reason is economic insecurity.      

Why is it that [a] kid is coming to junior or senior year with a lower reading or writing level when they don’t have any other special need? It’s because there’s been many steps where there hasn’t been adequate aides, or adequate teachers that have been compensated well enough or trained enough. But that is clearly the failure of the system, not the failure of the student.  

One thing I would add is after school programs just because of what I experienced with my robotics team. Everyone on my team goes to college. In Watts, almost half of students have been failed by our public school system and don’t graduate. Bringing that one program to the school I saw such a drastic change in hope and inspiration when students found somewhere to come after school. 

I had to go to private grants, it wasn’t funded by the school. NASA funds us, and Raytheon, and i.am Angel Foundation [founded by rapper will.i.am]. It shouldn’t be that way. I saw other robotics teams in other schools that were trying to start that didn’t have access to these types of funding ‘cause they didn’t know they existed [and the programs] didn’t last.      

You taught high school science in Watts where you incorporated environmental justice into your teaching. What did that experience teach you about environmental policy?

There’s a lot we can do locally at the state level.

Environmental justice is a global issue, but it’s also very local in terms of the access to clean water. How close your community is to a freeway. How much concrete and green space your community has. Food desserts. 

We need comprehensive legislation that really looks at the infrastructure that’s causing unclean water all over the state. We need comprehensive bills that are addressing the lack of greenspace, that are addressing how we are going to transition away from fossil fuel energy. 

That’s what I learned in organizing. It started with very local issues but it expanded onward to the rest of the district. I learned very soon that Wilmington and South LA have a very high proportion of oil drilling, of idle and active oil wells. These things are found in Black and Brown communities. 

[An] IPCC report came out [recently]. It says, our leaders are not doing enough and we’re all doomed. We have less than 10 years, 8 years at most to tackle this, and I’m not seeing that sort of urgent leadership. 

Can you point to specific environmental legislation that failed that you would have supported?

I would have supported ending oil drilling [which] failed twice during the course of my campaign. 

I would have supported, unlike my opponent, getting California to zero emissions by 2045 and [even] that’s too late so I would have supported a faster timeline. 

There were some great [bills], banning single-use plastic [for instance]. This is an interconnected issue, plastic comes from oil, everything is tied to oil. 

A lot of these bills haven’t been written yet. Issac Bryan, I see, introduced a bill recently that addresses environmental justice through the equity lens, kind of a semi-Green New Deal bill. I would have been an author/co-author of that.

Author’s Note: Assemblymember Issac Bryan’s AB 2419 would direct 40 percent of federal climate and infrastructure funding to low-income, Indigenous, and rural communities and communities of color. It most recently passed the Assembly and is now in the Senate.

AB 1395 would have codified California’s goal of zero emissions by 2045 into law. Assemblymember Mike Gipson voted “no” when it reached the Assembly floor. The Bill was ultimately shelved in the Senate. 

AB 345, which would have required protective distances between oil drilling sites and homes/schools/etc., passed the Assembly in 2019 before failing in the Senate. Gipson abstained from voting when it was in the Assembly. Would you have voted in favor?

I would have voted for it, I would have pushed it through. I would have been out there with activists, with [the] Sunrise [Movement], with CBE [Action]. Supporting, to me, is the lowest bar. 

You need to act, like the movie Don’t Look Up says, like our world is on fire. We need to act like peoples’ lives are on the line.

It saddens me that not only are there Democrats not acting that way, they’re opposed to [legislation that addresses climate change].   

It’s because of the toxic money up there, that’s why we need to get some of these folks out. 

You’ve said that Gipson is the “most funded corporate democrat in the State Assembly.” Can you explain your claim?

I’d have to look at his current campaign spending but when I first started my campaign, [the description] was based [on] 2018, 2020.

He takes the most in corporate money, including gifts. These corporations don’t just give money for your election, they also give you gifts. These gifts look like free trips or game tickets or VIP tickets, things like that. He’s accepted the most in that. And this is based off of 2018 and 2020 data. I don’t know how that’s changed. Obviously he still takes corporate money, yesterday at an endorsement meeting he saw no issue [in] taking it. He even said that.  

Author’s Note: At the Stonewall Democratic Club’s endorsement meeting in February, Gipson said that campaign donations don’t “control” him. 

You’ve said that you want to transition away from fossil fuels but want to keep in mind oil and gas workers [many of whom are unionized], something Gipson has also said is a concern. Can you be specific about how you would balance the two as a legislator? 

It’s not an easy bill that you can put together on a whim. That’s why I’m running because I feel like that takes great coalition building, of unions, even bringing the refineries to the table. We have to bring everyone to the table and understand that this is an issue that affects all of us. 

This is not about us versus them, about being anti-worker or for workers.

Here’s an issue for workers that is not talked about enough. What do we do [with] the workers when the oil runs out? No one is talking about that. And the oil is gonna run out and then we’re gonna be dependent on foriegn energy, and that’s not good. 

Yes we need a just transition but frankly it’s an issue of sustainability for union jobs. Where are these workers gonna go? It’s a nonrenewable source of fuel. What are we gonna do in 10, 15 years, for these folks’ jobs? 

In terms of a just transition, we need to be doing things simultaneously. We need to be scaling back fossil fuels while we’re building infrastructure for solar and wind and renewable energy. That’s not happening on the scale that it needs to be.    

It’s happening in other countries faster than it’s happening in the US and definitely California. California is increasing fracking permits, we have a lot of false solutions for regulating oil refineries. This is about keeping good union jobs, thinking about how those skills can translate to other infrastructure that we’re gonna build, other green infrastructure and green energy.  

A lot of those skills are very similar and can be translated to a new industry. We have to make sure there are project labor agreements [so] that these jobs are union jobs and so that the communities that struggled the most for environmental justice are benefiting the most. Whatever we’re doing in this transition, we want to make sure that not only are these jobs unionized, we want to make sure that that paycheck isn’t lost.

Author’s Note: California is not increasing fracking permits. Gov. Gavin Newsom has set a deadline of 2024 to end the practice entirely, but the deadline has not been codified into law and is currently being challenged in court. 

You’ve pledged to not take money from fossil fuel companies or police unions. What effect do you believe these special interests have had on Sacramento?

They’ve had an awful effect.

I have fought, even outside of my candidacy, with [CDP] delegates to get this money out of the party. The effect it has, to put it really simply, is that it has killed bills. If you look at the direct connection [between] the legislators that are voting against [climate legislation], or sitting out on these votes, it’s the legislators that are taking oil money. The ones that [don’t take that money] are on board. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this is a toxic influence on Sacramento.  

We need to get to a place where we limit corporate money. We can’t overturn Citizens’ United but we can definitely limit it on the state level and we can commit, as a requirement for [the CDP] to endorse you, that you don’t take this money. That’s a [requirement] I want in our bylaws. If the climate crisis is as serious as you say, then let’s commit to not endorsing anyone that takes this money. If we imagine the drastic change that would have on our legislature, because we would have legislators that are not sold out, we would ensure that climate legislation is passing.    

You’ve said that Gipson is tied to police unions, yet he’s sponsored major police reforms this past year including a statewide ban on chokeholds and a mandate that all police departments have a policy prohibiting police gangs. How do you believe he is beholden to police unions?

He takes [some] of the most in cop money, I think he’s [in the] top five. What’s sad is that he took this money after a lot of black youth were shot in my district.   

The chokehold bill, that [practice] has been banned in major police agencies all over the country. It hasn’t shown changes in holding police officers accountable. What we need is real accountability measures and transparency.     

The gangs [bill], that’s a good one. I’m not gonna say anything against that, I would have supported/co-authored it.

We need to end qualified immunity. I understand workers need to be unionized but the sort of power that police unions have in protecting officers that shoot civilians [and] kill civilians, is crazy. It’s to the point where like 99% of them can’t be charged. That’s ridiculous. If it was a black-on-black crime, or a gangland crime, [that] person would go to jail. How is that fair? When a police officer shoots someone they should be held to the same standards.        

[Gipson] is not going far enough [with] criminal justice reform. 

[I’m] someone who believes that the current policing system was [first] developed to be slave catchers. [There] is an amendment in our constitution that says we’re not going to enslave black folks, but we’re allowed to catch them and imprison them. That’s exactly why the police force was started in this country.  

If we want to see real public safety, community members feeling safe, it does not include the militarized police force we have right now. What it includes is mental healthcare investments, social healthcare investments. Maybe we need a crew for violent crime situations but we definitely don’t need every police officer to have a gun. That is problematic.

Those are some of the drastic changes we need and I don’t see them being proposed by [Gipson] or out of Sacramento right now. 

Are there specific police transparency reforms you think you can accomplish if elected? What can the state do to increase police transparency locally?

Ending qualified immunity would be huge. 

LA has an oversight commission, but that’s made up of police officers/folks on the inside. When we look at these committees that look at these crimes, it shouldn’t be police officers that are on that committee. It’s a biased view. If a police shooting of a civilian happens, those sorts of boards and commissions should be made up of community members and not folks inside the department. That’s something that would help with accountability: making sure those spaces don’t have folks in law enforcement, or tied to law enforcement, in them.      

Moving on to housing—some housing advocates have conceptualized the housing crisis as a supply side issue, while some tenant advocates believe it’s about tenant protections. How do you conceptualize the housing crisis in California? Is it about production or protection?

I think it’s both.

If you look at the macro side, production, we have to drastically increase production. Build enough units, [and] those need to be affordable. I’m not talking about market-value [units]. 

We do need to increase our stock of affordable units because we’ve never met our quota actually and that’s an issue.

But living in South LA I can tell you, that we have displacement happening a lot too. My leadership will be important because I understand that.

I understand that we need to overturn the Ellis Act. I understand that we need tenant protections, including [the] right to a lawyer. We need a robust bill of rights for tenants and we need anti-displacement [measures]. Every housing bill, we need to make sure there are provisions not just for affordable housing, we need anti-displacement provisions, tenants provisions.

That’s the approach we need to take to housing, and we can’t discount mental healthcare and economic security. We have to be paying people more and we have to be guaranteeing healthcare for drug addiction and other mental health issues.

Author’s note: The Ellis Act allows a property owner to evict a tenant in order to remove the property from the rental market or demolish and redevelop the property. Tenant advocates argue the law allows real estate “flippers” to displace tenants of rent stabilized units. 

There have been two high profile housing bills in the legislature recently and I’d like to know whether you would have supported or opposed them.  

First, AB 854, would have required landlords to own a building for five years before evicting tenants in order to remove the property from the rental market. The bill passed committee but did not get an Assembly floor vote. Yay or nay?

I would have been a chief co-author. I would have pushed it through; it’s highly needed. And that doesn’t even overturn the Ellis Act! It’s actually just a reform that closes a loophole. 100%, that’s an easy one. 

Author’s note: AB 854 was reintroduced as AB 2050 with much of the same language. Since then, AB 2050 has also been shelved before reaching the Assembly floor. 

SB 9, which passed, allows previously zoned single-family lots to be converted into two to four units. Yay or nay?

Yes, with a caveat. 

I would have voted yes, we need to increase our housing. What I wanted in that bill though was anti-displacement measures, affordability measures, and tenants rights measures. But I do think we need to increase our housing and work on the density issue.

If elected, you would be the first Muslim woman elected to the state legislature. What role does faith play in your politics?

I don’t believe faith should have any place in government, I’ll start with that. To me, my faith is an individual relationship I have with a higher power and that’s all it is.

We see these [theocratic] governments all over the country that are dangerous, they ban LGBTQ rights, they ban reproductive access. We see Republican states that aren’t supposed to follow Christian doctrines, but are banning these things. Religion should not be anywhere in our government spaces. 

My faith, for me personally, gives me peace, gives me strength. It focuses my mind towards justice and keeps my intentions towards justice. I’m not a believer in a literal reading of the Quran [which was] revealed in a certain time. What I take from it is to be [a] good [person].