When Joy Silver knocked on the door of a one-story brown stucco house in Indio, Nancy Mejia, 29, wasn’t expecting her.
“I thought you were a Jehovah’s Witness,” she told the state Senate candidate. “You’re the first one who has come by.”
Before strolling the neighborhood near Yucca Park in Indio, Silver’s campaign had identified Mejia as a “low-propensity” voter, meaning she had voted in none or only one of the past four elections.
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Turning out young voters whom previous campaigns may have ignored is a key component to Silver’s strategy as she attempts to unseat incumbent Republican state Sen. Jeff Stone in the historically conservative 28th Senate District.
“So few campaigns even talk to low-propensity voters,” Jacob Daruvala, Silver’s campaign manager, said. “Democrats in some areas of the district that have given up on Democratic representation, we’re going to them and telling them, ‘No, we can win this together.”
The far-reaching 28th District includes west Riverside County cities such as, Temecula, Murrieta and Wildomar, where Republicans dominate voter registration, as well as cities that are majority Democrat, such as Palm Springs and Coachella, and outlying areas that aren’t as clearly politically defined, such as Blythe near the Arizona border.
In 2014, the last time the seat was up for election, a Democrat didn’t advance beyond the primary; Stone faced off against fellow Republican Bonnie Garcia, a former state assemblywoman from Cathedral City.
But Silver is undeterred.
“Yes, I’m a first-time, outsider candidate and people say I’m the underdog, but the truth of the matter is – Republican, Democratic, ‘No Party Preference’ – all people want clean air, clean food, clean water and sustainable energy,” she said.
Silver and the group of supporters volunteering for her, along with Indio City Council candidate Waymond Fermon, got an early start Saturday canvassing the neighborhood, knocking on doors and reminding residents to vote in the November midterm elections.
“[Insert name], how are you? It’s Joy Silver. How are you? I want you to vote, to vote in this election. I’m Joy Silver. I’m running for state Senate. I want to stand up for working families and health care,” she told more than a dozen residents, as she handed them flyers outlining the Democratic Party’s slate of candidates.
After introducing herself, Silver described the 2018 midterm elections as “critical” and launched into her campaign pitch about reining in the cost of health care and prescription drugs in order to protect seniors and working families.
Silver’s focus on seniors, working families and health care aligns neatly with the Democratic Party’s national strategy, but also stems directly from decades of professional experience.
After growing up with two detectives as parents, Silver spent most of her career working in New York. She ran a women’s health care center in the outer boroughs and later managed a housing development for seniors in New Mexico that struggled through the past decade’s economic recession.
Silver believes her experiences have given her the know-how needed to tackle California’s most pressing issues – housing and health care.
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Nearly all the residents who answered their doors Saturday morning identified health care as their top political concerns.
If elected, Silver said she plans on making the issue her office’s top priority.
California Democrats often argue over the merits of health care policy proposals ranging from a state single-payer system to regulating prices, but when asked to take a position on intraparty debates, Silver said Democrats largely share the goal of providing universal health care.
She then launched into an explanation of how fighting President Donald Trump had compelled Democrats to put aside their differences and unite.
Instead of attaching herself to one plan or another, Silver said she believes in a “stepped process” of reforming health care, rather than radically reforming the state’s current $400 billion system.
If elected, Silver said she would advocate for incremental changes that would allow legislators to tinker with what’s working and what isn’t.
Democratic candidates in this year’s midterm elections have faced criticism for overemphasizing President Trump, but even though Silver is running for a state, not federal office, she believes Trump is wholly relevant to her race given Stone’s vocal support of the president and his agenda, which she said exemplified his values.
After Trump’s 2016 victory, Silver helped found a local chapter of Courageous Resistance in order to confront the political change brought by the new administration.
With Silver as a group leader, Courageous Resistance focused on protecting the Coachella Valley’s immigrant community andadvocatingfor theadoption ofsanctuary policies by many of the municipal governments.
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“A Trump presidency is a direct threat to our safety and well-being,” Courage Campaign, the group’s parent organization, proclaims on its website, where it boasts 1.4 million members throughout California.
Courageous Resistance’s run-ins with Stone span back to 2017. That year, the chapter met with Stone at his Indio office and at Indio’s Sip Coffee, Silver said.
Both meetings quickly devolved into heated exchanges about Stone’s support of Trump, and opposition to sanctuary cities, with activists interrupting his answers in protest.
After the meeting, Stone said he saw Courageous Resistance as a vocal minority that wasn’t representative of the entire 28th District, whileCourageous Resistance officials said they found Stone to be impolite and dismissive.
Silver said she believes elected representatives should be accessible to their constituents, and she remembers how difficult it was for Courageous Resistance to schedule a meeting with Stone. She called her frustrations with Stone the “genesis” of her campaign.
She believes the rise of President Trump and his brand of bombast has upended the rules of politics and opened the door for Democrats to broaden their appeal to conservative voters upset with the direction Trump has taken the Republican Party.
“We’re in a different time period,” she said. “That whole concept of red and blue, in this district, is changing. Many Republicans don’t necessarily agree with the national agenda.”
Remarks about transcending partisan lines aren’t surprising, particularly coming from a Democrat who isrunning in an historically conservative district, but Silver’s focus on reaching out to centrists and voters registered as “No Party Preference” hasn’t deterred support from her Democratic base.
“A lot of people started Googling ‘Progressive,’ or ‘Resistance’ and would find Courageous Resistance, the organization Joy founded,” campaign volunteer James Carver said. “That’s what this is all about. We can get volunteers a dime a dozen. There’s so much outrage.”
