SANTA CRUZ >> After entering the race to represent the state’s 28th District in the previous election cycle at the last minute and losing in the primary, union organizer and UC Santa Cruz student Joe Thompson learned that it’s best not to wait until the last second when trying to get elected to public office.

“It was definitely not well planned,” said Thompson. “I ended up still getting a decent amount of votes and support but I recognized that if I was going to do this again, I want to take the time to talk to folks and really learn from the community.”

This week, Thompson was the first candidate to throw their hat in the ring for the upcoming vacancy on the District 5 Santa Cruz City Council seat, which will be determined in a March 2024 runoff election alongside the 1st, 2nd and 3rd district seats.

Whoever wins the seat for the newly formed 5th District, which currently has just the one contender and includes portions of the upper downtown and the Westside, Harvey West neighborhood, part of the UCSC campus and the Pogonip, will replace Santa Cruz Councilmember Sandy Brown, who will term out at the end of 2024.

“To me the point of district elections is to have that representation,” said Thompson. “And this is the first majority UCSC district as well. Being a UC Santa Cruz student who has been active in politics and knows policy and the people of Santa Cruz, I think it’s a great opportunity for the city to have that representation on the council. I want to represent students, but also the seniors and the working families in the city and the district.”

Brown has officially endorsed Thompson’s campaign alongside a number of other prominent elected officials, past and present, local and statewide, such as former 29th District Rep. Mark Stone, current 17th District Rep. Ro Khanna, and six former Santa Cruz mayors including Don Lane, Bruce Van Allen and Mike Rotkin.

“When I decided to run, I started reaching out to those elected officials to get their input and advice,” said Thompson. “By getting to talk to these people, I am learning what it’s like to govern in Santa Cruz.”

Thompson, 20, was born in the Sacramento area and is the youngest of five siblings. Around 2008, during the recession years, Thompson’s family lost their housing.

“That was an eye opening moment, even though I was young,” said Thompson. “I probably moved 10 to 12 times when I was a kid. We moved very often because even up there it was hard to afford rent or a mortgage.”

Thompson finished their high school career in Texas after they came out as gay to their parents, who weren’t accepting of the fact. In 2021, Thompson, who uses they/them pronouns, moved to Santa Cruz to study politics and environmental science at UCSC. The 20-year-old said that they first got a taste for politics and policy making while participating in debate in high school and it is now like a hobby to them.

“People tell me it’s not a real hobby,” said Thompson. “For me, it is.”

In addition to working and union organizing at Starbucks and studying at UCSC, Thompson has served on multiple political campaigns including Gail Pellerin’s recent campaign, and is a substance use disorder services commissioner for Santa Cruz County, an executive committee member for the Sierra Club Ventana Chapter and an assembly district delegate for the California Democratic Party, among other extra curricular activities.

Through his time on the debate team and work as an aspiring elected official, Thompson has found that having an adversarial stance on issues can be counterproductive and that working across the aisle is the only way to get something done, and that’s how they see themselves approaching their work on the council, if elected.

“So far I have met with the majority of the Santa Cruz City Council,” said Thompson. “Because to me, even if we disagree on something, we can still work together on every other thing. For me, that means local issues like potholes, making sure we meet our climate change emission goals and I’m a big labor guy, so helping working families. There’s so many issues we can work together on even if we come from different backgrounds or come to Santa Cruz for different reasons.”

One of the issues that Thompson is focused on — in addition to meeting climate change goals by bolstering public transportation and increasing the affordable housing inclusionary rate for development projects — is labor and keeping it local. Thompson wants the city of Santa Cruz to adopt a project labor agreement similar to the one created by San Jose and Watsonville that helps to ensure that city-funded construction projects are conducted by union workers who live in the area.

“We can make the project labor agreement align with the needs of Santa Cruz,” said Thompson. “To me it makes sure to protect undocumented workers and workers who are experiencing wage theft, because Santa Cruz is very unaffordable so having those good union jobs and ensuring that people are being paid a living wage is really important to me.”