State Senator Bill Monning has a persistent – and effective – strategy to fight for the Central Coast.

It’s a quiet morning on the weekend before Election Day. In a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Merced, one of the most powerful members of the California State Legislature – Senate Majority Leader Bill Monning, who represents the Central Coast – is engaging voters on behalf of his friend and longtime political ally, Anna Caballero, a candidate for the sprawling State Senate District 12 seat.

A cerulean sky stretches out in all directions as Monning treks along the series of tract homes seeking out voters in support of Caballero. It’s surprisingly hot for early November and temperatures will climb into the high 80s later in the afternoon. Dressed in jeans, a blue polo shirt and a University of California baseball cap (Monning is a proud Cal alum), the sandy-haired senator walks from house to house, uncertain of what he will encounter behind each door.

What he discovers is a fascinating cross-section of California – one family from El Salvador; a young single mother and waitress raised in nearby Ceres; and three generations of a Vietnamese family in the midst of an ornate ceremony welcoming a newborn baby into their home.

Precincts like this one represent the deep trenches of California politics. The party or the candidate with the best field operation generally has an edge in any given election. But it’s hard to get a sense of the political landscape in this neighborhood. There’s not a single campaign yard sign in sight, and many residents who answer the doors seem disengaged from the process.

In certain respects, the 12th district represents Ground Zero in California legislative politics. A cadre of senators – including Nancy Skinner (Berkeley), Steve Glazer (Orinda), Henry Stern (Los Angeles), Bob Wieckowski (Fremont) and Senate President pro tempore Toni Atkins (San Diego) – have joined Monning on this three-day bus tour to rustle up votes for targeted Democratic Party candidates. Their goal: to secure so-called supermajorities in both houses of the legislature.

If the 12th district represents the hopes of California Democrats, it also reflects the deep dark political chasms of Donald Trump’s America. Caballero – the former mayor of Salinas who currently represents the Pajaro and Salinas valleys in the California Assembly – is facing Rob Poythress, a conservative, white, male Republican supervisor from Madera, who in the final weeks of the campaign unleashed a Willie Hortonesque series of television spots against Caballero that, among other things, accused her promoting heroin use (replete with needles and syringes as visual backdrops). Monning describes the ads as “vulgar” and “poisonous.”

AS THE SUN CLIMBS OVER THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, Monning beats on into the neighborhood. He’s warm and genuine with everyone he encounters. It seems there might be a better way for someone at his station in life to spend a golden weekend. Why does he do it?

“I have a defective gene,” he jokes with a wry smile. A few steps later, he clarifies, as if to make sure his humor is not misinterpreted: “You know, I’ve been walking precincts my entire adult life, all the way back to my days with the farm workers’ movement [in the 1970s]. You meet people, connect with people, you take them out of their political isolation. It’s a real and practical way to stem the tide of all the corporate money that’s being pumped into these races. I tell people: Don’t be demoralized. Vote, get engaged.”

Ever since he was first elected to represent the Central Coast – first as a member of the Assembly in 2008, then as a senator beginning in 2012 – Monning has waged a steady war in Sacramento on behalf of progressive causes: a soda tax or warning labels to support public health; farm worker protections; clean water; sustainable seafood; the End of Life Option Act; an economic assessment for the shutdown of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant; financial protections for the victims of domestic violence; eliminating plastic refuse in the oceans. He has also secured more than $3 million in funding for the Central Coast Veterans Cemetery at the former Fort Ord.

In each of these battles, Monning has taken on big-moneyed interests he believes warp California’s democratic institutions: insurance companies, the soft drink industry, the gas and oil lobby, agribusiness, the trucking industry, energy giants and polluters of all stripes. For him, California politics has a David versus Goliath dynamic. He refuses to give ground.

The legendary California Assembly Speaker, Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh, once famously proclaimed that “money is the mother’s milk of California politics.”

Ever since its founding in the aftermath of the Gold Rush, California has been dominated by special-interest money. The railroad magnates of the Central Pacific Railroad essentially owned the legislature in Sacramento for the latter half of the 19th century.

“It was true then, and it’s still true today,” Monning declares. “In fact, the lobbyists today are on steroids.”

As an example, he points to this year’s battle in San Luis Obispo County to pass Measure G, which would have prohibited fracking and further oil exploration in the county. “Chevron alone spent $4 million plus to defeat the measure,” Monning notes. (As of press time, the measure was going down in defeat, 56 to 44 percent.)

Near the end of Monning’s walk, he meets up with his colleague, Toni Atkins of San Diego. There is a clear warmth between them. She explains why, as president of the State Senate, she has appointed Monning to top leadership roles.

“Bill has a real calming effect on most of us,” she says. “He is very principled and trustworthy. He’s passionate about his beliefs, but he also has a practical approach to this work.”

For the End of Life Option Act, Monning negotiated with various medical organizations and hospitals (“they changed and went neutral”), the Catholic Church, hospice groups and met with every assemblymember and senator in Sacramento. For the new Pfeiffer Bridge in Big Sur, Monning negotiated funding from a variety of sources.

Atkins singles out Monning’s work on the Senate’s powerful Rules Committee, on which she serves as chair: “Bill’s an attorney, and it’s important to have someone with a legal background on board. He’s a diplomat and seasoned negotiator.

“He’s also someone with a nuanced understanding of California as a whole,” Atkins continues. “He understands coastal issues. He has a deep understanding from his days with the farm workers – right here where we are today – plus he’s bilingual (in English and Spanish). He’s extremely well-rounded and well-grounded. He’s a huge asset to the Democratic caucus and to the state.”

BORN IN CULVER CITY IN 1951, William Wheeler Monning grew up largely in Pasadena, where he was a star athlete at Flintridge Prep, participating in football, basketball, baseball and swimming.

Monning acknowledges that he was sheltered from the poverty and social turbulence during those post-war years of economic growth and tension in Southern California – in particular, the Watts Riots of 1965. But he recalls an incident during his childhood that he says shaped his mindset.

It was during the Christmas season that he saw a beat-up station wagon pull into a parking lot, when the driver, a Mexican immigrant with what appeared to be his entire family and all of their belongings in tow, rolled down his window and said to Monning’s father, an engineer for the city of Los Angeles, that he didn’t have money for gas. Without drawing attention to himself, Monning’s dad walked over to the station wagon and handed the driver a $20 bill.

“Not everybody has the same good fortune that we do,” Monning recalls his father saying. Those words left a profound impression. “My family had a deep commitment to public service –you give to others – and watching how my father handled that situation had a huge impact on my life.”

After graduating from Flintridge in 1969 (his father had died from a heart attack when Monning was still in high school), Monning went to Berkeley, where the free speech movement was on fire and activism defined the times.

One of his mentors in Berkeley was Tom Hayden – a Freedom Rider in the Deep South, a member of the Chicago Seven, and later, like Monning, elected to both houses of the California Legislature. During the early ’70s, Hayden lived in Berkeley as a member of the so-called Red Family, to whose brand of activism Monning found himself attracted.

By the time he graduated from Berkeley, Monning had been fully radicalized. He entered law school at the University of San Francisco and came out committed to working on behalf of migrant workers. His first job as an attorney was for the United Farm Workers union; he later worked for the Migrant Farm Worker Project at California Rural Legal Assistance; the Salvadoran Medical Relief Fund; and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. It was a legal career steeped in progressive causes, working on behalf of the disenfranchised and dispossessed.

THEN IN 1993, THE POLITICAL BUG GOT HIM. With the election of Bill Clinton to the presidency and the ascendance of Monterey congressmember Leon Panetta to Clinton’s cabinet (first as director of the Office of Management and Budget), Monning decided to seek what had been Panetta’s congressional seat since the mid-1970s.

Monning’s decision to run irked more than a few members of the regional Democratic party establishment who had already lined up behind Carmel-based Assemblymember Sam Farr. Monning bristles at the long-standing narrative (that still exists to this day) that he ran againstFarr.

“Remember, this was an open seat,” Monning says. “Sam wasn’t an incumbent. This was a special election. I was running on a progressive agenda – campaign finance reform, single-payer health insurance and opposition to NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). We disagreed on the first two issues, but Sam said he was against NAFTA, too.”

In fact, there were more than two dozen candidates in the primary campaign, representing all regions of the political spectrum. But the race, as the Santa Cruz Sentinel declared, was viewed by most political observers as “Farr’s to lose.” When the first dust settled in the April 1993 primary, Farr garnered 25 percent of the vote, while Monning surprised many local pundits by coming in a strong second, with 18 percent. In a runoff, Farr beat his Republican opponent, Bill McCambell, 52 to 43 percent.

Later that year Farr made national news when he “reneged on his campaign pledge to oppose the accord [NAFTA],” in the words of the New York Times. “The unions that were critical to his victory are now offering an all-out effort in 1994 to help Bill Monning, a Democrat who was Farr’s closest rival in the open primary.”

Monning says that wasn’t really true. Labor rattled some swords, he says, but quickly patched things up with Farr.

The previous year, Republican Bruce McPherson had upset longtime Santa Cruz County Supervisor Gary Patton to take Farr’s vacated Assembly seat. Rather than challenge Farr, Monning decided to take on McPherson.

The Democratic Party establishment – most notably State Sen. Henry Mello of Watsonville – sabotaged Monning’s campaign. Dan Walters, a longtime Sacramento columnist for McClatchy News Service, published an expose of how Mello, who Walters described as “an autocratic, old-style politician who… fancies himself the political boss of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties,” iced Monning because he had beaten Mello’s longtime aide Cathy O’Boyle in the Democratic primary for the Assembly.

They were both Democrats, but Mello and Monning were polar opposites. Mello had PAC money running through his veins; he had long favored Salinas Valley and Pajaro Valley agribusiness interests over Cesar Chavez and the UFW.

Mello refused to endorse Monning, and Democratic kingpin, Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown, waited until the last second to offer Monning some campaign crumbs. It was too little too late. McPherson (who has since left the Republican Party) squeaked by in the race by just 2,500 votes (51 to 49 percent), and went on to a lengthy career in the State Senate, served as Secretary of State, and now serves as a Santa Cruz County supervisor.

Monning had been outspent by $500,000 in the race, in a district that had been considered a Democratic lock. While he was “frustrated” and “disappointed” by the outcome, he had not compromised his principles, refusing offers of special interest money. He had fought the good fight – and had lost a legislative bid for the second time in two years.

CUT TO A DECADE-AND-A-HALF LATER. By then, a lot of water had flowed under many a political bridge on the Central Coast. When John Laird, the popular Democratic Assemblyman from Santa Cruz, termed out in the 27th District (Laird currently serves as Secretary of the California Resources Agency) in 2008, Monning – then teaching in Monterey – decided to make another run for it.

“I felt like there was some unfinished business,” he says. “I didn’t want to have any regrets.”

Monning ran on the same progressive platform issues that had been mainstays in his previous races – health care, campaign finance reform, workers’ rights, environmental protection. This time around he won the race with a whopping 67 percent of the vote, defeating Republican Robert Murray and Libertarian Mark Hinkle. “I have great gratitude and respect for all those who have worked in my campaign teams over the years,” Monning says. “It’s all about love and respect for each other and the shared vision of what we want for each other and our communities.”

Monning won re-election in 2010, and then won in the State Senate in 2012 and again in 2016. In each instance he won with roughly two-thirds of the vote. Monning hadn’t changed since his losses in the 1990s, but the State Democratic Party had come around to embracing his non-transactional brand of politics.

In 2014, Monning’s longtime ally, State Senate president pro tempore Kevin de León (who lost his U.S. Senate bid last week to Dianne Feinstein) selected Monning to serve as Senate Majority Leader, elevating him to one of the most prominent roles in state government.

There was no small amount of irony that Monning had assumed the position that Henry Mello had held. Monning is a trained mediator, but never patched things up with Mello, who died in 2004.

“I called him once to schedule a meeting,” Monning says. “I went over to his office in the hope of making peace, to unify. It was a vicious, insulting exchange.” Monning says he walked out of that meeting and never looked back.

When Monning ran for office the second time around, there was skepticism among local Democrats how well Monning might fare in Sacramento. Monning’s mentor Hayden – who served for nearly two decades in the legislature – died in 2016 at the age of 76. Asked years ago he how he thought Monning would handle the state capital, Hayden didn’t soft-pedal. “I’m not sure he’s going to like it there,” Hayden said. He thought there might be too much horse-trading for his friend’s ethical standards.

Just after the Nov. 6 election, Monning reflects on Hayden’s prognostication. He says he’s not surprised by Hayden’s view. “Yeah, it’s a mixed bag,” Monning says. “But when I look at what you can do when you grit your teeth, the trade-off is being able to accomplish important policy. I’ve been able to maintain my integrity and moral compass and not get sucked into the sludge.”

GO BACK IN TIME TO THE 1970s, MONNING’S FIRST TRIP TO SACRAMENTO when he was working for the United Farm Workers. “It’s alluring,” he says, “but I was also turned off by it and couldn’t wait to get away.

“I developed a love-hate relationship with it then, and I still have it. I don’t think you’re really grounded unless you have a love-hate relationship with the place. I still feel the tug both ways.”

There was speculation Monning would run again for Congress when Sam Farr retired in 2016, but he made news when he announced that he was instead going to stick with his role in Sacramento.

Married for 40 years to physician Dana Kent, Monning, now 67, will term out of office in 2020. Once the legislative session opens in 2019 he says he’s going to work on getting his Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund legislation passed. He has been in negotiations with agribusiness organizations and environmental groups (totaling 90 in all) and says he will refocus his efforts with a handful of legislators afraid of voting for a tax bill in advance of the 2018 elections.

And he will continue to wage battle against the soft drink industry. After three unsuccessful attempts at levying taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (twice in the Assembly and once in the State Senate), Monning is hoping that the supermajorities garnered in both houses on Election Day last week will enable him to push through his tax in the next legislative session.

Monning views the End of Life Option Act, passed in 2015 and which allows an adult diagnosed with a terminal disease to request aid-in-dying drugs from an attending physician, as one of his greatest legislative achievements.

The process was especially moving for him. Many people confronting terminal illnesses at the time came to Sacramento to testify and lobby on behalf of the trailblazing legislation.

“They knew that they weren’t going to be able to benefit from it,” Monning says. “And yet they still came, facing their terminal conditions, making sure that those who followed them would have options that they didn’t have. Their courage was very moving. When it’s all said and done, those will be the lasting memories.”

A look at some significant pieces of legislation authored by Bill Monning.

ABX2-15 – End of life Option Act

Allows for a terminally ill adult with the capacity to make medical decisions in the final stages of their disease to request medication from a physician to bring about a peaceful death.

SB 106 – California Central Coast Veterans Cemetery

An urgency measure that clarifies two sections of the Military and Veterans Code as it relates to the creation of the Central Coast State Veterans Cemetery. Phase 1 has been completed and is operational; Phase 2 is expected to be completed by 2022.

SB 1090 – Diablo Canyon Impact Mitigation

Calls on the California Public Utilities Commission to approve a community impact mitigation settlement of $85 million for the decommissioning of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in Avila Beach.

SB 1129 – Financial Protections for Victims of Domestic Violence

Establishes protections for victims of domestic violence by ensuring that they cannot be forced to financially support their abusive spouse through court-ordered spousal support, payment of their spouse’s attorney’s fees, or the splitting of their community property interest in a pension or retirement fund.

SB 1192 – Healthy Beverages in Kids’ Meals

Requires restaurants that serve meals primarily marketed to children to make the default drink option water, sparkling water or milk. (Customers can still explicitly ask to replace the healthful drink with a sugary beverage at no cost.)

AB 1217 – Sustainable Seafood

Directs the Ocean Protection Council to develop and implement a voluntary sustainable seafood promotion program with protocols for seafood vendors to be independently certified to internationally accepted standards.

SCR 139 – No Straw November

The Senate Concurrent Resolution designates every November as No Straw November. The initiative was originally created by Girl Scout Shelby O’Neil from San Benito County in 2017 and asks people to pledge to refuse straws during the month of November. It is currently the first official No Straw November in California.