Esmeralda Soria '11 announces bid for Congress

Photo by Jose Alfonso Perez

On July 11, Fresno City Councilwoman and UC Davis School of Law alumna  Esmeralda Soria ’11, announced she would be running to represent California’s 16th Congressional District. She is challenging longtime Rep. Jim Costa, a fellow Democrat. Reporting on Soria’s announcement, the Fresno Bee said Costa “may face his toughest challenge to date.”

King Hall’s Marketing and Communications staff caught up with Soria last November in Fresno, when she was serving a one-year term as Fresno City Council president. Here is that profile:

Esmeralda Soria ’11: ‘It matters who is at the table’

By Carla Meyer

When she first ran for Fresno City Council in 2014, Esmeralda Soria finished second out of seven candidates in the primary, and won the general election by a less than overwhelming margin.

In 2018, she ran unopposed for the same seat.

“I think people saw that I would be hard to beat,” Soria said while sitting in her Fresno City Hall office, which is filled with memorabilia from her four years on the council, including golden shovels from groundbreaking ceremonies.  “I think that over the past four years, I have kept the promises I made to constituents.”

Soria, 36, has just come from a special council meeting regarding residents’ water use, where she brought a quiet authority to her role as council president (she just finished her one-year term). Though gracious with public commenters and patient with fellow council members prone to long-windedness, Soria never wavered from the professional tone she set at meeting’s start. Her demeanor encourages order.

She is the only woman on the seven-person council that governs Fresno, the most populous city in California’s Central Valley (Fresno has 527,000 people compared with Sacramento’s 502,000).  She was the first Latina council president and is the first woman to represent Fresno’s District 1, the section of town that holds Fresno High School, the Tower arts district and about 78,000 people.

Under Soria’s stewardship, District 1 has added a park, and a grocery store “where there had been a food desert,” Soria said. There also is a $38 million mixed-use project in the works that will include 88 affordable housing units.

For Soria, it has been a natural progression toward public office, specifically public office in the San Joaquin Valley. The daughter of Mexican immigrant farm workers, Soria grew up in Lindsay, a small town an hour southeast of Fresno. While in high school, she excelled academically, winning a full scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley.

“When I left Lindsay to go to Berkeley, I told myself I would never come back” to that part of the San Joaquin Valley, Soria said. “But with time, I realized that there was a responsibility that I had to give back to the community. That was something my parents always instilled in me.”

Her parents were very active in their church, and well-known in Lindsay. Three of Soria’s siblings also hold public office - on the Lindsay City Council, school board and hospital board.

Even when she was not consciously planning a return to the valley, it was calling to her, through her work, while at King Hall, with the Immigration Law Clinic and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.

After Soria finished law school, she was hired to do policy advocacy for the CRLAF, which is headed up by Professor Amagda Pérez ’91. In her role with the Sacramento nonprofit, Soria made appeals to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and other elected bodies in the valley. She later worked for state Sen. Michael Rubio, of Kern County, and Assemblyman Henry Perea, of Fresno.

“Somehow, I was always attached to the issues impacting communities that live here,” Soria said.

On the City Council, Soria has continued her advocacy of immigrants - an issue integral to the San Joaquin Valley, and to Soria’s life. Her parents were undocumented until the Reagan Amnesty of 1986.

As President Trump’s administration has enforced its aggressive, “zero tolerance” policy toward immigrants, “I have been one of the very few that have been vocal about supporting our immigrant community” on the Fresno council, Soria said.  “Even though we don’t have local jurisdiction over the issue, there are certain things that impact the immigrant community, and how we make them feel welcome or not welcome in this city.”

Soria, a Democrat, was one of the few progressives in her first term on the council, which, though officially nonpartisan, leaned conservative (one member hails from the Tea Party). The November 2018 election, however, shifted the make-up to a Latino Democratic super majority that includes Soria.

Soria said she is glad to “be at the table” during such divisive political times in the United States.

“I have been on the outside as an advocate, previous to being on the council, and that is important,” Soria said. “But also learned it matters who is at the table. If you are not where the decisions are being made, and where you get to push the button, then how effective are you in terms of advancing policies that are important to the community?”

Soria teaches Constitutional Law and Latino Politics part-time at Fresno City College, and said she would not rule out a later career as a law professor. But framed photos on her office shelves, of Soria with Sen. Kamala Harris, and with civil rights legend and Georgia Rep. John Lewis, suggest a different path. Considered an up-and-comer in the Democratic Party, Soria also recently was asked to introduce Sen. Dianne Feinstein at a Fresno function.

A few years ago, Soria said, she was flown to Washington, D.C., to discuss a potential congressional run. But she did not think she had accomplished enough in her district yet.

“I don’t have a particular plan about what I will do four years from now, or two years from now,” Soria said. “If an opportunity presents itself, I will assess whether I feel I have the ability to make positive change. That’s what I have always been about – making changes that would improve the quality of life of people, and not just in Fresno. I have a place in my heart for the entire Central Valley.”