Experience and knowledge count. That’s why suburban East Bay voters should elect Assemblymember Tim Grayson to fill the state Senate seat that Steve Glazier is vacating because of term limits.
The outgoing incumbent has been an excellent representative for the district, demonstrating dedication to the social values of the Democratic Party combined with a willingness to confront fiscally irresponsible special interests and state programs.
The question for voters in the March 5 primary is who can carry on that tradition. It’s not a close call. Grayson, drawing on his eight years in the Assembly, has a sharp understanding of California issues and a realistic recognition of the state’s financial plight, both of which he can discuss with specificity.
Grayson is running against San Ramon City Councilmember Marisol Rubio. Both are Democrats. Because there are only two candidates, they will both make the runoff, providing voters with the same choice again in November.
Senate District 9, in which Democrats have about a 3-1 registration advantage over Republicans, includes most of Contra Costa and Alameda counties east of the East Bay hills as well as San Leandro and Castro Valley.
Grayson is thoughtful about the need to ease hurdles for affordable housing developers, by streamlining, but not eliminating, California’s environmental review process. He is appropriately dubious of the governor’s plan for a water tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that lacks guarantees of adequate supply to protect the waterways of Northern California. He’s similarly suspicious of Bay Area transit agencies’ plans to seek voter approval for another tax increase in 2026.
Rubio, who is conducting her fourth campaign in as many years, has had a hard time figuring out where she wants to land politically.
She failed to make the runoff when she challenged Glazer in the March 2020 primary, then ran successfully in November 2020 for the board of the Dublin San Ramon Services District. In the next election cycle, she ran for, and won, a seat on the San Ramon City Council. She had barely started to warm that seat when she launched her current second bid for the state Senate.
Unfortunately, Rubio’s constant shifting of focus has left her ill-prepared for her Senate campaign. She started out saying that she greatly differed from Grayson on housing policy, but she could not identify any legislation in which she would have voted differently from him.
She wasn’t familiar with the key cause of California’s tax revenue volatility — a dependence on capital gains tax revenues from high-income earners — nor Bay Area transportation officials’ well-publicized plans for a 2026 ballot measure to raise taxes.
Voters have a clear choice between an experienced legislator and an ill-prepared serial office-seeker. They should choose the former by electing Tim Grayson to the state Senate.