Monique Lemon takes the helm of the California Senate

from Maya S. MillerCalMatters

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As California lawmakers return to Sacramento and prepare to tackle the budget deficit, all eyes are on the new Senate President Pro Tem Monique Lemon of Santa Barbara and what tone she sets for her room.

Lemon, 46, a union-backed progressive and the first Latin American to lead the Senatewill face arguably her biggest legislative challenge yet as she and her diverse caucus grapple with a daunting projected budget deficit of $18 billion and historic federal funding cuts by the Trump administration.

Although Lemon has yet to announce any spending-cutting strategies or impose any restrictions on lawmakers introducing bills that require new money, the lack of funds will likely force the new leader to focus on a few key priorities, a premise she pushed back against in a recent interview with CalMatters.

“Our Assembly will continue to prioritize the issues that our communities prioritize,” Lemon said, rattling off a list of policy areas including health care access, cost of living, education, housing affordability and child care. The new Senate leader also stressed the importance of finding policy solutions that “span our caucus — reflecting 58 counties, 483 cities.”

But how it will do this while keeping the budget in check remains to be seen.

For Lemon, who has built a reputation as an egalitarian consensus builder who wants everyone to feel heard, scaling back those priorities will test her ability to say no as the group tries to both rein in costs and fund programs that help vulnerable Californians.

She told reporters at the Capitol on Monday that she expected senators to understand that “big spending is not something we can do at this time,” and said she would repeat that message at their first meeting.

Former and current colleagues voted their confidence in her to lead the chamber through a difficult budget year.

“She’s a good person to be there when there’s a challenge,” said Kate Parker, who has served alongside Limon on the Santa Barbara school board, including as president. “Obviously the budget is going to be horrendous and she’s someone I would really trust to move the state forward at a really difficult time.”

From school board to Senate leader

Lemon points to her nine-year term in the Legislature and relationships with legislative colleagues as the basis for her inevitably tough conversations about how to prioritize a mountain of pressing issues.

The new Senate leader is best known for stalking pay transparency legislation, consumer protection such as medical debt protection from credit reportsand efforts to regulate the oil industry. She authored a 2022 law that requires failures around new oil and gas wells and steps to protect residents who live near old wells, and pushed for a failed 2021 bill. to ban oil fracking. Governor Gavin Newsom later ordered the ban.

In the Assembly, she chairs the Banking and Finance Committee and until recently chaired the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water. With two former Senate leaders, Tony Atkins and Mike McGuireLemon served as second-in-command as majority leader for Senate Democrats and helped craft legislative strategy.

It was the lemon elected pro tem in June after joining forces with supporters of Sen. Angelique Ashbya Sacramento Democrat also seeking the role to muster a caucus majority and fend off a rival bid from a senator. Lena Gonzalez in Long Beach. The power struggle came amid a chaotic week as a federal standoff over immigration enforcement erupted in Los Angeles and the Legislature struggled to finalize a budget. Lemon has since named Ashby as his majority leader.

Before running for the legislature, Lemon served six years on the board of trustees of the Santa Barbara Unified School District, the public school system he attended, before immersing himself in public service and policy studies at UC Berkeley and later graduating from Columbia University with a master’s degree in education.

Her first run for public office came in 2009, when Limon ran for a vacant seat on the Santa Barbara School Board. Former board president Kate Parker, who overlapped with Lemon during the current senator’s six-year term, said she had never heard of Lemon before the election and was even a little skeptical about her leadership abilities.

“She was kind of running out of left field and there was no kid in the area,” Parker said. “She seemed so young to me at the time. You know, I think she was probably around 30 or so. And I just wasn’t sure if she had the experience to be a strong leader in the field.”

But from their first meeting, Lemon impressed Parker with his ability to listen to all sides and extract consensus from a group with a wide range of opinions.

“She was really good at working out a productive compromise,” Parker said. “She had a policy of meeting anyone who wanted to talk to her.”

Lemon was tight-lipped about how he would lead the faction through the budget negotiations. But Parker said Lemon is no stranger to difficult spending discussions. Almost every year they served together, the school board faced budget challenges.

“Her guiding principle in this context has always been to put the student first,” Parker said, adding that Lemon has always tried to keep funding cuts as far away from the classroom as possible.

“I think at the state level you’ll find that she also has guiding principles that help in the decision-making process,” Parker said. “It’s not random, it’s not piecemeal. It’s systematic.”

Lemon has yet to reveal exactly what those guiding principles will be for the Senate under her leadership. In an interview with CalMatters, she declined to name any specific legislative measures the faction would prioritize.

But she hasn’t ruled anything out either. When asked specifically whether her group should consider raising taxes or cutting government services, Lemon didn’t dismiss either idea, seeing both as politically radioactive options.

“Everything is on the table until we choose or decide it shouldn’t be on the table,” Limon said. “But having a thoughtful and thoughtful conversation about the options before us doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to move forward with all the options. It just means you’re considering them.”

No bad blood with McGuire

Lemon’s reputation as a collaborator and consensus builder contrasts sharply with that of her predecessor McGuire, whom some members, staff and lobbyists privately called a micromanager.

During last year’s eleventh-hour negotiations to reauthorize the state’s cap-and-trade program, McGuire reportedly kept the text of the Senate bill under lock and key and refused to allow members to take copies with them to review with staff, instead requiring them to come in person to see the text and banned photos. Lawyers said they felt removed from the discussions and had little to no input.

“We hope this change in leadership marks the beginning of a new and more transparent process,” said Asha Sharma, state policy manager for the Equity and Accountability Leadership Council.

Frustration boiled over during a budget subcommittee hearing in September, when lawmakers debated a budget bill that contained more than $85 million in earmarks for projects in McGuire’s northern coastal district. That power play spurred the Democratic senator from Napa. Chris Cabaldon to joke to the entire committee, “There are more than a handful of disadvantaged communities, plus the North Coast, in California.”

Lemon tried to quell any criticism of his predecessor.

“There was never a time when it was a leadership comparison,” Lemon insisted. “At the end of the day, it’s really about what the band wants, the direction the band wants to go, the experiences the band feels they need at that moment.”

Lemon leads the Senate task force on reauthorizing the state cap-and-trade programbattle at the heart of negotiations on a agreement on climate and energy policy which dragged out the final days of last year’s legislative session.

Her biggest challenge, Sen said. John Lairda Santa Cruz Democrat and fellow task force member she named as her budget chairman was bridging the divide between members who wanted to keep the existing cap-and-trade program largely as is and climate hawks who wanted to give up some of the concessions former Gov. Jerry Brown gave to polluting industries to win votes during the last reauthorization.

“It was a real test because it was like riding a hell of a bronco,” Laird said. “And yet she worked hard to hold the Senate together. She worked hard to find out what the people really wanted. And a lot of what we wanted was part of the bottom line because of her work.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.