Listen to the full interview below, and check out our interviews with Adam Schiff, Steve Garvey and Katie Porter.
Rep. Barbara Lee has served as an elected official for longer than any of the other candidates running for California’s U.S. Senate seat. But back when she was in college, she wasn’t even a registered voter.
In an interview with KNX News Chief Correspondent Charles Feldman, Lee recalled that, as a young mother on public assistance, she had no faith in government to fix the issues affecting her life. That changed after meeting Shirley Chisolm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, during an event at Mills College in Oakland.
“She said, you have got to register to vote, and you have got to understand that these laws and these rules weren't made for people like you and I,” Lee said. “And she said you have to get in there and shake things up, and you can't go along to get along. So get involved.”
She ended up organizing for Chisolm’s 1972 presidential campaign, going on to serve as one of her delegates at the Democratic National Convention.
Lee pointed to her track record of standing her ground despite pushback during her nearly 26 years in the House of Representatives, which includes being the only member of Congress to vote against authorizing military force after 9/11.
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“I knew that that authorization was overly broad and would lead to forever wars,” she said.
Lee has also pushed for reducing the defense budget. She said the Pentagon had never been audited until after she introduced legislation to check the institution’s spending.
“The Pentagon has been audited now because of my leadership six times, and it's flunked each audit. I still can't get [their budget] cut,” she said. “Until we get this rebalancing of our national security strategy and foreign policy and military policy, we're not going to have the investments here for housing, for healthcare, for economic opportunities, for every domestic priority that has been neglected. And primarily it's because of corporate greed and the defense budget.”
Lee said cuts to the defense budget could help fund a single-payer healthcare system like Medicare for All.
“Healthcare is a basic human right, and when I was in the legislature, I led on putting forth the first bill to call for us to look at single-payer,” she said.
She’s also made headlines by calling for a $50 federal minimum wage – a proposal she defended as necessary in many parts of California.
“In the Bay Area … it takes $117,000, $118,000 for a family of four to just barely make it,” Lee said. “So I'm not gonna settle for just raising the minimum wage if I'm talking about what's going to help people afford to live and stay in California.”
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