Candidates for governor are playing it safe. Gen Z voters can’t afford that. 

The next governor of California will set the stage for the economic mobility, success and safety of Generation Z.  

Gen Z voters are looking for candidates who have a plan of action. For our entire lives, we were sold the California Dream — affordable housing, quality education and access to good-paying jobs. Yet today those promises feel increasingly distant, as students take on massive debt and multiple degrees just to stay afloat economically. 

Although we both study policy at UCLA and UC Berkeley, our peers on campus seem hardly interested in this race for the governorship or don’t understand how a new governor will affect our future. So, instead of waiting for a TikTok to break down each of the candidates’ platforms, we set out to see for ourselves. 

Through our work with the Ad Hoc Latino Leaders group, we aimed to attend as many publicly accessible gubernatorial forums across the Bay Area and Los Angeles as possible, to provide our fellow students with a high-level understanding of how prepared candidates were to advance a policy agenda focused on our issues of health, wealth and dignity. 

Of eight forums, these candidates showed up most consistently: Betty Yee, Antonio Villaraigosa, Katie Porter, Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer. They attended events hosted by health coalitions, labor groups, civil rights organizations and community forums. 

When we looked at the substance of all the candidates’ policies, specifically at which communities and issues they talked about most, we were left wanting. 

The candidates appeared cautious to fully embrace the bold leadership needed to lead the fourth largest economy in the world. California deserves a governor who breaks from legacy policy frameworks and instead paves a new future for the Latinos and young voters in the state. 

The economic challenges Californians are experiencing are not abstract to me, Andrea. As a full-time student, I have to balance two jobs to afford tuition and rent in Los Angeles. 

My main focus was how candidates are planning for economic mobility for not only our generation, but for Latinos as a whole. For the past few years, it feels like state leaders have balanced the budget against our future. 

We wanted to hear a plan for affordable housing and for increased CalGrant funding to help us make ends meet with rising costs. Instead young voters and Latinos were talked about in the abstract. 

Without a clear plan to address the issues we care about, like college access and affordability, these candidates remain disconnected from mobilizing young voters like us. 

It’s a much broader problem though. Despite the growing concern of voters against violent immigration enforcement and raids, few candidates spoke about immigrants, or Latinos. To these candidates, immigration is framed as an identity marker, with candidates invoking their immigrant heritage, lifelong advocacy or platitudes about protecting the immigrant community. 

But voters have been clear that threats to democracy and worsening economic conditions are the most important problems the U.S. is facing. 

For myself, Joselen, being a student at UC Berkeley — the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement during the Vietnam War era — I cannot help but feel that history is repeating itself. While international tensions once again raise the specter of war, California’s next governor must be prepared to fight for civil rights here at home.

We need candidates who are ready to act on the issues that voters care about: economic mobility, civil rights protections, and affordable housing. 

Betty Yee and Tony Thurmond were the only candidates who had clear plans for increasing health care access, taking on ICE and the federal government, and increasing access to food security resources. Both are polling near the bottom of the field but are the only candidates taking a risk by advancing their vision for Californians. 

Polling has never been more important in this race, as institution after institution is using polls to cull the field. The recent USC debate cancellation brought these metrics into sharp relief, with all the candidates of color not qualifying for the forum under its criteria. Rather than consider which voices they were leaving unheard, USC moved to cancel the event. 

Candidates like Yee have continued to highlight the underrepresentation for candidates of color at these forums. And USC’s move calls into question how the race is being shaped by external forces rather than a focus on what the candidates are looking to achieve. 

It is not enough to acknowledge communities of color and young voters as being part of California’s story. We need substantive policy measures we can use to hold our leaders accountable when they are in office. 

We need to be sold a vision for California that does more to ensure that young Californians can stay in this state, have quality jobs and are protected from the threats from the federal government. Governor Gavin Newsom’s sparring style might be polarizing, but the state’s voters need to feel their next governor is passionate about more than just being elected.

With every new forum ahead, we continue to evaluate who is stepping up to be the leader our generation so desperately needs.