Candidate for
Member; California State Assembly; District 8; Democratic Party

Christopher Cabaldon is a recognized regional and statewide leader in educational opportunity and reform, environmental protection and enhancement, neighborhood quality of life, civil rights, and transportation and technology. With a record of accomplishment at the local, regional, and statewide levels, he knows how to deliver real results for Yolo and Solano counties?and for California.

Cabaldon was first elected to the West Sacramento City Council in a 1996 special election. In 1998, the City Council elected Cabaldon as Mayor. Cabaldon then became the first mayor ever elected to a consecutive second term. Mayor Cabaldon?s work to bring professional baseball to a new first-class ballpark on the West Sacramento waterfront has been widely recognized for enhancing the city?s regional reputation and quality of life.

Cabaldon is Vice Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, the largest system of higher education in the United States. Cabaldon was a top policy expert with the State Legislature for nearly a decade, serving as the staff director of the Assembly Higher Education Committee and chief of staff to the chair of the Assembly finance committee. He wrote legislation to expand student financial aid, crack down on diploma mills and abusive trade schools, recruit new science and math school teachers, and increase funding for college facilities and safety improvements, and led a state investigation into fraud at a university fertility clinic.

He began his professional career as vice president and then legislative affairs director of the University of California Student Association. He also served as president of Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education. Throughout his career, he has been a major statwide leader in promoting affordable and equitable access to high-quality postsecondary education for all Californians.

Councilman Cabaldon is a board member and past chair of the Yolo County Transportation District, where he worked to win approval of Yolobus transit service to the Sacramento Airport and expansion of bus service to seniors and transit-dependent residents. As a member of the Capitol Corridor Rail Service Board, he has fought to expand rail service along the I-80 corridor.

In 1999, Cabaldon was chosen to represent the four Yolo County cities on the board for the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the metropolitan planning organization. He chairs the region?s Transportation Roundtable, an innovative panel of 55 regional leaders developing the Metropolitan Transportation Plan for 2025 through collaboration among environmental, business, neighborhood, government, and education groups.

Appointed by the Speaker of the Assembly to the Commission on Regionalism, Cabaldon has been a statewide leader in governance and fiscal solutions to such challenges as traffic, housing, social equity, open space and rural conservation, and economic development.

Councilman Cabaldon is an active advocate for environmental quality. A board member for the Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District, he helped craft and then implement an innovative regional program to replace high-polluting heavy duty truck engines, and fought to preserve the urban forest in his city. He fights for clean water, habitat enhancement, recreation, farmland preservation, and economic sustainability in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as a member of the state?s Delta Protection Commission. Cabaldon was recently appointed by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and the Governor to the Bay-Delta Committee guiding implementation of the CALFED water program. As Mayor, he sponsored a city ordinance that removed gross polluting vessels from the Sacramento River. In 2000, he was appointed by the Governor to the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, where he is a leader in protecting public health and the environment from pollution.

Shortly after assuming his seat on the City Council, Cabaldon led a successful effort to expand education and training opportunities in West Sacramento by working with Sacramento City College to invest in a new educational center offering the full range of collegiate and workforce preparation courses?the center is now one of the state?s most popular. As Mayor, he convened a Blue-Ribbon Commission on School Excellence to strengthen the public schools and ensure that every child has the opportunity to succeed.

Cabaldon joined community leaders in the region as a founding member of the Capital Unity Council, formed to eradicate hate violence. As chair of its program committee, he is a leader in the effort to build a statewide center for intergroup understanding. A former treasurer of the National Filipino American Youth Association, Cabaldon is the youngest person to be honored for outstanding historical contribution by the valley chapters of the Filipino American National Historical Society. He will be the first Filipino American ever to serve in the California Legislature. Prior to his election to the City Council, Cabaldon was President of the Yolo County Health Council, where he worked as an advocate for access to quality community health care, particularly children and seniors.

Cabaldon served two terms on the Yolo County Democratic Central Committee, and as treasurer of the West Sacramento Democratic Club. He chairs the State Democratic Party?s legislation and equal opportunity committee and a member of the state Executive Board.

Born in 1965, Cabaldon grew up in Los Angeles, attending California?s first public magnet school. He earned a bachelor of science degree in environmental economics at UC Berkeley, where he was student body vice president, before settling in the Capital region in 1987 and earning a master?s degree in public policy at CSU Sacramento.