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FAIRFIELD – Incumbent state Assemblymember Lori Wilson is being challenged by David Ennis in the Nov. 5 election. The California State Assembly works alongside the governor of California to create laws and establish a state budget.

The 11th District covers all of Solano County and small sections of Sacramento and Contra Costa counties. State Assembly members are elected for two-year terms.

Ennis faces a potentially insurmountable challenge taking on Wilson, who has amassed considerable political and financial support and has risen to key leadership positions in the Assembly.

David Ennis

David Ennis is a civil engineer and former business executive who lives in Vallejo. He is running on a platform of fiscal discipline and infrastructure improvements. He spent years working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and says that experience will help him bring federal infrastructure funds into the region. He is running as a Republican and describes himself as "a fiscal conservative and a moderate on social issues." 

Ennis said, “It's all about a place where everybody has a home, where there's opportunities for small businesses and entrepreneurs, where we have short commutes to well paying jobs.”

Ennis said that homelessness is a very difficult problem that the state Assembly is doing practically nothing about, other than giving money to people who don't keep records on whether or not things work. “I think the accountability is very important,” he said. 

His priorities are finding a place for people to live, and in cases where people have mental health issues, finding the resources for the mental health services. 

A last resort, he said, was to “either move them out or move them into prison,” an option he described as “really nasty, and I don't advocate that at all, but we've got to try to do something. We've got to get these people off the street.”

On policing, Ennis said, “We need to work together as a community to figure out how to restore trust, because that's really fundamental.” 

“We need to get together and work on it, to help the police any way we can, help the DA where we can, and getting to the root cause of the crime,” he said. 

Ennis said that the numerous police shootings in Vallejo have damaged the relationship with the community. “That's just destroyed a lot of confidence, and it's hard to get that confidence back. It's hard to recruit people to be law enforcement officers,” Ennis said. 

Ennis recalled an eye-opening encounter with two Texas police officers, who he said pulled their guns on him when they stopped him for a broken headlight during a pre-dawn run to the grocery store. 

“I felt instantly the difference between innocent until being proven guilty and ‘we're going to shoot you if you don't cooperate,’” Ennis said. “I generally trust policemen very much, but these two policemen definitely lost my trust in a hurry. All of a sudden, all of your fundamental rights are stripped, and now you are a criminal until you are proven innocent. That's a terrifying prospect.”

Ennis also brought up lax enforcement of sideshows. “That needs to be stopped,” he said, “and it needs to be stopped with force if necessary.” 

Ennis said that criminals are getting better treatment than their victims, which he said is causing businesses to shut down or leave the state. “If there's retail theft of under $950 that's too bad for the person who had the material in their store, and the criminal just walks away free,” he said. “There's no recompensation for the victims at all. So what about why are we treating victims like they're the criminal?” 

Referring to Wilson’s Constitutional Amendment ACA-8, Ennis said “There was a bill that went through the legislature just lately that would allow prisoners to have three days a week of family visits and all sorts of opportunities to stop working altogether, and just refusing work for saying that they are a slave,” he said. “You know, this criminal committed a crime somewhere, and the criminal is getting better treatment than the victims.” 

On education, Ennis said he wants schools to focus on the basics, reading, writing, arithmetic and technology so that our children can thrive in a global economy. “The short phrase is, teach, not preach,” he said.

Ennis said that Wilson’s bill AB 1955, which prohibits schools from disclosing a student’s gender identity to parents without consent, needs to be repealed. “We're focusing on gender equality and forcing the teachers into not informing parents that their children are oriented that way,” Ennis said. “Those aren't things you're supposed to be talking about in school. You're supposed to be talking about reading, writing and arithmetic, rather than being the thought police for the entire world.”

Ennis said the arts are also important. “Look at Taylor Swift, she’s doing pretty well,” he said. “But if you can't read and write, there's a problem.” He said he’s in favor of volunteer and nonprofit organizations addressing the decades-long erosion of school arts program funding.

• Fundraising: As of early October, Ennis’ campaign had raised $16,369, His top contributors include James Ennis, Warren Murphy, Janis Ennis, Michael Ennis and Tom Foley.
• Endorsements: Ennis’ endorsements include the California Congress of Republicans, the Solano County Republican Central Committee, the Contra Costa Republican Central Committee and the Republican Party of Sacramento County.

Lori Wilson

Assemblymember Lori Wilson overwhelmingly won a special election in 2022 to succeed Assemblymember Jim Frazier after he resigned. She was elected to a full two-year term later that year and is seeking a second full term in office. Wilson has a background in accounting and was elected to the Suisun City Council in 2012. She was then elected mayor in 2018. 

Among her recent accomplishments in the legislature, Wilson co-sponsored the recently-passed bill SB 1379 with Sen. Bill Dodd which which allows retired Solano County Sheriff’s deputies to return to duty full time and bolster law enforcement presence in Vallejo. She said she thinks the bill will help get the short-staffed Vallejo Police Department on track.

She also authored Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 8, which prohibits the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from disciplining any incarcerated person for refusing a work assignment. Wilson said this closes a loophole in the California Constitution that has allowed involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime since 1849, 15 years prior to the abolishment of slavery in the United States. 

Wilson supported the passage of AB 1955, which requires the state Department of Education to develop or update resources and strategies to increase support for LGBTQ pupils. It prohibits school districts, school employees and contractors from disclosing information related to a pupils’ sexual orientation or gender identity to any other person without the pupils’ consent. 

Wilson, the parent of a transgender child, said that students have a right to privacy, “so it's concerning that officials or administrators would betray that right to privacy for our students.”

Wilson said she’s on an Assembly subcommittee that is focused on reducing the number of homeless and on ensuring that the state’s money will be allocated in ways that produce results.

“Right when I got to the assembly, an audit was released showing that all this money had been spent and homelessness was worse,” Wilson said. She said that the legislature is now considering how to spend the money more effectively.

Wilson said she first became aware that Vallejo is not getting a proportionate share of the state’s funding for homeless services when she was on a committee of Solano County mayors. She got the details when she became an assemblymember, and found that Vallejo, the Solano County city with the largest unhoused population, had received less funding than Vacaville and Fairfield. She said she is co-authoring a bill with Assemblymember Corey Jackson that will tie homeless funding to the biannual point in time count. 

“We are going to demand a portion of those resources are specifically tied to the count within their county to ensure that cities like Vallejo, who have a high count relative to other cities, actually get the resources that they need,” she said. 

Wilson said that the CAP Solano Joint Powers Authority distributed state funds to their “pet nonprofits” in Vacaville, which has a relatively low unhoused count, and in Fairfield, with the second-highest count. Wilson said that the Fairfield unhoused count rose in spite of that funding. 

“But the point is that Vallejo, 100% proven factually, did not ever get its fair share of the resources,” she said. “It actually was underserved in that particular area, and the money that it did get wasn't productive.”

Wilson said that the reasons for this funding gap are complicated. She said that Vallejo leadership had been focused on other issues, and suffered from a high staff turnover. “So of course, if there's a constant turnover, it's hard to apply for a grant and meet the requirements of the grant,” she said.

Wilson also said that nonprofit partners with a lot of the resources are needed to effectively put the funds to use, and that Solano County doesn’t have many productive nonprofits.

Wilson pointed to increasing numbers of seniors and veterans becoming unhoused and said she’s working on preventative measures for those populations. “It is way less expensive to prevent someone from being homeless than it is to then find them shelter after the fact,” she said. 

When asked about her position on Prop 47, which reduced the penalties for certain crimes and could be partially rolled back by this year’s Prop 36, Wilson said that the legislature tightened up some laws to increase the penalties on organized crime rings that have been paying people to go into stores to steal up to the $950 felony threshold. Wilson said that she expects to see a reduction in this type of crime in the new year.

Prior to Prop 47, Wilson said that a homeless person could go to jail for stealing a sandwich. “That was what that law was about.” 

Wilson said, “I've been the type of elected official that's delivered for the people that I serve, I'm asking them to give me another opportunity to continue to do that work.”

• Fundraising: As of early October, Wilson’s campaign has raised $964,418. Her top contributors include the California Nurses Association PAC, the California Building Industry Association PAC, the California New Car Dealers Association PAC, the Pechanga Band of Indians and Occidental Petroleum Corporation and its Subsidaries.
• Endorsements: Wilson’s endorsements include the California Democratic Party, the California Federation of Labor Unions, the California Federation of Teachers, the California Nurses Association, California YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) and Planned Parenthood Northern California Action Fund.