‘Accidental Politician’ Monique Limón Is Leaving Her Legacy on Central Coast and Beyond

As Women’s History Month comes to an end, the Independent is closing it out with a spotlight on Monique Limón, Santa Barbara County’s state senator since 2020 and one of our region’s genuine, gets-stuff-done women in office. 

Our conversation on Tuesday was bright and early. “With this job, I’m whatever I have to be, so there are times when I have to be a morning person and times when I have to be a night owl,” she said with a laugh. 

To recap, Limón won this March’s primary election with an impressive 61.9 percent of the vote, greatly outpacing her Republican opponent Elijah Mack, whom she will face in the November 5 General Election. She is also one of the newest members of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to state legislatures. 

The 44-year-old former assemblymember described herself as a homegrown, “accidental politician.” Before stepping into office, she spent more than a decade working in higher ed — helping students navigate college at UC Santa Barbara — with a master’s in education from Columbia University. 

She shared that she never dreamed of being a politician — an ironically reassuring sentiment from an elected official. But she was nudged by the community to run for local office, and inspired by the work she did with students and families (which also landed her among the Independent’s Local Heroes in the early 2000s, a decade before the start of her political career). 

“Even working at a university, our resources for helping students were limited. But if, you know, a student didn’t have a place to live, that would definitely show up in a classroom,” she explained. “And so, I started thinking, ‘Well, how else can I help the students?’”

Her political springboard was serving six years on the Santa Barbara Unified school board, in the same district where she was raised and attended school. “I have a deep sense of responsibility and accountability because I do know this community; I am from this community,” she noted.

As she grew up, Limón watched the Central Coast change colors: from red, to purple, to blue. “The Central Coast used to subscribe to different policies,” she said. “It’s been a transition.”

Limón herself is a prime example of that transition. In 2022, for example, a bill authored by Limón (SB 1162) was signed into law, requiring companies to provide salary ranges in job postings to encourage equal pay for women and people of color.

That year, because of the bill, Forbes magazine named her one of the top 50 individuals changing the future of work. She said she is reminded of that bill when thinking about the importance of lived experience in the legislature. 

“I felt that I was tackling a really important issue,” she said. “So I feel like in the spirit of Women’s History Month, that’s one of the examples of a woman-led bill that’s having an impact not just on women, but on the whole country.”

That same year, the country saw the reversal of Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal right to abortion. Women’s rights have since remained at the forefront of American politics as the effects continue to ripple across the nation. 

“We believed that the rights we had were protected,” Limón reflected. “And I think that belief has deteriorated based on what we’ve seen coming from other states and at the national level … anything we do at the national level can be reversed by those who don’t believe in the same things that we believe in.”

Although the right to abortion is protected in the California constitution, Limón said she regularly hears from her constituents that they are frightened by federal sway regarding issues such as access to Mifepristone, the abortion pill. “I think that there’s a lot of concern, but I also think that there’s a lot of commitment to do the work, which is why you’ve seen California do a lot to try to protect reproductive health on many fronts,” she said. 

She added that it is “not a coincidence” that California’s legislative women’s caucus has more members than ever before. Fifty out of 120 legislators are women, a historic high, which she believes could potentially grow by the end of the 2024 election cycle in California — not enough to accurately represent the population, “but we’re getting there,” she said.

This year, despite the state’s looming budget deficit and its expected impacts on policy, Limón stressed she wants to prioritize Central Coast communities and move policies forward that address critical issues such as environment, health care, education, and the labor force. 

“And these are all still things that we’ll still be working on and still thinking about, no matter what the budget is in California,” she added. “So I think, this being my eighth year in the legislature, it’s a difficult walk; it’s a difficult process. And that process is one that looks at the policy itself, but also the cost of the policy with very, very limited funds.”