Two more candidates seek Congressional seat

Joaquin Beltran is one of two candidates to recently announce their campaign for California’s 42nd Congressional District. Photo by Alex Dominguez

DOWNEY - Two more candidates have come forward seeking election to California’s 42nd Congressional District.

Peter Mathews, 70, was inspired to a life of public service from an early age as a child in India.

“At the age of 9, I used to walk home from school every day. When I got to the house that we lived in – a beautiful house with a gate and walls around it – I would see some people at the gate,” said Mathews. “I would say hello to them, I would go inside the gate, go in my house into my mom’s kitchen, and she would be waiting there with food; two plates of food with some money as well to take back to the people at the gate.

“One day something struck me in my heart and my mind, and that was ‘Why was it that those people on the other side of the gate – very emaciated, very thin, the children looked like they hadn’t eaten in several days – and I am on this side of the gate well fed, well clothed, with wonderful parents who loved me. Those parents on the other side loved their children just as much as my parents loved me, but they just didn’t have the opportunity to give their children a good life. That had to do with the socioeconomic structure of India at that time, in which there were a lot of people who had come in from the countryside that couldn’t make a living, and they’d try and get jobs in the city and try to make it there and make ends meet.”

Peter Mathews, a political Science professor at Cypress College, is running for Congress. Photo provided by Mathews

Mathews, who has been a political science professor at Cypress College for over 30 years and an adjunct sociology professor at Long Beach City College, said he was also inspired to run after seeing his own students struggle to afford college, get good jobs, and enter the middle-class.

He said that there is a need to “bring the gates down” between the rich and the poor.

“When you see so many of our children – 20% of our kids in America – are going to bed hungry sometime during the month, and about close to 20% of my students at Cypress College are living in their cars homeless, this is not acceptable in the most beautiful country in the world,” said Mathews. “As immigrants, my parents came here and worked hard. We were able to live the American dream, but the dream is not available to all Americans today, even those born here, and those who are coming as immigrants.

“I want to bring that dream back again, that opportunity again.”

A self-described “progressive populist in the Bernie Sanders mold,” Mathews is running on the platform of Medicare for all, tuition-free college and cancellation of student debt, full equality for women, and the reduction of income and wealth inequality.

Mathews is also an advocate for the Green New Deal.

“I am one that supports the Green New Deal to bring in high-paying jobs that will be environmentally friendly and promote new products like solar panels, electric cars, charging infrastructure,” said Mathews.

Mathews lives in Long Beach with his wife and 10-year-old daughter.

More information about Mathews and his campaign can be found at www.petermathewsforcongress.org.

Joaquin Beltran, 38, experienced both the highs - and the lows - of pursuing his family’s own American dream.

“I think part of the promise of America is the openness of possibilities, and that’s the American Dream, right, that whatever we think we can accomplish, we can; that we can create a better life for our families, and that we can contribute to our communities, having more opportunities,” said Beltran. “It’s all connected, we’re all connected; the health of the family is the health of the community, the health of the community is the health of the family. It’s all intertwined.”

Beltran’s family’s business would face major obstacles, included being uprooted by eminent domain and the burden of the great recession. Beltran says that his family “nearly lost everything.”

“As a first generation Mexican-American, experiencing those highs and lows showed me the value of hard work, but then also the challenges that our community faces every day in order to really overcome those hurdles, to achieve the American dream.”

Beltran was inspired to run for the 42nd Congressional District because he believes that many people are struggling with some of the same issues that he and his family struggled with, and the American dream is becoming harder to achieve because of it.

“During that time I saw the challenges of working to achieve the American dream, but then at that time people losing their businesses, people losing their jobs, the unhoused population increasing, people losing their homes,” said Beltran. “The blessing we have is we are in America and we have this promise of the American dream here, but there are challenges in achieving it, and these challenges are growing every day.”

“We see it right now with this pandemic, that has exacerbated a lot of these challenges: the challenges of obtaining affordable, quality accessible healthcare, the challenge of small business owners keeping their doors open or trying to pay payroll, people keeping their homes or making the rent, and the increasing costs of all of these things including food and gas.”

He says it’s the “wrong direction.”

“We need to be creating a foundation here where we help provide the opportunities for people to achieve their dreams,” said Beltran. “Fundamentally, this is about providing a good life for their families, at the core of it, and then beyond that it’s these dreams of creating their businesses; that should be the next step.”

As such, Beltran’s grassroot campaign stands on a platform of affordable housing, affordable and accessible healthcare, job creation, education, conservation and wildlife protection, and tackling of climate change.

Beltran lives in Downey, and works as a software engineer and community organizer. He has spent the last three years focused on the pandemic, helping communities adopt “better Covid policies” and launching projects to help distribute masks, PCR testing, and improve air filtration.

He has also previously worked for the campaigns of Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

For more information on Beltran, visit joaquinbeltran.com