My name is Angelica Dueñas. I’m a daughter of The Valley. I went to Roscoe Elementary, then Byrd Middle School, then Poly High. I’m a mother raising five children in the same San Fernando Valley streets I was raised on. I know what this district needs because I have lived it.

I am running because I know what working-class families in this district are up against. I’ve lived those struggles myself, and I’m tired of watching people who are supposed to represent us choose their big-money donors over their constituents.

In congress, I will focus on lowering the cost of living by tackling the issues families face every day: rent, groceries, healthcare, childcare, and gas.

I will stand up and vote for Medicare for All, urgent climate action, and housing security for all—policies the American people want, need, and deserve—and  speak out and vote against policies and practices that violate human rights, just as I have throughout my entire adult life.

Incumbent Luz Rivas has taken nearly $85,000 from AIPAC and other pro-Israel PACs just this cycle. That money doesn’t come free. It comes with an expectation, unequivocal support for continuing to send billions of our tax dollars in weapons to Israel, no matter what her constituents here at home actually need, and no matter what those weapons are doing to families in Gaza right now.

While ICE raids were tearing through our neighborhoods in 2025, while families in this district were being separated and terrified, Rep. Rivas took an all-expenses-paid trip to Tel Aviv, Israel. She made a choice about whose needs mattered more. It wasn’t ours. Her campaign website lists no priorities.  And, oddly, her list of endorsements does not include AIPAC.

That is what pushed me into this race in the first place. Not ambition. A dereliction of duty I couldn’t watch happen without saying something. Nobody else was stepping up to challenge her on it, so I did.

I made it through the primary in June. Now it’s just two of us left on the ballot for the November 3rd general election: Luz Rivas and me.

Unlike her, I will never take AIPAC money. Unlike her, I oppose this genocide, and I oppose handing over trillions of our tax dollars to the weapons industry while our schools, our hospitals, and our streets go underfunded.