A dawn bus ride, a Capitol showdown and a last-minute deal: How Santa Cruz activists fought health care cuts

The first rays of sunlight illuminated the parking lot of Resurrection Catholic Church in Aptos and a thick layer of fog shrouded the area in a bluish hue as a group of about 30 organizers and advocates from the Central Coast slowly trickled in before 6 a.m. 

Mary Litel Walsh, a longtime leader of a Monterey-based nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on a wide range of social and economic issues, opened up the trunk of her SUV to hand out bagels, juice, and water before the group piled into a bus — one of four buses filled with organizers leaving from Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

The interior was decked out like a party bus, complete with tables, TV screens and a surprisingly good sound system, but their occupants weren’t headed to a celebration. They had their work cut out for them.

The organizers were joining forces with dozens of other advocates based across the state from Marin County to Los Angeles to urge California lawmakers to reject Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed cuts to Medi-Cal for undocumented immigrants. Their trip came as time ticks on approving a state budget, which has to happen by Sunday.

Under Newsom’s proposal, announced in mid-May, Medi-Cal — the California implementation of the federal Medicaid program that serves low-income residents — would no longer allow undocumented residents 19 and older to enroll in the program. Additionally, the governor proposed that adults whose immigration status makes them ineligible for federal Medicaid should pay a $100 monthly premium starting in 2027.

The trip, organized by the Monterey-based nonprofit Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action (COPA) and the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, brought representatives from Community Bridges, Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County, Unite Here Local 19 and students from UC Santa Cruz’s Everett Program for Technology and Social Change, along with advocates and faith leaders based across the state. A Lookout reporter and photographer tagged along on the trip, which offered a glimpse into the frantic final days of the state’s budget negotiations.

Quiet chatter flowed throughout the bus, while many took the opportunity to get some more sleep after an early morning ahead of a long, busy day. Rev. James Lapp of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Santa Cruz, who co-founded COPA, walked down the aisle between the seats in a beige suit jacket and pants with an off-white clerical shirt and bright, multicolored cross around his neck, introducing himself and thanking people for coming along.

No matter the sector that the advocates work in, the proposed Medi-Cal cuts raised serious alarm among all of them. Santa Cruz Community Health board member Andrew Goldenkranz called the cuts “a penny wise and a pound foolish,” and said that Medi-Cal makes up about 70% to 75% of the organization’s budget. Between 13,000 and 14,000 low-income patients rely on Santa Cruz Community Health — and Medi-Cal by extension — every year.

Steve Sacks, a semi-retired speech therapist who worked in Central Valley schools, said many of the children he has worked with “need all the help they can get.” The cuts would put those families in a deeper financial hole, he said, adding that immigrants pay billions in taxes that go toward programs like Medi-Cal: “There’s no reason for this in the richest country in the world.”

The bus stopped in Sacramento at about 9 a.m., just a block away from the capitol. The thought of a state capitol usually conjures up grand images of regal, intricate architecture, but the 10-story building known as the Swing Space where legislators’ offices sit looks more like a community college building. After meeting at a cafe a block away from the offices, the large crowd of lobbyists split off into several smaller groups, each going to attempt to meet with different elected officials.

One group of eight organizers passed through security, emptying their pockets into bins slid into an X-ray scanner and walking through a metal detector as they would at an airport. Goldenkranz, leading the group, told everyone that Gail Pellerin, 28th District assemblymember and longtime Santa Cruz County clerk, was the group’s first visit. 

Pellerin took plenty of Santa Cruz with her to Sacramento. Her office has numerous artistic renditions of banana slugs, along with other Bay Area merchandise and paintings of redwoods on the wall. Wearing a sleek blue suit jacket and a white-and-black patterned shirt and accompanied by her chief of staff, Tomasa Dueñas, Pellerin greeted the lobbyists with handshakes and a warm smile as they gathered around a table in her office and shared personal anecdotes to illustrate the importance of accessible health care. 

Paul Haenze, a member of Santa Cruz Bible Church, told Pellerin that his sister, who lives in Texas, had a stroke in 2018. She was able to recover enough to return to work as a technical editor, but was eventually let go in 2022. She began appealing to the state for disability, but was denied, leading her to blow through a large chunk of savings and retirement funds while maxing out her credit cards.

Haenze said that while his sister was eventually able to get federal disability, the state of Texas required that she own a car worth no more than $3,000 and have no more than $5,000 to her name to qualify. Newsom’s proposal would similarly render anyone with more than $2,000 in assets ineligible for Medi-Cal.

“It makes absolutely no sense that the state of Texas would rather her be totally indigent before they help her,” he said. “So, my plea is, let’s not let California be like Texas.”

Sacks told Pellerin that 88% of the students in Fresno Unified School District are below the poverty line, and the governor’s proposal introduces only larger barriers to accessing care.

“These people, who are kids of farmworkers, basically have very little or nothing,” he said. “And 50% to 70% of farmworkers are undocumented. If we didn’t have them, what would happen to our [food]?”

Naja Steward, a third-year graduating UC Santa Cruz student in the Everett Program, connected her studies to the budget, saying that environmental health and health care are “intimately linked,” especially given the number of undocumented people who work in agriculture. She added that major projects like growing operations for native plant restoration are “screwed” without undocumented workers. 

Lapp said COPA was founded after the 1995 Pajaro River flood in part to respond to the needs of affected farmworkers. He called the proposed California cuts a “slap in the face,” especially given President Donald Trump’s attempt to dehumanize immigrants: “It really seems incongruous to have our governor almost side with the president and cut these people’s very limited benefits.”

Elsewhere that day, other lobbyists shared stories of the life-changing help that Medi-Cal can offer. Claudia Reyes, an organizer with Mujeres en Acción in Monterey County, speaking in Spanish, said that a couple she knows through the organization are both farmworkers. The husband was diagnosed with a benign tumor in his back in 2017, but was unable to get proper treatment due to the family’s financial situation. He was able to get surgery in 2024, with complete coverage from Medi-Cal, she said. If they had to pay a $100 monthly premium, they could no longer afford the coverage.

“Medi-Cal is more than a medical service,” Reyes said. “It is a real hope for those who have no other option.”

Pellerin, nodding in agreement, thanked the group and told them it’s important that they traveled to the Capitol to connect with legislators. The budget that the state Assembly and Senate would be presenting would be “very different” from the governor’s proposal, she said. While she didn’t share specifics, she said that at the Democratic caucus meeting, people were “very in sync” on the priorities and human element of the budget, as well as the need to protect the state’s most vulnerable population.

It’s a tough budget year, with more likely to follow, Pellerin said. “We’re just hoping there will be a shift in our federal government’s priorities to return to helping people versus helping billionaires.”

After leaving Pellerin’s office, the group loaded into an elevator going down to state Sen. John Laird’s office, where they spoke with legislative aide Emily Chiu. 

The lobbyists were touching on the same talking points — the desperate need many immigrants and low-income Americans have for health care, the importance of immigrants to the economy and their oft-underappreciated contribution to society — when Laird rushed into his office.

The Senate and Assembly had reached a budget agreement, he told the group. He did not provide details about the agreement, but said that the Senate’s goal was to do “no cuts or very limited cuts to Medi-Cal,” before heading off to a late morning virtual meeting — news that lobbyists in the group called “encouraging.”

The group left Laird’s office shortly after, to head out for a scheduled 11:30 a.m. lunch. Stepping out of an elevator, the group ran into another, larger COPA-led party with organizer Eli Holliday at the helm. Holliday’s group was headed to Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas’ office — perfect timing for everyone to flood his office together. 

Rivas is arguably the most powerful person in the state Legislature as speaker of the Assembly. Representing the 29th District, which includes the Pajaro and Salinas valleys, Rivas’ district has a large presence of undocumented workers, mainly in the agricultural sector, who could be severely affected by Newsom’s proposed cuts. 

COPA had tried to confirm Rivas’ stance on the issue of Medi-Cal cuts in days and weeks prior, to no avail. Holliday previously told Lookout that Rivas’ office had appeared to recognize the problems with the governor’s proposal, but had not committed to a position on the cuts.

Rivas was unavailable at the time, his staff told the group, but they allowed the visitors into the speaker’s office. By then, the group had swelled to about 20 people, spilling into the hallway. 

The organizers planned to hold a news conference on the steps of the Capitol in a few hours, Holliday told Rivas’ staff, and wanted to know where the speaker stood on the issue of cutting Medi-Cal. 

“The intention is not to embarrass the speaker, but we have a pretty sizable group of people, and it won’t look good if we don’t know what to say about his position,” he said to the office staffers. 

Staffers referred the group to Rosielyn Pulmano, a policy consultant in Rivas’ assembly office who specializes in health care. A group of lobbyists met with her later in the afternoon, and reported that she heard and acknowledged their concerns, and encouraged them to reach out to the governor.

After a generally unsatisfying drop-in at Rivas’ office, the various lobbying groups reconvened a block away at the Capitol building, where the crowd of about 100 enjoyed a brief respite and a COPA-provided lunch of boxed sandwiches, chips and water in the shade on the Capitol lawn as the temperature crept up to the low 90s. 

The large group of organizers was preparing for its news conference on the Capitol steps in the early afternoon when Goldenkranz said that he had been able to get the details of the legislative budget agreement from an elected official.

They included dropping the premium that some immigrants would have to pay from $100 to $30 and implementing a six-month grace period for those who forgot to reapply to get back onto Medi-Cal instead of getting kicked off right away. The deal also proposed to remove the lowered means test. Instead of requiring people to have assets under $2,000 to be eligible, the legislative agreement proposed to leave it at the current $130,000. 

However, Goldenkranz told Lookout that the budget proposal had a long way to go before it’s approved.

“They still have to negotiate from there, and the governor’s got line-item veto. There’s still a lot that can happen,” he said.

Within the hour, the activists, faith leaders and labor organizers gathered on the Capitol steps for their news conference. Speakers expressed guarded relief at the new proposal, even if it didn’t fully satisfy their demands. 

“This means that our voices were heard, and the Legislature couldn’t deny the rallying cries of our communities to protect and preserve health care access, but this does not mean the fight is over,” said Ana Alvarez, an organizer with the statewide Health4All coalition. “We must rise up and push back on any attempts to cut our care. This budget proposal is mostly just a delay in the cuts, not eliminating them entirely.”

Litel Walsh, the longtime COPA leader, agreed. “We understand the legislature is beginning to fight for us. However, any fee placed on one group of people is treating that group unfairly,” she said. “The immigrants pay taxes and they work in our communities with no safety nets.”

Francisco Rodriguez of the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council urged everyone to realize that any changes to Medi-Cal have the potential to affect everyone, regardless of whether or not they are on the program.

“If you think you’re not affected by cuts to Medi-Cal, think again, because hospitals and the health care system will not hesitate to increase your insurance rates to make up for any losses in their revenue,” he said.

Although the day was almost entirely focused on the budget and cuts to Medi-Cal, Selam Jaser, a leader of Parent Voices San Francisco, took a moment during the news conference to decry the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the Los Angeles area, as well as the arrest of union leader David Huerta. Hours later, an even larger rally would take place on the same steps in opposition to the immigration raids in Los Angeles and President Donald Trump’s action to bring in the National Guard and Marines to quash the protests.

“We say all immigrants belong here. We believe it’s time to show that all care is connected from care in our earliest years and throughout life for those who need it and those who provide it,” Jaser said. “Together, we’ll convince legislators and the governor to pass a final budget that protects care, not billionaires.”

A legislator involved with the Medi-Cal negotiations told Lookout they feel good about the proposal and thinks it is unlikely that Newsom rejects the Senate and Assembly’s agreement outright, but expects the governor to make some changes. The legislator spoke on background because they were not authorized to speak publicly on behalf of budget negotiators. They expect a final vote on the agreement on Friday, before it goes back to the governor.

With just a few legislative visits remaining, the organizers gathered to debrief and share their feelings in the waning heat of late afternoon. Those feelings ranged from hopeful to uncertain. While they saw the impact of their efforts, they did not get everything they wanted, and don’t know how Newsom will respond to the proposal.

“I would say that I feel both angry and proud,” said Robert Hoo, the statewide director for California Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and lead organizer of One LA IAF, on the lawn of the Capitol building. “What they’re offering will kick a lot of people off health care.” However, Hoo acknowledged that $30 is better than $100.

“What you’ve done today is show that you’re engaged in this, and you’ve made this budget better,” he told the group. “[It’s] not as good as you want, but you’ve made it better. That’s politics, and to me, that’s hopeful compared to what I see happening in Los Angeles.”

As the organizers got back into the buses to begin the three-plus-hour drive back to the Central Coast, Holliday thanked everyone for their efforts and said COPA would soon begin planning its next moves. 

However, he made it clear that their work had only just begun: “Let’s get that $30 down to $0.”

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