ELECTION 2024

Advancing our mission to deliver wages, benefits, and working conditions

Wages, benefits, and working conditions. Taken together, these are the North Star used by CPF to guide our endorsement process for ballot measures and candidates for elected office. Our political and legislative teams at CPF work diligently to set the conditions for our success in the State Capitol and to deliver wins that benefit CPF’s 35,000 members and their families. Firefighters answer the call to serve the public in times of crisis, and we expect our endorsed candidates to serve the interest of public safety when it comes to fighting for funding and legislation that protects firefighters.

In California, one party has a supermajority hold on state politics – which isn’t very different from many of the local governments that CPF members serve. But holding or attacking a specific political party isn’t why CPF engages in legislative campaigns.

CPF supports candidates whose campaigns are viable for the district they are running in and who have demonstrated through their record that they support firefighters and the issues that assist us in serving the public.

Some legislative races are incredibly competitive, but nearly 90 percent of them are not. Within the 11 extremely competitive races in the Assembly and Senate between a Republican candidate and a Democratic candidate this year, CPF is endorsing six Republicans and five Democrats. Those CPF-endorsed candidates, in our estimation, are not only terrific supporters of firefighters but also fit the communities they are running to represent very well.

There may be many reasons firefighters choose the candidates they want to support that are not necessarily related to firefighting. That is the right that every voter has – to make up their own mind about who they want to elect to lead them. CPF’s responsibility is different.

As the state council of local firefighter unions, CPF is singularly focused on recommending candidates and ballot measure issues that are going to advance our mission to deliver better wages, benefits, and working conditions for our members. It is our hope that you will support those recommendations and act on them with your ballot.