When Millenials and Gen-Z were kids, we were told that we could do anything when we grew up, that we had unlimited potential if we just work hard enough and go to college. Our parents knew what it was like to be better off than the generation before them, but we did not inherit an America of prosperity.

I was born in Las Vegas in 2000. My Dad was born here in the late 60s to a Mexican immigrant and a Mormon Navy-vet. My mother moved here when she was three, her father working a union job at the Review Journal. Both of my parents were the first in their families to go to college, and they have fully paid off their loans. They were homeowners before they were thirty. As a 24-year-old recent college grad, this seems woefully out of reach.

I have never known an America that wasn’t in crisis. The year before I was born, Columbine started the school shooting generation. Fast forward 23 years, I lived through a school shooting of my own at UNLV. In elementary school, the Great Recession ripped children from their homes, and then we grew up to experience another global recession, historic inflation, and a deadly pandemic to boot. Today, Nevada is one of the most unaffordable housing markets in the country, for both renters and owners. The strain is felt by us all. For those who have housing, they are struggling to keep it. For those of us just starting out, we are struggling to ever have it in the first place.

I did exactly what I was told, I went to college. I got good grades and won a full-tuition scholarship to an out of state school. All I had to pay was housing and food. I attended in-person for ONE semester, and that one semester has accounted for half of the loans I accumulated in four years. While UNLV was much more affordable by comparison, I still had to take on more loans to get by.

This is why I am running. We deserve a leader who has real stakes in the choices made in Carson City. I would be a legislator that will inherit the consequences of our policies WITH you. I have the sense of urgency we need to build a Nevada where working people can afford to stay, where students don’t fear for their lives, and where young families have a future. We can’t keep waiting for someone to save us. No more waiting turns. No more asking permission. I’m running because decisions are being made without us, and its time to change that. I’m saving YOU a seat at the table: its where we belong.