photo credit: Tim Kelly for Congress
Tim Kelly (center) standing with tenants he's represented in his
practice as a housing attorney. 

Continuing our coverage of the upcoming June primary election, KRCB's Noah Abrams spoke with Tim Kelly, a housing attorney, long time Sonoma County resident, and candidate for Congress in the new District 1.

The redrawn Congressional seat spans from Sebastopol in the west, to Susanville and the Nevada border in the east.

It cuts across northern swathes of the Central Valley and into Northern Sierra, stuffing Santa Rosa and Chico together in a new district.

"California District 1 is a relatively rare situation in that there is not an incumbent," said Tim Kelly.

Kelly is a lawyer and Santa Rosa resident, raised near Fort Ross.

He said he has worked as a high school math and science teacher, and currently practices housing and renter law.

"So much of American politics at the congressional level is incumbents running again and again and again and again," Kelly said. "Any normal person who wants to challenge that faces a tremendous uphill battle where they will usually be ignored because they don't have the name recognition or the deep pockets of fundraising."

A newcomer to electoral politics, and an independent, Kelly said he feels there's a deep dissatisfaction - across the US - with political leadership from both the Democratic and Republican Party, and a system he said, that is aimed at stifling political dissent.

"Americans who are unhappy with the status quo are basically told you have three options." Kelly said. "You can kvetch about it on social media where you will be connected by algorithms into either echo chambers of ineffectiveness or into arguments that accomplish nothing."

"The other option is you can go protest in the streets which will generally be ignored or you will be fed tear gas and rubber bullets and then be ignored. And your third option is wait till the next election cycle and write postcards to voters in swing districts. All three of those options feel frustrating because they feel ineffectual."

Kelly said the Iraq War, and the way massive public protest in opposition to the war was ignored, was a major turning point in his understanding of how political power works in the United States.

"This frustration has stayed with me for two decades, and what I have found in my work as a tenant's advocate is a truly unparalleled form of mass economic protest, which is organizing tenants and going on rent strikes," Kelly said.

Kelly said he represents tenants across the Bay Area and the state. In San Francisco, he's represented renters against threats of eviction in a standoff with corporate landlord Veritas.

"It just took a few dozen people standing up to them and demanding change," Kelly said of his experience fighting Veritas.

Veritas, at one time the largest landlord in San Francisco, was accused of neglecting essential maintenance, and using superfluous construction in an effort to displace renters. After a rent strike by residents, Veritas eventually defaulted on over-leveraged loans for dozens of apartment buildings last year.

"These buildings got better landlords, better living conditions, it benefited everyone," Kelly said of the sale of Veritas owned apartments. "This approach taken on a wider level, I truly believe can demand that our elected officials obey the Constitution, do their job better, serve the people."

Kelly said he doesn't advocate for tenants to rent strike in all situations.

"If their landlord's a human being, if their landlord generally follows the law, and if they want to continue living there, I would not advocate a rent strike under those conditions," Kelly said. "But many of us, perhaps most renters, have corporate landlords or landlords who are checked out, doing the bare minimum, breaking the law, and trying to get away with it."

Kelly said he believes with the proper preparation and coordination, a mass rent or general strike has the potential to create change and build momentum over time, akin to the Civil Rights Movement and it's transformative impacts in the 1960's. Kelly said his hope is to provide a kind of backbone for just such as a movement as an elected leader.

"I want to make this campaign and this candidacy, and if I am elected, my term of service in Congress, about helping Americans to understand that they have more political power than most of us realize," Kelly said. "I have yet to see any tactic work as effectively as a rent strike and that's why that is my focus."

In addition to the core commitment to a rent strike, Kelly said he supports creating a Tenant Bill of Rights, standardizing things like simple transparent leases and a cap on junk fees.

Kelly is also supportive of gun rights.

"What I've seen is guns is the biggest divide is rural versus urban," Kelly said. "I grew up in a really rural area, you know, gun was seen as a tool not that different from a chainsaw."

"I was also an urban teacher for 13 years teaching in some of the toughest schools in our country," Kelly said. So as a school teacher, the reality that America has suffered horrific gun violence often targeted at our most vulnerable are students, parishioners, moviegoers is a real fact. It can't be ignored."

He said his support for gun rights is more about seeing firearms as a citizen's check on government power.

Kelly said he would like to see Big Tech and social media companies held liable for damaging youth mental health, and wants a ban on addictive algorithms and predatory data mining practices.

On the topic of Proposition 50, which drew him into the new District 1, Kelly is candid about the reality. "District 1 was a Republican district, it is one of the five districts that was redrawn to make it Democratic," Kelly said.

Kelly said though, that he believes the diverse make up of the district - a mix of urban, suburban, and rural communities - some deeply Democratic leaning and others with heavy Republican support - opens up a unique opportunity.

"I really think that's one of the reasons that I believe district one can be something of a pathfinder," Kelly said. "Running as a independent candidate could be dismissed as a fool's errand. We haven't had a non-partisan candidate win an election to Congress since 1990....but I think if it did work here, it could be a real message to the rest of the country that the all these divides, they're not as great as they seem."

Kelly, as an idiosyncratic candidate, has vowed to serve just a single term in Congress if elected. He also currently serves on the Fort Ross Conservancy's Board of Directors.