Diane Papan faces challenge from Jabra Muhawieh in District 21 Assembly race

“Building consensus is really how you move the needle,” she said. “I feel that building consensus has been a skill set that I’ve brought to the table, and it really has helped on many different issues.” 

Fighting to change the bureaucratic mechanisms that leave San Mateo County legislators haggling for the region’s VLF fees to be included in the budget each year continues to be a major priority for Papan. Because the setup of San Mateo County’s existing educational revenue structures doesn’t qualify the county for the full in-lieu amount of taxes on California vehicles, which are used to fund basic county and city services, she said ensuring they’re included in the state budget until a more long-term solution is reached is of utmost importance. 

Aside from budgetary work, Papan said her climate-related initiatives — including work on water use for artificial intelligence data centers — and reform of the state’s housing mandates would continue to be a focus if reelected. 

Finances

Muhawieh, who said he was not familiar with the VLF issue and declined to comment on it, also cited finances as a major impetus for his Assembly run. His experience as a tax professional has demonstrated firsthand the impact that California’s high taxes have on families, he said, also citing the impact of Proposition 19, which limits parent-to-child property tax transfer. 

“We definitely need taxes, but we definitely have to lower it in California, because they have a surplus with the sales tax, the property tax, income tax, corporate tax,” he said. “I feel that’s a big step.” 

His spirit of perseverance would make him well equipped to handle new challenges, like potentially building more affordable housing for specific career-based groups, he said. 

“I feel in my heart, my skills, whatever I put my mind to, I could do, from my entire life, whatever I’ve given my attention to, I’ve done it,” Muhawieh said. “I went to Arizona State University and got a 4.0 in communication studies, and I did business courses as well.” 

For Papan, addressing the state’s cost-of-living crisis means looking at nearly every issue through an affordability lens, she said. From insurance rates on fire-hardening regulations to looking at who picks up the tab on wildfire resistance requirements for public utilities, the issue of rising expenses is never far from her mind, she said. 

“There’s very complex financing issues that go into some of the things we decide on. It’s not sexy, I don’t think the average citizen knows it’s going on, but we worked very hard at reaching this balance,” Papan said. 

Housing

Addressing the state’s housing supply crisis has been touted by legislators as one solution to driving housing prices down and has been mandated by the state in the form of Regional Housing Needs Allocation goals for cities. Papan has taken a more moderate approach to the issue, proposing reforms to a process she said can sometimes overload localities beyond their financial capacities. 

“I’d like to see that money perhaps redirected to things like rental assistance, so that we can keep people housed through their most difficult time periods and not have them end up homeless,” she said. 

Muhawieh said he was not supportive of state mandates on housing, however, guidelines could be helpful to the process. Instead, he proposed building more affordable housing in major cities and urban areas. 

“When you’re trying to, for example, raise a family, and you work so hard and you want to get someone in a nice, single-family house, right? … They worked harder, they want to have that privacy and that kind of luxury,” he said. “But I’m sure there’s other parts of California that are zoned for those projects.” 

AI

In the absence of federal regulation, Papan said she supported California’s efforts to regulate aspects of artificial intelligence, a rapidly-growing industry that has major economic revenue impacts for the district as well as potential harms for consumers. Her own legislative work around AI has centered in part on attempting to get data centers that power the technology to report their water use, which is only one part of what she termed a “behemoth” of an issue. 

“What I’m looking at is, are there reasonable guardrails that allow … the public [to have] an understanding of how AI is being presented,” she said. 

There should be some type of regulation around the safety issues AI presents, Muhawieh concurred, and said that it was important for Californians to “learn to work with” the technology. 

Interaction with federal government

Muhawieh, who is running as a Republican and voted for Trump, said he would still challenge him on specific issues that he felt violated citizens’ rights. As a Palestinian person, for example, he said he was concerned by the president’s approach to free speech. 

“Whether I voted for Trump, I did, but if he’s going to violate the Constitution and the First Amendment, I will challenge that and say, you can’t do that, whether I like you or not, whether I think he’s trying to do good for the country or not,” Muhawieh said. 

For her part, Papan said she listens to the needs of all constituents, regardless of party, she believed the state should continue its ongoing fight against Trump administration policies in the courts. 

“We have to hold the federal government accountable, and Trump administration, on things like the environment and healthcare,” she said. “Millions are at stake here. We don’t really have a choice.”