Covid-19 was ripping across the world, California was urging residents to stay home, and it was all getting in Elon Musk’s way.
Determined not to let pandemic precautions dent factory production, the CEO of
“F*ck Elon Musk,” Lorena Gonzalez, then a California state assembly member, posted to Twitter on May 9, 2020.
Gonzalez’s comment broke with Democratic orthodoxy. Musk, at the time, was primarily seen as a visionary—albeit an eccentric one—doing what generations of environmental activists had dreamed of in rolling out an electric vehicle that resonated with consumers. His company and Silicon Valley, more broadly, were driving an economic boom that provided the tax revenue for California leaders to pursue progressive policies on issues such as climate change.
For Gonzalez, though, it crystalized that it was time for Democrats to take a more aggressive approach on workers’ rights, economic inequality and the emerging threat of artificial intelligence.
Five years later, she’s having something of an “I told you so” moment.
As Democrats grapple for a direction after President Donald Trump’s election, Musk takes on the role of top adviser, and
While Gonzalez, 53, says she isn’t interested in running for office again, she’s emerged as something of a kingmaker. As head of the California Labor Federation, she leads about 2.3 million union members who can provide crucial door-knocking and other on-the-ground voter mobilization efforts for Democratic campaigns. The organization also has considerable sway on whether bills live or die in the state legislature.
Labor takes some credit for helping flip three House seats in California during the last election, bringing the party within striking distance of a House majority by aiding efforts to oust GOP Reps. Mike Garcia, Michelle Steel and John Duarte.
Now, tech titans like Musk advocate for slashing union positions in government and cutting social benefits while touting AI, which Gonzalez argues is a threat to eliminate jobs—as well as entire professions—and perpetuates discrimination in areas such as hiring and health care.
Few elected officials and candidates seem to understand or fully address this point, which presents Democrats with an opportunity, Gonzalez said in an interview with Bloomberg Government.
“I think Elon Musk has been our best weapon in terms of opening peoples’ eyes to the tech sector,” Gonzalez said.
The labor federation also takes a share of the credit for helping Gov. Gavin Newsom fend off a recall campaign in 2021. But he and Gonzalez represent very different segments of a Democratic Party struggling to define itself.
If Newsom or any other California Democrat wants to take on a bigger role in national politics, they’ll have to reckon with Gonzalez, who says she’s tired of the party taking labor’s support for granted and rarely holds back from speaking her mind. And that could put Democrats like Newsom in an awkward position of choosing between longtime tech allies and supporters in labor.
“When there’s blood in the political waters, she can sense it,” Dave McCuan, professor of political science at Sonoma State University, said in an interview.
AI Emerges
Gonzalez’s up-close view of Silicon Valley as a political and economic force dates to her undergraduate years as a self-described fish out of water at Stanford University. She graduated in 1993, four years after venture capitalist and Republican megadonor Peter Thiel and a few years before Musk would arrive. She later received a law degree from the University of California Los Angeles.
She won a seat in the state Assembly in a 2013 special election and became one of its most pro-labor members, authoring legislation to end the practice of companies like
Gonzalez left the Assembly in 2022 to head up the labor federation. A year later, screenwriters and actors struck Hollywood studios in 2023, bringing a central piece of California’s economy to a halt.
The strikes were due, in part, to concerns over the use of AI in filmmaking. While past strikes in Hollywood came off as battles between rich actors and even richer studio bosses, this one resonated with workers in low-wage industries, Gonzalez argued.
“They are already seeing in real time unregulated AI in workplaces,” she said.
Fifty-two percent of Californians have an unfavorable view of AI, according to a November survey from the Public Policy Institute of California—a notable result in a state that is home to 32 of the top 50 companies in the global sector.
Meanwhile, a separate study from the UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute found 4.5 million California workers were employed in the 20 occupations at high risk of automation as of 2022. The jobs included truck drivers, cashiers and cooks. About half those workers are Latino, the study found at a time when Democrats have seen support erode in Hispanic communities.
Both findings, she said, show AI is an issue Democrats can campaign on.
A Duality
Gonzalez’s push for curbs on tech and artificial intelligence has been met with opposition from an industry that’s a major force in California politics, even as some of its biggest names have become some of Trump’s closest allies.
Newsom represents this conflict, McCuan, the political science professor, argues.
The governor has aligned with labor at times, backing Gonzalez’s bill on gig workers in 2019. Gonzalez also championed a 2022 bill that would have made it easier for farm workers to organize. Newsom—part owner of a boutique vineyard and restaurant group— vetoed an earlier version, but signed the bill under pressure from allies such as President Joe Biden.
And Newsom has twice nixed bills Gonzalez has backed with others in labor that would require drivers inside autonomous trucks. Those measures would scuttle the hopes of companies aiming to link California’s major logistics hubs to driverless transportation networks.
Undeterred, the labor federation is again pushing to curb the use of autonomous trucks. Its agenda also includes bills that would limit the use of automation at grocery stores as well as pharmacies and measures that would limit the use of AI in areas such as hiring and health care.
The governor—a former mayor of San Francisco—is more a creature of Silicon Valley than of union halls. His 2013 book “Citizenville” is a guide to “how to take the town square digital and reinvent government.” It’s imbued with the sort of techno-optimism that characterized Silicon Valley in President Barack Obama’s era.
Lately, Newsom has taken to the favorite medium of Silicon Valley—podcasts—to promote his own take on the Democratic Party’s future. That vision includes walking back support for transgender rights and pushing allies to engage more with their ideological opponents. The tone fits the Silicon Valley backlash against so-called wokeness but has also left some allies unsettled about where he really stands.
There’s a more practical consideration for California Democrats considering taking on Big Tech: its boom has indirectly provided much of the state’s funding in recent years, thanks to California’s steeply progressive income tax structure.
Stock pay alone at four major technology companies—
Some Democrats, like Rep. Ro Khanna, have sought a different balance in the party’s approach to tech.
The congressman, who represents much of Silicon Valley, knows Gonzalez well. The two have sat on panels together about the future of AI.
“I consider her a thought leader and on-the-ground leader,” Khanna said in an interview.
But he contends policymakers “need to find an appropriate balance between reflective tech skepticism versus the right’s embrace of techno-libertarianism. Neither is right.”
Gonzalez is quick to note she’s not against technology. Even though Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X, she can’t quit it, using the social media platform to post everything from family photos to scorching screeds against corporate executives and politicians.
But she argues Democrats need to prioritize protecting jobs that could be lost through automation. Democrats didn’t adequately address the concerns many voters had in the last election about the cost of living, she said.
“Democrats were in one place, people were in another,” she said.
The party, she says, shouldn’t make a similar mistake about technology.
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