Monica Montgomery Steppe

Candidate for San Diego County Supervisorial District 4

Monica Montgomery Steppe is a native San Diegan whose interest in public service was shaped by her parents' activism against Proposition 209. She earned a bachelor's degree from Spelman College and a law degree from California Western School of Law, then worked as a civil rights attorney with the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties and as a senior policy advisor at San Diego City Hall. She served on the San Diego City Council representing the Fourth District from 2018 to 2023, including as Council President pro Tempore, where she led public safety reform efforts and chaired the council's budget committee. In December 2023 she won a special election to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, becoming the first Black woman to serve in that role; her colleagues later selected her as Vice Chair of the Board in July 2025. In office she has championed the county's first tiny-home sleeping-cabin project for homeless residents, funding for a second safe-parking lot, a food-justice plan that directed $750,000 to the San Diego Food Bank and the SunCoast Market Co-Op, the county's first Summer Youth Academy, a Small Business Procurement Program, and $7.6 million in discretionary funding for community organizations.

Montgomery Steppe has said housing and homelessness are her highest priorities, and in office she has pushed to expand shelter capacity — including approving up to 70 non-congregate sleeping cabins at the Troy Street site using $11.1 million in federal pandemic-relief funds — alongside supportive housing tied to substance-use recovery. On public safety, she has said accountability is key for both law enforcement and elected officials, and has pushed for greater county oversight of jail operations, including changes to state law that would expand the Board of Supervisors' authority; she has linked jail understaffing and low pay to the county's rate of in-custody deaths and has worked to strengthen the Citizens' Law Enforcement Review Board's investigatory powers. On health care, she co-led a 2026 effort with Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer to carve behavioral-health services out of the county's Health and Human Services Agency into a standalone department, aimed at expanding treatment capacity and modernizing the region's mental-health and substance-use safety net. On immigration, she has supported county spending to help nonprofits serving migrants, describing the county's role in public-health terms.

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