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Agatha Bacelar
Agatha Bacelar (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent California's 12th Congressional District. She lost in the primary on March 3, 2020.
Bacelar completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Agatha Bacelar was born in São Paulo, Brazil. She earned a B.S. in product design engineering from Stanford University.[1] Bacelar's career experience includes working at Emerson Collective, where she focused on design, documentary filmmaking, and political advocacy.[2]
Elections
2020
See also: California's 12th Congressional District election, 2020
General election
General election for U.S. House California District 12
Incumbent Nancy Pelosi defeated Shahid Buttar in the general election for U.S. House California District 12 on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Nancy Pelosi (D) | 77.6 | 281,776 |
 | Shahid Buttar (D)  | 22.4 | 81,174 | |
| Total votes: 362,950 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 12
The following candidates ran in the primary for U.S. House California District 12 on March 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Nancy Pelosi (D) | 74.0 | 190,590 |
| ✔ | | Shahid Buttar (D) | 13.0 | 33,344 |
 | John Dennis (R) | 7.7 | 19,883 | |
 | Tom Gallagher (D) | 2.0 | 5,094 | |
 | DeAnna Lorraine (R) | 1.8 | 4,635 | |
 | Agatha Bacelar (D) | 1.5 | 3,890 | |
| Total votes: 257,436 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2020
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Agatha Bacelar completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Bacelar's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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For the past five years, I have worked on documentary filmmaking and political advocacy at Emerson Collective. There I collaborated with leading nonprofits, activists, artists, and policy makers to advance education, immigration, criminal justice, and environmental reform.
I am also a founding member of Democracy Earth, a nonprofit building blockchain-based voting and governance software. I am passionate about how technology can upgrade our political system to be more participatory and representative of everyday people.
I studied engineering at Stanford University with a focus on anthropology and social impact. At Stanford, I helped start one of the country's first collegiate jump rope teams, and competed nationally. In my free time and sometimes on the campaign trail, I can be found leading double dutch circles in the Bay Area.- With family in San Francisco for nearly 30 years, a sister in a San Francisco high school, and as a resident of the Mission District, I am proximate daily to the two faces of San Francisco-the great civic shame of homelessness in the midst of enormous wealth. This long standing problem spotlights a political status quo that is not serving all citizens. For a democracy that serves the 100%, we're going to need new design thinking, and Representatives who will listen to the people over the apparatus of power.
- Half of my family is from Brazil, which is home to the Amazon Rainforest, and this is, for me, a deeply personal connection to the urgency of the climate crisis. We must rapidly transform our economy to a regenerative one.
- San Francisco has some of the youngest, most diverse, and technologically advanced residents of any district in the U.S. The technology dreamt up here ripples out to the entire world, and will continue to do so as another four billion people connect online in the next decade. Artificial Intelligence, automation, and social media will continue to impact every aspect of our lives. Yet, only 3% of Members in the House of Representatives today have a science or technology background. I'm running for Congress to change this. I'm running to update our political system to the times we live in.
We have been in a long slumber to the poor and vulnerable, but I am committed to being part of the democratic awakening that roots this evil out. Until we reach the promised land of racial justice, none of us are really free.
Dr. King provided me with a blueprint for a life of service. In 1957, by the time he was my age, Dr. King had already led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, his home had been bombed by segregationists, and he was traveling an average of 780,000 miles and giving over 200 speeches a year. We may think we have come a long way in fighting for the justice we so desperately seek, but in many ways the U.S. is more unequal and discriminatory than before the civil rights movement. Today we live in a well-disguised system of social control that spans immigration, mass incarceration, and homelessness. We have so much work to do.
Second, my work as a documentary filmmaker helped me be attentive listener and someone who takes great care in bridging gaps in understanding. Most of my career has been spent with the people and in the places where justice is most urgently needed-from immigrant detention centers to under resourced classrooms and communities that are unbanked. Every person I met and every story I heard helps ground my service to those who have been underserved by our democracy.
The invention of internet search and email also changed my life. I remember when my mom first showed me (in Kindergarten) how an email could deliver a message instantly to a family friend on another continent. It was like discovering a magic power. These days we hear so much about how divisive tech platforms can be, so I'm glad to have this reminder that the internet as originally envisioned is a force for unity and connection too.
(It's a song about politically active youth.)
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2020 Elections
External links
Footnotes
