Help us improve in just 2 minutes—share your thoughts in our reader survey.

Christian Thomas Shaughnessy

From Ballotpedia
Jump to: navigation, search
BP-Initials-UPDATED.png
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Christian Thomas Shaughnessy
Image of Christian Thomas Shaughnessy
Elections and appointments
Last election

March 5, 2024

Education

High school

Pacific High School

Associate

San Bernardino Valley College, 2016

Bachelor's

University of California, Santa Barbara, 2018

Personal
Profession
Community organizer
Contact

Christian Thomas Shaughnessy ran for election to the San Bernardino City Council to represent Ward 3 in California. Shaughnessy lost in the primary on March 5, 2024.

Shaughnessy completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Christian Thomas Shaughnessy earned a high school diploma from Pacific High School, an associate degree from San Bernardino Valley College in 2016, and a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2018.[1] His career experience includes working as a community organizer. Shaughnessy has been been the San Bernardino County Youth Coordinated Entry System chair, San Bernardino County Youth Advisory Board staff liaison, and an English teacher's assistant.[2]

Elections

2024

See also: City elections in San Bernardino, California (2024)

Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for San Bernardino City Council Ward 3

Incumbent Juan Figueroa won election outright against Christian Thomas Shaughnessy in the primary for San Bernardino City Council Ward 3 on March 5, 2024.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Juan Figueroa
Juan Figueroa (Nonpartisan)
 
53.2
 
1,028
Image of Christian Thomas Shaughnessy
Christian Thomas Shaughnessy (Nonpartisan) Candidate Connection
 
46.8
 
903

Total votes: 1,931
Candidate Connection = 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.

Endorsements

To view Shaughnessy's endorsements as published by their campaign, click here. Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Shaughnessy in this election.

2022

See also: Municipal elections in San Bernardino County, California (2022)

General election

General election for San Bernardino Community College District Area 4

Incumbent Nathan D. Gonzales defeated Christian Thomas Shaughnessy in the general election for San Bernardino Community College District Area 4 on November 8, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Nathan D. Gonzales
Nathan D. Gonzales (Nonpartisan) Candidate Connection
 
54.6
 
12,947
Image of Christian Thomas Shaughnessy
Christian Thomas Shaughnessy (Nonpartisan) Candidate Connection
 
45.4
 
10,784

Total votes: 23,731
Candidate Connection = 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.

Endorsements

To view Shaughnessy's endorsements in the 2022 election, please click here.

Campaign themes

2024

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

Christian Thomas Shaughnessy completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Shaughnessy's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Christian T. Shaughnessy is an anti-corruption fighter, experienced housing community organizer, city commissioner, and county housing expert born and raised in San Bernardino. He is a proud graduate of Ward 3’s San Bernardino Valley College (where he served as a co-chair of the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan), and the University of California, Santa Barbara. After he lost a friend to gun violence 3 blocks from his childhood home, he knew we needed change in San Bernardino to stop poverty, homelessness, unaffordable housing, slum lords, poor infrastructure, pollution, alienation, corruption, and all the causes and enablers of violence.

He is backed by 25 organizations and unions, 14 elected officials and many other community leaders including Majority Leader Emeritus Assemblywoman Eloise Gomez Reyes, Retired Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, our local National Organization of Women, the Inland Empire Labor Council AFL-CIO, IE United Steelworkers, and Ward 3 Valley College’s School Employees Association because he is the pro working families, anti-corruption and anti pay to play candidate in Ward 3.

He is proud to run a campaign that is Corporate PAC and developer money free. He fundraises on small donors, small businesses, and working families like you to win so we can defeat corruption in San Bernardino.

  • We must stop the corruption and bribery that hurt San Bernardino working families and small businesses. When we save taxpayer funds that are being wasted on politician's corrupt friends, we can then spend them on our city's needs, like our roads, our youth, our elders, and our environment.

    I support:

    Not using tax payer’s dollars to pay for politician’s legal fees, especially ongoing sexual harassment cases.

    Rejecting Corporate PAC and developer donations to prioritize working families and give all businesses a fair playing field.

    Cracking down on cash bribery of our city elected officials.

    Enforcing anti pay to play and conflict of interest laws.

    Stopping Big Business and developers from owning our politicians.
  • Create good, local jobs and build huge amounts of affordable housing so our young people can enter the middle class and our elders can stay living in the neighborhoods they grew up in. I support: Development of affordable housing Inclusionary housing Rent Stabilization and a Housing Board Shelters for unhoused people A rental assistance program Cracking down on slum lords Community benefit agreements and local hiring Promoting building and trades apprenticeships in the housing renaissance San Bernardino needs Seed money for small business startups Revitalizing our Downtown and National Orange Show. Mentoring for historically underrepresented entrepreneurs Protecting the legal right to unionize for warehouse workers
  • Promote accountable public safety and cracking down on violent crime and slum lords. As someone who lost a friend to gun violence and who has seen too many other friends victimized by corrupt slum lords, that is personal to me. Defend and expand Violence Prevention and Intervention Programs to stop gangs. Taking on slum lords and defending tenants and working families by hiring more code enforcement officers Self defense courses for residents Young child care support for parents Youth programming and senior programming to promote civic engagement Community Control of the Police
Affordable housing, public safety, economic democracy.
I would like to follow the example of Abraham Lincoln. He was able to bring together both sides of the aisle to enact revolutionary and transformational change in American history.
It is vital we listen to our working families and their opinions in policy, not just a corrupt wealthy few.
I want it said of me that I was uppity, and that I fought for working families and the oppressed even when it was inconvenient to do so.
Eloise Gomez Reyes, Assembly Majority Leader Emeritus, Assembly District 50 Assemblymember

Cheryl Brown, Retired Assemblymember District 47 and co-founder of Black Voice News

Corey Jackson, Assembly District 60 Assemblymember

Kimberly Calvin, San Bernardino City Councilwoman

Ben Reynoso, San Bernardino City Councilman

Abigail Medina, San Bernardino City Unified School Board Member

Susan Longville, Elected San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District Member

Dr. Treasure Ortiz, San Bernardino City Council Ward 7 Candidate, Former Ward 3 City Council Candidate

Dr. Gwen Dowdy Rodgers, San Bernardino County Board of Education Member

Mary Ellen Abilez Grande, San Bernardino City Unified School Board Member

And many more:

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.

2022

Candidate Connection

Christian Thomas Shaughnessy completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Shaughnessy's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

After I grew up in poverty and had one of my friends shot and killed just 3 blocks from my childhood home, I knew we had to do whatever it took to improve the lives of people in our region and ensure that poverty and violence like that would never happen again. I am the only district graduate, youth community organizer and mentor stopping violence on the streets, who was also an international educator, student government leader, and co-chair of Mecha (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan) in this race.

I am the only candidate in this race who has pledged never to take corporate PAC money and support term limits. I will be a proud voice for working families and have been endorsed by the IE Labor Council, Teachers Association, School Employees Association, Teamsters, Steelworkers, United Food and Commercial Workers 1167, and Chicano Latino Caucus.

I am someone who knows the struggle and I have the roots and experience to put our precious students and beloved working families first. I would also be humbled to be the first Asian and youngest trustee ever elected on the Board. We need change in this board and together we will make it happen!
  • I will promote official mentoring programs to keep our youth permanently away from the path to violence and on the path of graduation and employment.
  • I will help create vocational centers on every campus that will provide paid apprenticeships to students who want to enter the trades, avoid student debt, and get inflation resistant jobs.
  • As a trustee I will look forward to ensuring that our wonderful support staff and faculty get the thriving wages and benefits they deserve to live happy and fulfilling lives with their families in the region while having the remote work flexibility to watch their children grow up and attend to their elders in their old age.
As a youth community organizer I have advocated pro youth and pro worker policy to elected officials at the local, state, and federal level. I also was a volunteer union organizer for the historic La Quinta Starbucks union drive, the first in the Inland Empire (and not the last!). I am passionate about ensuring violence prevention initiatives and mentoring programs get established in our district and that students receive jobs that are inflation resistant. Worker's rights are also essential to me, and how our support staff and faculty are treated by the current administration is a complete abomination. We must treat our employees as the essential workers and heroes we said they were for years and keep our promises to treat them with respect.
I have failed tens of times in my life, and every single time I have gotten back up. My community has inspired me to continue on in the struggle for a better future and has never failed to give me a reason to keep on fighting.
I want it said of me that I was uppity, and dared to think I was worthy of being called equal to the elites.
Any book in Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The series balances what is magical about fantasy with the hard realized lessons in a life spent in the material world. It is an outstanding book for those coming of age, and since we are all coming of age into some sort of skill, idea, or experience, the trilogy is an absolute classic to read.
Judy Collins cover of Bread and Roses
Poverty, depression, addiction, and alienation. But through the help of mentors and friends I have been able to achieve recovery and transform my life. Now, in my role as a youth community organizer I do my best to pay back to the world all the goodness it has given me.
To advocate for students, working families, and employees to ensure that everyone in the community can get an education or good job, and not just the elite.
Students, working families, and employees.
We must increase student access to paid apprenticeships and vocational training. With inflation as bad as it is, many students do not want a four year or even two year degree anymore, and just want to make money as soon as possible. Paid vocational training accomplishes this.

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


External links

Footnotes

  1. Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on October 6, 2022
  2. Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on February 6, 2024