Do California politicians serve the working class? Look to Merced County | Opinion

Some counties become political symbols by accident. Merced County became one by necessity.

As housing costs rise, infrastructure lags and wages stagnate, Merced has quietly turned into a test case for a question few want to ask out loud: Does any political structure in California still represent the working class?

This isn’t a partisan question, it’s a survival question — one that matters not only to rural communities like Merced, as well as to the entire Central Valley and the state that depends on it.

Merced’s working people are not confused about what they need. They are confused about why no one is fighting for it.

Working-class communities are carrying the weight

In Merced, the people who keep this county running are the ones who feel the strain most intensely: farmworkers laboring in 110-degree heat; caregivers supporting our elders; public safety workers covering gaps in behavioral health; adjunct faculty teaching the next generation; service workers living paycheck to paycheck; and families priced out of the neighborhoods they built.

These residents aren’t interested in ideological battles. They want affordable homes tied to local wages; behavioral-health systems that function; transparency in development decisions; infrastructure in long-ignored neighborhoods; protection from displacement; real workforce pathways; and leadership that listens.

Instead, conversations across the political spectrum have drifted toward abstractions, symbolic gestures, cultural arguments, and national narratives that have almost nothing to do with the reality of living in a county where most residents don’t have a grocery store in their neighborhood.

Working-class residents of rural counties share a frustration that rarely appears in statewide politics. And the people making decisions are too far removed from those living with the consequences.

It’s not that people don’t care. It’s that the system isn’t built to reflect the voices of farmworkers, low-wage families, renters, small-business owners or behavioral-health patients navigating a broken system.

When state and regional plans assume income levels Merced families do not have, or prioritize development for people who don’t even live here yet, the message is loud and clear: Growth is valued, and the people experiencing the growth are not.

Merced County is the front line of rural displacement

Across California, coastal housing crises have pushed families inland. Merced, with its lower housing costs, became a landing zone. But without safeguards, the working class becomes collateral damage: rents rise faster than wages; “affordable housing” is priced for regional incomes, not local ones; small businesses are replaced by chains; cultural communities are eroded; and residents doing the hardest work lose their grip on the place they call home.

This is displacement — not revitalization.

And it raises the same question: Who is being planned for? And who is being planned around?

The future of the working class will be decided in places like Merced.

California’s political structures often speak passionately about equity, fairness, justice and dignity. But those words carry little weight if they don’t reach the neighborhoods where people are most affected by economic pressure.

Merced is not asking for miracles, we are just asking for representation.

Any political movement that ignores Merced’s working class will eventually lose them — not because people shift parties and not because they want ideological battles. We want what every Californian wants: stability, dignity, a fair chance, a livable wage, a home and a community that does not get reshaped without our input.

If the political system cannot offer that, working-class residents will look elsewhere — or build their own structures of power.

Merced County may be small, but what happens here is not. It is the measure of whether California still has space for everyday working people.

Micki Archuleta is an educator and researcher focused on rural communities, equity and working-class stabilization in Merced County. She holds graduate degrees in educational technology, American studies and English literature.