From the Streets
to the State House.

Jordyn Guadalupe Balderas dropped out of high school to keep his family alive. His mother, a nurse who raised six kids on her own, was diagnosed with amyloidosis and denied the disability benefits she had earned. The safety net did not catch them. Balderas spent his teenage years homeless, sleeping in cars, motels, and on friends' couches, working full time and serving as the primary caregiver for his disabled mother before he was old enough to vote.

He is not a career politician. He is not a lawyer or a lobbyist or someone who read about poverty in a textbook. He is a 21-year-old community organizer on Florida's Treasure Coast who has spent the years since getting his family off the streets doing the same thing for everyone else. He has built coalitions across Indian River County, partnered with local Democratic leadership, and shown up consistently for the families and individuals that Florida's government was supposed to help but never did. He is one of roughly 28 million Americans living without health insurance. He does not talk about these issues from a briefing book. He talks about them because he is still living them.

Balderas is running for the Florida House of Representatives in District 34 because he is tired of watching politicians who have never missed a meal decide who deserves help and who does not. He is running on affordable housing, healthcare access, and the basic idea that the people who represent working families should actually be one. His opponent is a landlord who owns more than 60 rental properties. Balderas could not afford one.

He has been defying expectations since the day he was born, when a collapsed lung and a stay on life support were supposed to be the end of his story. They were not. Neither was homelessness. Neither was being told that people like him do not run for office.

He is bringing grit back to politics because grit is all he has ever had.