Marni von Wilpert

Marni von Wilpert is a San Diego City Councilmember and the Democratic nominee running to represent California's 48th Congressional District, one of the most competitive House races in the country. She is looking to flip the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, and faces Republican San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond in the November general election, in a district redrawn under California's new congressional map.

Von Wilpert grew up in San Diego's Scripps Ranch neighborhood in a military family — her father immigrated to the United States and served in the Army, and her grandfather served in World War II. She earned a degree in peace and conflict studies from UC Berkeley, then served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. After law school at Fordham, she founded a legal aid clinic in Mississippi, and later worked as a labor attorney and as an advisor on the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee.

Von Wilpert served as Deputy City Attorney in San Diego from 2018 to 2020 and has served on the San Diego City Council since 2020, where she authored an ordinance banning untraceable "ghost guns" and led passage of a citywide ban on flavored tobacco products aimed at curbing youth nicotine addiction. As a civil prosecutor, she says she cracked down on price gouging, pursued polluters, and helped hold opioid manufacturers accountable — building a reputation as a taxpayer watchdog she says prepared her to take on entrenched interests in Washington.

Marni von Wilpert has fought to:

• Lower costs for working families by cracking down on price gouging and cutting red tape to build more affordable housing
• Protect and expand the Affordable Care Act, restore ACA tax credits, and add a public healthcare option
• Defend Social Security and Medicare against cuts or privatization, while expanding dental, vision, hearing, and mental health coverage
• Push back on ICE overreach while supporting secure borders and a path to citizenship for Dreamers and long-term residents
• Protect abortion access and reproductive freedom, building on her record helping pass local protections after the fall of Roe v. Wade
• Strengthen workers' rights and unions, drawing on her background as a labor attorney
• Restore accountability in government by banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks and reducing the influence of dark money in elections

Across these issues, von Wilpert casts her candidacy as bringing a record of practical, results-driven governance in San Diego to Washington, with a focus on lowering costs and holding powerful interests accountable for CA-48 families.