Marni von Wilpert says she doesn’t just “go to the college Democratic clubs every four years” when there’s an election—she keeps young people involved in her work year-round.
The San Diego City Council member and Democratic nominee in California’s 48th Congressional District told Courier California she brings young people into the work of governing, not just campaigning, including the city’s ghost gun ban. “I ask them to govern with me,” she said.
The open seat is one of the country’s most closely watched House races. Democrats aim to flip the district from Republicans, who vacated the seat when Rep. Darrell Issa retired after Proposition 50, the 2025 redistricting measure that redrew the district in Democrats’ favor.
The new map pairs deep-blue Palm Springs with much inland territory that leans Republican, mostly in southwestern Riverside County and inland North San Diego County.
Palm Springs, where Kamala Harris won by double digits in 2024, and gives Democrats a 3-percentage-point voter registration edge, CalMatters reported.
Her opponent is Republican County Supervisor Jim Desmond. Desmond is a longstanding conservative who has campaigned against sanctuary city protections and is in favor of Trump’s war on Iran.
But von Wilpert says her campaign is about more than opposing the GOP. “To win this race, I cannot just be against Trump,” she said. “I have to be for a better future for this country.” For von Wilpert, that includes young people working inside government, not just cheering from the outside.
Von Wilpert told Courier California that she brought several young interns into her City Hall office to shadow her. “We teach them the ropes,” she said. Some college interns have gone on to join her office as full-time staff after graduating.
Writing a law banning “ghost guns”
The clearest example von Wilpert offered is San Diego’s ban on ghost guns, the untraceable firearms assembled at home from kits and parts that at the time could be bought without a background check. Von Wilpert authored the Eliminate Non-Serialized Untraceable Firearm (ENUF) Ordinance, and when Mayor Todd Gloria signed it in September 2021, San Diego became the first city in California to ban ghost guns.
Von Wilpert credits high school students with helping write it, including Stephan Abrams. Abrams was 17 and a leader with Team ENOUGH, the youth arm of the gun violence prevention group Brady, when he ordered gun parts online. They arrived at his door; he assembled the weapon and shared a video of it online. “That’s all it would take to build an untraceable 9mm handgun,” he said in a 2021 YouTube video.
Abrams went on to speak at the City Council meeting where the ordinance passed and, von Wilpert recalled, stood beside her when the mayor signed it into law.
Abrams has since graduated from college and works as a national policy director for Brady in Washington, von Wilpert said. Brady’s political action committee has endorsed her congressional campaign.
Von Wilpert said young people should not be treated as turnout targets every election cycle, but as collaborators, a practice she says applies across partisan lines.
“The day I got elected, I represented everybody,” she said, referring to flipping the “most conservative” San Diego City Council district from red to blue in 2020.
“I didn’t care whose yard sign you’d had in your yard. [If elected] I’m now your representative, and my door is open to everybody.”
