On Oct. 20 the Ceres Courier sat down with state Assemblyman Juan Alanis in his Modesto office to get more acquainted with him, learn of his path that led to representing Stanislaus County in the state Legislature.

Born in 1978 in Modesto and raised in Riverbank, Alanis aspired to become a Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department – attaining the rank of sergeant. He lost his 2017 bid to run for sheriff but ran for state Assembly as a Republican and won in 2022. He was re-elected in 2024, defeating Democrat Jessica Self for a second time.

Because of the length of the interview, we will present the second half next week.

Q: So tell us about your growing up years.

A: I was born at Memorial (hospital), grew up in Riverbank, went to school in Riverbank, went to Rio Alturo which is now RLA Riverbank Language Academy, and then I went to Cardozo Middle School, went to Riverbank High. While at Riverbank,

I did things like Little League, Oakdale soccer, NYSA soccer.

Q: So was it in high school that you decided you wanted to become a law enforcement officer?

A: Yes, so I was going to go into the Navy. At Riverbank High School, we had the NJROTC. It just started. I was a sophomore by my junior year and I ended up becoming the commanding officer of that unit. And when we went to Fleet Week, and there was a School Resource Officer there named Ed Martinez, and he was like, “Hey, you ever think about joining the Sheriff’s explorers?” I was already a Boy Scout. So then I put an application to be a Sheriff’s explorer, id the interview. Never owned a suit or any kind of jacket, and I had some people give me some stuff and did the interview.

Q: Did you grow up in a kind of a poor family?

A: I was oldest of five. My dad was the only one working so we didn’t always have Christmases or they made the best of it. My mom, now that we were adults, would say “It’s your birthday, what do you want me to make you for dinner?” And I remember one year I told my mom I want her beans, corn bread and fried potatoes. And she’s like, “Really?” And I’m like, “I love that dinner.” And she said, “You know that was because we didn’t have any money.” They called it Bean Week. So we had those pinto beans, and then those pinto beans became chili, and then that chili became like chili and eggs, chili dogs, and then leftovers by the end of the week. And I had no idea.

Q: So you can identify with struggling families in California.

A: Yeah, and my dad’s first generation here. My grandparents, you can see where my uncles and aunts were born as they made their way up from Mexico up here to Riverbank. My dad was born in Fowler, so there’s a big migrant camp thing there with Wasco and stuff. 

He did general contracting. He hurts from years and years of working. I used to go to job sites with my dad when I was cheap labor but it also taught me a trade. A lot of the stuff I do at my house, I do all my own, I don’t need to call anybody from plumbing to electrical. But he was doing that to prove a point for me to go to school, obviously, like all of us parents want our kids to do better.

And so then I’m on that Fleet Week. Well, I watched CHiPs growing up. I obviously, would have liked to have been a cop, so this was my way to becoming a cop, and was starting in ‘94 at the Sheriff’s Office and been there since.

Q: What was the highest rank you attained?

A: Sergeant.

Q: So Sheriff Adam Christensen left, and you decided you wanted a run? And you and Dirkse had a race there, and I think you came in at like 48%?

A: We lost by like, 3 percent, so it was a close game. And if you look money wise, he had over a quarter million; we had barely $100,000. So it just took a lot of knocking on doors.

Q: Did losing take the wind out of your sails?

A: Most people would leave. If you look at the history of like when Adam ran, you had guys like Rob Jackson and Mark Puthoff. Well, Mark Puthoff, especially in the beginning when Les Weidman was supportive of Mark Puthoff and then Adam Christensen won. And then obviously that whole thing went sideways, but they all ended up leaving because political stuff happens. I had my drone team taken away from me. I had my take home car taken away from me, my assignments. Bad evaluations; never had a bad evaluation in over 20 years – didn’t even know how to react to one. I found out later that they basically were trying to find something to put in it.

Q: Who was behind that?

A: That was I’ll coming from Admin. Even down to just little things that like, like my my sign off at the end.

Q: You weren’t their pick. Why is that?

A: I had always said, even when Les Weidman was my sheriff, I’d always wanted to be sheriff. I’d always had that as a goal. Even with talking with Adam and his wife (I asked) how is it for you guys? What’s the pressures? What’s the expectations? When I told Adam I was running, I said, “I told you I always wanted to be sheriff.” And he said, “Well everybody tells me that.” Well, I meant it. And you know, that relationship went sideways. But I let bygones be bygones. I mean, I still call them my sheriff.

And so I had sight on Assembly District 22 and said, let’s do it. What do I have to lose? I want to hold people accountable still, and I want I still wanted to be the sheriff. I was in the sheriff’s race in 2022, and that’s when I got a phone call from Heath Flora and he asked me to come up to Sacramento. He said that we could really use my experience up there.

And so I asked him questions like tell me about retirement? And he’s like, “Well, there’s no retirement.” And I said, “You want me to leave probably one of the best retirements in this state, if not the country, and come to us?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” And I go, tell me about the medical. “There’s no medical either.” And I’m like, what are you asking me to do? Like, I have a family to support and stuff. So I get to pay into medical while I’m here, but when you’re done, there’s nothing. It’s blank.

So I do have a problem with that because you’re not going to get very qualified candidates to come up and do that kind of stuff up and down the state. And so there have been rumors that they may try and bring some of that back. But it came down to, I had to check with retirement to make sure I could still survive, my wife and I. And then I had to get permission from the wife. The team that we had built with the sheriff’s race, I wanted to bring them in all that because they’d been with me from the beginning, so I knew this needed to be a team effort as well. And yeah, we had a big meeting at my house.

And so I went up to Sacramento, had people tell me stuff about my life that I didn’t even know about and the odds of me winning this race and so I got into the race late and ended up making it through the primary and the rest is history. Everything that was shared with me for reasons for me to go up there really became reality.

Q: Your wife must be independent and strong. Most wives would say, no, right?

A: In my sheriff race at 2018, she ended up becoming the campaign manager. And that’s how she is. She’s on our team.

(At this point I asked if his two-time defeated opponent, Jessica Self, will be running against him for a third time).

A: We don’t know. We’re waiting. 

Q: How many terms can you serve?

A: You can do 12 years total in the Legislature. So like senator time and Assembly member time counts the same as Legislature.

Q: So if you just decide to stay in the Assembly…

A: Then I can do eight more years. I could run four more terms.

Q: Do you have any ambitions to be in the state Senate?

A: Right now, our current senator (Marie Alvarado-Gil), her and I work very well together. So if she was ever to leave that office, I would pursue it. I’ve made that very clear up in Sac.

Well, if you look at the bills that we were on for Public Safety, she was on there with them with me. She was actually one of the ones that would present in the Senate on my behalf, what they call jockeying a bill. And some of the bills she did take on, like, having sex with a person unconscious and stuff like that, Democrats would never touch that. But those were bills that she pushed.

Yeah, so if she wasn’t running for Senate, then I would run for Senate. Okay. But we make a great team. There’s no reason to mess with that right now.

Q: I want to reflect on something you told me a couple of years ago – that no Democrat up there was willing to vote for legislation that would add a single day to a sentence. Is it still like that?

A: No.

Q: What’s changed?

A: We have a new freshman class who are actually asking questions. I’m thankful to hear them. So, like, I’m a Problem Solvers, right? We have Democrats and Republicans and some of them in our meetings are asking why on certain bills and it gives me a little bit of a hope. There’s still obviously the numbers game but there are some who are starting to question like, why are we not looking to see about what the victim’s getting as opposed to the responsible?

And then, we have a new chair of the Public Safety Committee, Nick Schultz. He has a prosecutor background, and I enjoy working with him. I’ve had three chairs now starting out with Reggie Jones-Sawyer and then it went to Kevin McCarty. And it kind of went from bad to better. And now with Nick he’s a Democrat, obviously. But a lot of my Republican colleagues think like it’s impossible. And I tell them, “sit down with him, talk with him about your bill and your passion.” And he’s worked with him. I’ve had had some Republicans reach out to me after their bills got signed to share his phone number to thank him for helping them get their bill through. So there’s a little bit of a difference.

Q: Aren’t they starting to see that they’re losing voters in California? Republicans are gaining, so maybe they’re just wising up?

A: Or maybe it’s encouraging them to be a little bit braver on some of their stuff. I’ve seen the party line stuff happen and they don’t want to go against it, but things are changing. The climate is changing.

Q: What’s your prediction on Prop 50?

A: I don’t know. It’s getting closer and closer to maybe a no, but knowing the numbers in Los Angeles and the way these ads are so confusing.

Q: I’m going to ask you about conservative Assemblyman Carl DeMaio.  I was watching the exchange where he was repeatedly interrupted by Speaker Pro Tempore Josh Lowenthal who offered trivial birthday announcements.

A: My birthday was around that time too. I was in the lounge and they were like, hey, they want you to come. I‘m like, nope, I’m not going to be part of it. He’s not going to use my birthday (to interrupt).

Q: Well, he did that to Minority Leader James Gallagher, too, didn’t he?

A: Well, they do it. He has the power to mute your mics. They have the power of everything; they have the numbers. And they do little things like that.

Q: That’s got to be frustrating, huh?

A: It’s an uphill battle. Anybody who watched that would know that Carl was in the right. But those little things happen like that.

And then there was another time. There were some Tennessee legislators who got yanked for Second Amendment stuff, but they brought them here to Sacramento and they (Democrats) applauded them and Gallagher stood up and he’s like, “You know, the things that they did to them are what you guys do to us every day. Look at the mirror.” And some of them, you could see like, oh, shoot, we do do that to you guys too. Yeah, you do this all the time.  But they got the numbers. Right now, it’s 60 to 20. 

So, Carl, obviously, he has Reform California. It’s good to have him there with his perspective. But my thing with him is don’t jeopardize other Republican races with your views. We’ve had a leadership change. Gallagher is no longer number one. Heath Flora is number one.

Q: Because the Democrats have a lock on this state Assembly and the state Senate, isn’t it impossible for you to get meaningful legislation passed?

A: By the numbers, you would think yes. We were very successful in our first term. We were able to get 17 bills through. Unfortunately, Newsome vetoed one of them so we got 16 signed, which is rare, especially for a Republican. 

(Alanis was first among the Republicans to successfully get bills to pass and fourth overall in the freshman class).

And our bills weren’t just like, you know, “save the puppy” bills or call a 1-800 number for this kind of bill. I was on the floor saying assault rifle; to allow police officers or in the academy to have that. And we had our Neveah’s Sports Law Act that went through first. I was actually surprised the governor came up to me when he was on the floor and said, “Hey, you didn’t get any’no’ votes on this.” And right now currently we have no ‘no’ votes, with the exception maybe one – from Bill Essayli, one of my own colleagues. I was trying to get probation officers exempted from jury duty. He’s an attorney, so he’s like, «Well then attorneys should be too.» And it’s like, «No, probation is an arm of the court so they have more to do than even cops do because they’re on the intake process, the follow through process, the end part of the process.”

“So, getting bills passed by the numbers is really somewhat impossible with everything being stacked, but I guess it just comes down to relationships. That was the first thing I did up there – start having coffees, dinners, whatever I could. I wanted to meet them. And I think it started becoming apparent to some of my Republican colleagues when I was getting no ‘no’ votes in Public Safety and getting like three bills through it a week. They’d ask, ‘How’d you do that?’ I’m like, ‘Have you gone to talk to them?’ ‘No, they’re Democrats.’ ‘Talk with them, let them see your side and stuff like that.’ And so it works.

“I’m also happy about the bills that I’ve killed because if my opponent (Jessica Self) would have been up there, these would have passed. Like the ability for police officers to ask for consensual searches.

(Alanis stops to give a spiel an officer might say in a traffic stop: “So hi, Jeff. I know we’re having a great conversation here, but real quick, just for my safety, do you have anything illegal on you? Any bombs, grenades? No, no. Do you mind if I check? Okay.”)

“That’s when you’re giving me permission. And I check. Oh, what’s this? Oh, I forgot about that.

So one of my colleagues down in LA, instead of just telling his constituents to stop carrying knives and drugs and guns, would rather just take the law enforcement side that they can’t ask you that; it would be illegal. I was able to kill it on the floor as a freshman. I remember Gallagher came up to me (and said) “I’ve never seen a bill not pass. I just always see 41, bill passes, I move onto the next one.” And his slowed down around 30.

That colleague, the author of the bill, called me later that night to make sure we’re still okay. But he gets it. We’re best buddies up there and yet I killed my first bill. So it’s all about relationships. 

Q: What about everyday concerns people have, like building housing, affordability, and CEQA, and the gas situation. 

A: I have colleagues that talk about affordability, and then we have a bill that maybe does X, Y, and Z, and they all voted for it, and it just took prices up. And I was like, I thought you guys were all about affordability?

You can take a number of the housing bills like us trying to get Los Angeles to be able to have exemptions for electricity for the water heater, the oven, the stove, all that stuff. Because now you got to put new electrical boxes in, you got to put new electrical lines in. Maybe their infrastructure’s not set up for that big demand coming off the grid as opposed to gas. So those kinds of things they say they’re about affordability. But when it comes time to try and show that you’re for affordability, we can’t get them to do it.

(Alanis talked about that morning’s tour of a digester on Commons Road near the Merced County line whereby cow manure and urine is being converted to methane gas to be injected into natural gas pipelines to power renewable natural gas (RNG) vehicles. Alanis said the environmental justice people come and make it harder for such projects to become reality.)

A: They just want dairies out. I get dairy people all the time coming to me saying, “Hey, Juan, my neighbor just moved out of state with his dairy, just picked his cows up and went over here, and now he’s bringing milk back and he’s selling it cheaper than me. So that’s California.”

Q: They don’t seem to want any new water storage projects.

A: No, New Melones was the last one. We’re doing little projects here and there to try and supplement that but yeah, we need the storage again. I have colleagues down south who are like, I want some more of your water. I’m like, you guys are already getting water from us. I’m sure it frustrates you too. We had watering days, but yet LA there’s green grass everywhere. It’s like wait a minute.

Q: Let’s talk about Newsom. He’s getting a lot of attention.

A: You also probably noticed that he’s also talking more like Trump on some of his tweets. Even the podcast thing that he got on, he was trying to make himself look a little more conservative than what he was. I even tell people like when I talk to him in-person he’s not the guy that’s on TV. So which one is the fake? Is it the one I talk to in a setting, like with a bunch of people and no cameras? Or is it when he’s in front of the cameras?

I remember a bunch of us Republicans were around him at one of the speaker dinners and all these Democrats around us were looking like why is he talking with us four or five? It was around the time when we were waiting to see what he was going to do for the budget. And so one of my colleagues asked, so, Gavin, what are you going to do about the budget? He’s like, “Do you ever think about it?” And he goes, “Yeah, I do. I think about it every night. But no matter what I pick, if it’s law enforcement, Juan’s going to come after me, if it’s education, you’re going to come after me.” And we’re like, “Yeah, we are. Just pick the right things to get rid of,” and kind of just left it at that.

But, you know, I’m glad to hear that he is kind of pressured on certain things, but when it really comes down to it, it’s whatever the party wants.

Q: Are you making any endorsements to the governor’s race?

A: I did last year, Chad Bianco. This was before he was just getting his ducks in line basically. So I figured, hey, what would it be like to get another law enforcement officer?