Joaquin Arambula, a Democrat, represents the 31st Assembly District, covering the Fresno area, and is the first Latino physician elected to the California Legislature. The son of former Assemblymember Juan Arambula, who held the same seat, he worked as an emergency department physician in Selma before entering politics. He earned his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and his medical degree from the University of Minnesota, and has served in the Assembly since 2016, chairing the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Health and Human Services from 2016 to 2023.
In early 2019, Arambula was charged with misdemeanor child cruelty after prosecutors alleged he struck his then-7-year-old daughter’s face while disciplining her, leaving a bruise; he acknowledged spanking her but denied striking her face or knowing how the bruise occurred. After a nine-day trial in which his wife, mother, and two of his daughters testified, a jury deliberated about four hours before acquitting him in May 2019. The Fresno County District Attorney’s office said afterward that it stood by its original decision to file the charge despite the acquittal.
Arambula has remained legislatively active since, authoring bills including protections for community college students’ civil participation, labor trafficking enforcement measures, folic acid fortification requirements for corn masa products, farm labor housing eligibility reforms, and expanded state authority over failing sewer systems in disadvantaged communities; nine of ten bills he authored in the 2023-24 session were signed into law.
