Monica Montgomery Steppe has always had two interests: music and public service. When she has time, she still occasionally sings at church, but it’s her devotion to public service that eventually led her to work for several San Diego city officials, including former San Diego City Council President Myrtle Cole, representing District 4—the district with the highest percentage of Black residents.
In 2016, during a council meeting about racial profiling by the San Diego Police Department, Cole made comments seemingly condoning the practice. Not long after, Montgomery Steppe quit Cole’s office. In 2018, she challenged Cole and won the District 4 seat.
“I left her office because that was the line that I didn’t want to cross,” Montgomery Steppe says. “I knew that I would have to represent her and what she said, and I was not able to do that. That was really one pivotal moment that helped me to have the courage to stand on my own values.”
Last year, Montgomery Steppe was elected to the County Board of Supervisors in a special election, becoming the first Black woman to hold the position. She has already helped bring home a deal between UC San Diego and the county to convert the former Alvarado hospital campus in the College Area into a psychiatric facility with 30 behavioral health beds and a crisis stabilization unit.
“I want to make sure that we are considering people who we have never considered before in San Diego’s history when we’re crafting and implementing these policies,” she says. “It really has been America’s Finest City for a select group of people—so, every day, my work is to make sure we can all say this is America’s Finest City, because we’re all being treated fairly and we’re all at the table making decisions.”
