One Nurse’s Campaign
California’s Congressional District 10 is on the edge of Central Valley. Industrial agricultural land is punctuated with a few cities, Tracy, Modesto, and Turlock among them. Almost half of the district’s population are Latino. It is intensely hot in the summer and desolately beautiful in the winter, when tule fog obscures hard edges, turning vast vistas soft and painterly. It is also the site of one of the most active congressional races in the 2018 midterm elections, for a seat now occupied by Republican Jeff Denham. Dotty Nygard, an emergency room nurse and union activist, is one of Dehnam’s Democratic challengers. Nygard has lived and worked here for quarter century and many residents recognize her from emergency room triage. They light up when they learn that she is running for office to represent them in Washington. Nygard knows intimately what ails her patients: asthma from the effects of industrial pesticides, panic attacks from fear of deportations, and illnesses due to neglect and poverty. Nygard shows up, stands with people, listens, and empathizes. She has her finger on the pulse of the electorate.
Berkeley-based photographer Avi Stachenfeld makes a weekly trip to the Central Valley to chronicle Nygard’s campaign. He will follow it through the Democratic primary on June 5 and then through the midterm elections on November 6.
Every week we’ll publish an installment of Stachenfeld’s photo chronicle to introduce the people of the district, their concerns and hopes, the changing seasons and landscape, cutting a window into one woman’s crusade to serve her community.
