A Labor Lawyer Who Helped Draft the PRO Act Is Now Running for Congress
Marni von Wilpert, a San Diego city council member and former attorney for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), is running to replace longtime Republican U.S. Representative Darrell Issa in California's 48th congressional district. Von Wilpert, a Democrat, filed her candidacy paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in September 2025. She survived a contentious primary against a fellow Democrat and now faces Trump-endorsed San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond in November. The newly redrawn district slightly leans Democratic. Her campaign committee, "Marni von Wilpert for Congress" (FEC ID C00918391), has reported total receipts of $2,174,872.25, with total individual contributions of $1,684,545.71. The committee is headquartered at 663 S Rancho Santa Fe Rd #689, San Marcos, CA 92078.
What makes von Wilpert's candidacy unusual is how directly her professional background ties to a single piece of federal legislation that has struggled to become law. She joined the NLRB — the federal agency that enforces workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively — as an attorney in 2014 and served until 2017. During that period, she worked with Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott and Senator Patty Murray to draft what became the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. The legislation's roots go back further: the labor law reform plan that became the PRO Act began with a meeting of labor lawyers in an ice-cream shop in Washington, D.C., over a decade ago.
The PRO Act would update the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, the foundational U.S. labor law, by strengthening protections for workers who want to form a union. Its provisions include allowing the NLRB to assess monetary penalties for labor violations, holding corporate executives personally liable for violations, and authorizing civil penalties for employers that retaliate against workers who try to join a union. Think of it as giving the referee in labor disputes real teeth — penalties and personal accountability — rather than relying largely on back-pay orders and reinstatement offers.
The PRO Act has been introduced in Congress every year since 2019. It passed the House in 2021 as H.R.842 in the 117th Congress but has been stalled in the Senate, where it faces a higher bar for passage. A Senate version, the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act, was introduced as S.567 in the 118th Congress. In the current 119th Congress (2025–2026), the legislation has been reintroduced as H.R.20. The persistent gap between House passage and Senate inaction has made the PRO Act a rallying point for organized labor and a frequent target for business groups. Von Wilpert's direct role in drafting the legislation gives her candidacy a tangible link to one of the Democratic Party's most significant and debated labor policy priorities.
Her political record in San Diego predates the congressional run. Von Wilpert flipped one of the most conservative districts in the city when she first won her city council seat, representing the Fifth City Council District, which includes communities such as Black Mountain Ranch and Carmel Mountain Ranch. On the council, she introduced a ban on "ghost guns" — untraceable firearms assembled from parts without serial numbers — after San Diego police found 97 ghost guns in 2019 and 164 in 2020. She also introduced the SAAFE Act to combat teen smoking rates, which the San Diego City Council approved.
Before entering electoral politics, von Wilpert began her legal career as a legal fellow at the Mississippi Center for Justice and as a federal law clerk. That background in civil rights litigation and federal judicial practice preceded her NLRB tenure and, ultimately, her legislative work on the PRO Act.
The general election matchup sharpens the policy contrast. As a county supervisor, Jim Desmond opposed pro-labor policies including minimum wage increases for contracted county workers, a contract for county janitorial workers who made abuse allegations, and the creation of a county office for labor standards. Desmond carries a Trump endorsement into a district redrawn to slightly favor Democrats, a margin that may test whether von Wilpert's labor-policy credentials and council record translate into the kind of crossover appeal she showed when she first won her city council seat.
The broader context here is that von Wilpert's candidacy arrives at a moment when the PRO Act's legislative path remains uncertain but its symbolic weight within Democratic politics has, if anything, grown. A candidate who helped draft the bill now running in a competitive district creates a direct electoral test of whether the labor law reform agenda that started in that ice-cream-shop meeting more than a decade ago can mobilize voters in a redrawn Southern California district. The outcome in November will not determine the PRO Act's fate in Congress, but it will offer a measurable data point on whether the coalition behind it can carry a House seat that the redraw did not make safe.
