About Marcus Ismael

Born from a diverse family that hailed from all over the world, Marcus was raised in San Francisco’s southside neighborhood of Crocker-Amazon on the ragged edge of the middle class. From riding Muni buses at a young age to being surrounded and raised by several generations of working immigrants, Marcus knows the city from before it began to radically change with the influx of the tech industry and understands what it means to be a San Franciscan who has to work for his keep.

A product of public schools, Marcus got a chance to earn a quality, affordable education at San Francisco State University. With scholarships and a generous CalGrant from the state, Marcus studied economics and urban planning to gain an insight on how the world around him worked. Coming of age in a changing city encouraged Marcus to commit himself to championing a Democratic Party that fights for working people.

GROWING UP IN THE BAY AREA

Marcus’ upbringing may not have been the toughest but it was not without its struggles. He grew up both in San Francisco and a variety of Peninsula towns. As a child born to unwed parents, he was shuffled around and raised by many different family members all of different backgrounds and faiths and who all spoke different languages.

Marcus learned quickly the value in having such a diverse family who all chose to settle here in the San Francisco Bay Area and appreciated, from a young age, the importance of having a city that welcomed people from around the world.

As he got older, his immediate family moved out of the city to try and stake out a promising middle class life on the Peninsula. Marcus’ mother worked at the San Mateo Medical Center and his stepfather worked at a big-box retailer.

Life was looking up until Marcus’ younger brother was diagnosed with leukemia, an unfortunate condition running in the family, at the age of four throwing his family’s life into disarray.

Then, the recession hit. Bills piled up, stress was high, the threat of losing the home they rented loomed ever constant, but the family persevered.

Marcus grew up quickly in this time and learned first hand just how American families could lose everything with a single medical diagnosis. From being pushed out of the city economically to just barely scraping by through major life challenges, Marcus’ story is not unique nor is it one to pity. A young Bay Area family starting out could do everything correctly and the political system and economic structures at play still can derail and hold them back. Cognizant of this reality, Marcus made it his life mission to do what he can to ensure politics in his home region would be about making life easier, more livable, and more accessible for families just like his.

A CHANCE TO SUCCEED

Marcus was always a student inclined to appreciate learning but was nowhere near being the top of his class. The only school he got into that he had a decent shot of attending was the local CalState school, San Francisco State University. With a grant from the state and scholarships from local citizen groups, Marcus made it to and had his first two years paid for at SFSU. He wasn’t attending the most prestigious school, but for him and his family, getting an education at all was a way of paying back the sacrifices his elders made to get him to this point.

Studying economics and dabbling in urban planning, Marcus held a keen interest in understanding why the world around him - from the economy to the built environment - allowed some to make it to the top and many others, the rest of us, to toil and struggle for what little we had. Marcus knew one’s station in life was not contingent on how hard they individually worked - his parents put in the longest hours and raised three children and were still living on the ragged edge of the middle class - or the attitude, but rather the conditions built up around each and every one of us.

While having a parent with a county job and health insurance in the midst of a cancer diagnosis and global economic recession saved his family from total economic ruin, Marcus saw first hand how a society that would not protect the more vulnerable families around him would push more and more of his schoolmates’ families out of the Bay Area. A safety net that is built on people somehow making ends meet magically instead of giving every household the most basic of needs would contribute to a loss in culture and vibrancy to the Bay Area Marcus grew up in.

THE PATH FORWARD

Finishing up his studies at SF State, Marcus pushed harder into the world of politics believing that fixing some of the less challenging ails in society began with electing the right elected officials who empathized with the plight of working people. He got his start running a Democratic club on the SF State campus - one of thirty official, sanctioned Democratic clubs in the city at the time - and working for the Democratic County Central Committee, or SFDCCC, to help elect progressive Democrats to local, state, and federal office.

As time went on, Marcus reached state and national levels of politics first serving as Chief of Staff of the California College Democrats for three years where he helped overhaul its operations from its communications apparatus to its brand identity to shaping up its finances in crucial election years to revising a code of conduct to give justice to survivors. Marcus then went on to serve as Director of Communications of the College Democrats of America in 2016. Working in tandem with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, Marcus emphasized the need to both hear from and elevate perspectives of young, Black, Indigenous, People of Color, women, religious minorities, LGBTQ individuals, and people living with disabilities on college campuses all over the nation. While 2016 didn’t pan out the way we had all hoped, Marcus is nevertheless proud of the work he did there.

In 2019, as the 2020 presidential election field was heating up, Marcus was given the opportunity to work for yet another presidential campaign, this time fighting for big, structural change with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Organizing field operations in Northern California, Marcus led the largest volunteer base in the state with nearly 1,000 active volunteers in five Congressional districts from the Peninsula down the Central Coast to Santa Barbara who knocked on least 22,000 doors and made at least 10,000 phone calls leading up to the March 3, 2020 California Democratic Primary. During the Get Out the Vote period of Super Tuesday, Marcus’ organizing in California resulted in the single largest turnout of volunteers in the state. With California being the busiest state in terms of campaign volunteer turnout and direct voter contact, Marcus’ efforts topped the national campaign presence in all Super Tuesday states. Of the 10 delegates Warren ultimately won in California, one was won in Marcus’ turf.

Marcus continues this commitment to progressive, inclusive politics by working as a political consultant at DC-based E Street Group - a full service media and advertising consulting shop that staffs exclusively progressive candidates and campaigns across the nation including here in the Bay Area.