By Matt Fountain

San Jose’s Democratic Assemblyman Ash Kalra was looking for a state lawmaker across the aisle with criminal justice experience to support a criminal justice reform bill earlier this month when he reached out to Jordan Cunningham.

Cunningham — a former prosecutor now working in defense — has gained a reputation as a lawmaker with an expertise in the sometimes politically conflicting areas of public safety and law enforcement accountability in his one-and-a-half terms as the Central Coast’s representative in the Assembly.

Though he wasn’t a co-sponsor of the former public defender Kalra’s legislation to shorten the time it takes for criminal defendants to get information about misconduct by police officers involved in their cases, Cunningham took the Assembly floor in support of the bill he called both “consistent with due process” and “a good change in law.”

“I can tell you as a deputy (district attorney), the last thing you want to do is carry a case forward to a jury not knowing whether you’re going to put a police officer on the stand that has impeachment material in their file that you haven’t gotten access to,” Cunningham said on the floor May 22. “I know a lot of my colleagues on our side of the aisle are nervous about this bill, but I don’t think you should be.”

Cunningham has set himself apart as an ally when it comes to several hot-button issues of the day: law enforcement transparency, criminal justice reform, public safety, commercial privacy and predatory lending, to name a few. He describes himself as a free market capitalist but also a moderate conservative in the vein of popular three-term local Assemblyman Katcho Achadjian.

He was named Legislator of the Year this year by law enforcement groups such as the state Police Chiefs and District Attorneys associations.

To read more, https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/politics-government/article230990123.html