Rob Lucero, a former national director for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign, is running for California’s 34th Congressional District, hoping to unseat Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez in next year’s midterm election.

The 34th District spans parts of downtown and east and northeast Los Angeles, including the Boyle Heights, El Sereno, Highland Park, Koreatown, Pico Union and Westlake communities.

A resident of Eagle Rock, Lucero — who has been involved in political campaigns as a volunteer or paid staff member for decades — said he’s running for Congress to help fill what he described as a leadership void in politics.

“There’s a vacuum of leadership. It’s been in both parties,” Lucero said, referring to both the Democratic and Republican parties.

“I want to stand and fight and fill this vacuum,” Lucero said before a campaign kick-off event planned for Saturday, June 14, in Highland Park.

Lucero also mounted an unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 2022, running as a Republican that year.

Today, the 52-year-old, who is president and CEO of a consultancy called American System Group, is running as a Democrat.

It’s not Lucero’s first time being a Democrat. He said he volunteered or worked on Democratic campaigns from 1993 through 2008 and was regional director of a get-out-the-vote effort for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama for the California Democratic Party in 2008. According to his website, Lucero also previously worked as a field organizer and fundraiser for the national Democratic Party.

Then in 2021, Lucero re-registered and ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat. Current U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla ultimately won that race.

Lucero said that when he heard Kennedy was launching a presidential campaign, he became excited by the prospect of another member of the prominent political family seeking office. RFK Jr., as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary is often called, is the son of U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated in the 1960s.

Lucero said he wrote to the soon-to-be presidential candidate and was hired to help with Kennedy’s campaign. He became a leading fundraiser and a senior advisor to Kennedy on economic issues, he says on his campaign website.

Lucero said he felt that Kennedy’s campaign focused on issues like the threat of nuclear war, and that “his campaign wasn’t about vaccines.”

Kennedy is the founder of the Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization. Just this week, Kennedy, now the Health and Human Services secretary, removed everyone on a scientific committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to use vaccines and said he’d put in place his own picks.

Lucero made a point of noting that his own children have been vaccinated and wore masks during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, which paved the way for states to ban abortions, Lucero said he decided to rejoin the Democratic Party.

He then registered with the American Independent Party in September, he said, in order to vote for Kennedy in the 2024 general election — even though Kennedy, by then, had dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Donald Trump, who ultimately went on to win the election.

“I’m not a Trump guy,” Lucero said, adding that he’s never voted for Trump but, rather, for Democratic presidential nominees Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.

After the 2024 general election, Lucero said, he re-registered as a Democrat.

Despite the back-and-forth in party registrations, Lucero insists he’s never flip-flopped when it came to his core beliefs.

But he considers himself an independent thinker and said he aligned himself with whichever political party he felt was most open to new ideas at the time.

“I’ve been myself the whole time. It’s just where has there been more openness to discuss these ideas?” he said.

“I have not compromised my core principles at any point,” he said.

If elected, Lucero said he would focus on de-escalating foreign tensions, such as in Iran or between Russia and Ukraine, and strengthening U.S. diplomacy, improving economic and business security and implementing banking reforms.

Lucero is one of several people, including the current office holder, who have filed paperwork indicating potential plans to run for the 34th Congressional District seat. Next year’s primary election will take place on June 2.