Jackie Elward is under attack from billionaires and corporations. Learn the facts.

Your mailbox, your TV screen and your social media feed are probably full of ads attacking Jackie's record. That's because crypto MAGA billionaires, Big Pharma, energy monopolists and more know that she'll fight for us in the Assembly, not them. They've spent more than $1 million attacking her and have left every other candidate in the race alone.

Here are some of the lies being told about Jackie, and the truth behind them.

LIE: Jackie created a nonprofit to benefit orphaned children in Kinshasa and didn't spend the money on the kids.

FACT: Jackie's nonprofit, Les Enfants Baobab, provided a home, supervision, tutors, school fees, school supplies and clothes to 15 orphan boys.

In Jackie's own words:

When I started Les Enfants Baobab, a nonprofit charitable organization, with my husband and others in 2016, I only knew that I wanted to help kids from my old hometown of Kinshasa. I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps; when I was a child, she would take in orphaned children from the street, cook them a good meal, and make sure they got to school. When I was approached by a child on the street during a 2015 trip to Kinshasa, I felt the same calling that my mother did, and I wanted to help.

While I knew what my mission was, I didn’t know how to do the paperwork. My husband, John, and I began navigating the complexities of gaining nonprofit 501(c)3 status with the IRS, creating organizational bylaws, opening bank accounts, and doing things as correctly as we knew how. For years, we filed the full annual Form 990 to the IRS, which is only required of large nonprofits that raise at least $50,000 a year, have paid staff, and need to justify their nonprofit status. Our organization never raised more than $20,000 in a year, and we should have been filing the much simpler 990-N “e-Postcard”.

If I had known in 2016, before I had run for any elective office, that doing my best to file the more complicated tax form would cause corporate interests to attack my candidacy a decade later, I would have found an experienced treasurer to do the reports.

While doing our best with the paperwork, we supported 15 orphan boys at a home that we rented in Kinshasa. We paid private tutors to bring them up to grade level, and then paid their school fees, because public schools in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are not free like in America. We bought their school materials and paid the salaries of two adult chaperones to create a safe living space for the boys 24/7.

In 2018, we partnered with another organization, Desire of Nations, to help split the expenses of running the home and the programs. After several years, the partnership fell apart. Desire of Nations took over the program, and we stopped raising funds. However, we kept a balance in the nonprofit’s account, because it remains my hope to one day be able to purchase a permanent home for Les Enfants Baobab in Kinshasa.

So here we are in 2026. Covid, Donald Trump’s travel policies and now Ebola have made it impossible to travel to and from the DRC. Currently in my sixth year on the City Council, these days my time is limited and my attention has been more focused on the needs of my kids’ hometown of Rohnert Park and the needs of working Californians in my campaign for State Assembly than the needs of my original hometown. Nevertheless, our organization is in good standing with the California Secretary of State (Nonprofit Corporation #3877645), and we are rectifying our filing problems with the IRS.

LIE: Jackie traveled to Cairo on the taxpayer dollar.

FACT: Jackie was chosen by her peers on the Sonoma Clean Power board of directors to join a contingent that included Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Rogers to represent Sonoma County at the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

The conference, COP27, was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Jackie and the rest of the delegation from Sonoma County represented the Bay Area. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported the trip was funded by "a partnership between Global Council For Science and The Environment, Sonoma Clean Power, the public electricity supplier, and Sonoma Water". Sources: KQED and Santa Rosa Press Democrat.