California man who was exonerated after 20 years in prison launches bid for Congress

A man who spent 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit is now running for Congress in Southern California.

Francisco “Franky” Carrillo was wrongly convicted of committing a 1991 murder at the age of 16 and spent two decades in prison trying to prove his innocence before being exonerated in 2011. Now, he is running against Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) in California’s 27th District as a Democrat.

Carrillo is a member of the Probation Oversight Commission in Los Angeles and works with the LA Innocence Project. He was elected to a position in the Los Angeles County Democratic Party this year.

The 27th is a key swing district in California. Spanning from Santa Clarita to Lancaster, across the San Gabriel Mountains from Los Angeles, it is one of just 18 districts which elected a Republican to the House in 2022 after voting for President Biden in 2020.

Cook Political Report named the district one of the most competitive in the country for 2024.

Garcia is a Trump ally, and was one of the 147 congresspeople who voted to reject the results of the 2020 election.

In a video announcing his run, Carrillo positioned himself as a candidate that looks out for the interests of the average Californian, lambasting what he characterized as the unfair impact of rich and powerful people such as Fox Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch, pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli and Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

“There are people who abuse their power and benefit from the system. Then there’s the rest of us, who play by the rules and get screwed by the same exact system,” Carrillo said. 

“The people who rig the system — the big CEOs, the hedge fund managers, the big corporations which jack up our prices — they get exactly what they want,” he added. “Meanwhile, we get screwed by the insurance companies, drug companies, oil companies and those politicians who they put in power.”

He called Garcia a “MAGA extremist” and “part of the problem.”