SAN DIEGO – California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) has been named to Politico magazine’s annual list of 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming politics” in 2016, released today.
Declaring “Lorena Gonzalez might be the nation’s most ambitious progressive scientist,” Politico highlighted Gonzalez at #35 on this year’s list, citing her work on California’s New Motor Voter Act, helping raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, supporting the nation’s toughest equal pay protections, and ongoing efforts to achieve fair overtime for farmworkers. The profile also highlights the national impact of AB 1522, authored by Gonzalez in 2014, providing paid sick days for all private sector workers in the state:
“But it’s Gonzalez’s trailblazing advocacy of mandatory paid sick leave that could make the biggest difference nationwide. In 2014, she wrote a law requiring every private-sector employer in California to provide paid sick days to employees—the first such state or federal law in U.S. history. Two years later, because of Gonzalez’s law, paid sick leave is considered an achievable goal, no longer a liberal pipe dream. It was made a part of the official Democratic platform, and is a centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s economic policy. Now the test is whether paid leave can take off nationally, but Gonzalez experimented with it first in California.”
In addition to AB 1522 providing paid sick days, Gonzalez authored AB 1461 in 2015 (also known as the California New Motor Voter Act) to streamline voter registration through the DMV for an estimated 7 million eligible but unregistered voters in California. She was a principal co-author of SB 3, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016 to raise California’s minimum wage to $15/hour and coauthor of SB 358 in 2015 to implement the country’s strongest rules addressing the gender pay gap. She is also the author of AB 1066 to provide California farmworkers with fair overtime pay after an 8-hour day or 40-hour week, currently pending before Gov. Brown.
The Politico 50 list also features presidential candidates, Supreme Court justices, U.S. senators, global economic and social leaders and prominent media figures.
