Nothing is more important to the future of our democracy and the future of women's rights than access to the vote. Join NWPC California to hear California Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber on her commitment to assuring the greatest possible access for all California voters. After you’ve heard her, you will want to make sure that everyone you know exercises this precious right, which undergirds all the rest of our rights.
Speaker Bio: Secretary of State, The Honorable Dr. Shirley Weber
Born in a sharecropper family in Jim Crow-era Arkansas, Dr. Weber moved to California as a young child; but her sense of justice and dedication to achieving civil rights for all people was driven by her family's history, including their struggle for the right to vote. She spent much of her career in education, earning a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D at UCLA by the time she was 26, and spent 40 years as a faculty member and department chair in the Department of Africana Studies at San Diego State University.
Her political career began with a seat on the San Diego Unified School District board, including stints as board chair. She was then elected to the California Assembly representing much of metropolitan San Diego, serving four terms before Governor Newsom appointed her as Secretary of State in early 2021. She is California’s first Black Secretary of State and only the fifth African American state constitutional officer in California history.
During her time in the Assembly, Dr. Weber chaired the Assembly Elections and Redistricting Committee and was the first Black chair of the Assembly Budget Committee; she also served on the Assembly Education and Higher Education Committees, as well as Banking and Finance. She chaired a Select Committee on Campus Climate, aiming to mitigate hate crimes on California college and university campuses. She was chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus from 2019 to 2020, where she broke records in gaining support for caucus projects.
Dr. Weber’s passion and effort for equality and fairness extends to all sectors of life, with a priority on reforms in education and criminal justice. Her legislative work includes many bills aimed at improving the lives and opportunities of all Californians—students, people in poverty, racial minorities, veterans, senior citizens and many others. Her position as Secretary of State allows her to channel her passion into making sure the state's election systems are accessible and fair and that every vote gets counted.
This forum is one of a series of public policy presentations sponsored by the National Women’s Political Caucus of California to focus on the key policy issues important to women. Our goal is to elect pro-choice women to at least half the seats in the legislature and to work with those we elect on policy to improve the lives and the rights of women, girls, and families, as well as all marginalized groups, throughout the state.
Moderator bio: Senator Connie Levya
Senator Connie Leyva, one of the strongest voices in the California Legislature for women’s rights, is serving her second term in the 20th State Senate District, which includes many communities in California’s Inland Empire. She came to the Senate as a long-time community and labor leader, including her historic election in 2004 as the first woman President of the California Labor Federation, representing over 2.1 million workers statewide.
During her time in the Legislature, Senator Leyva served as vice-chair and then chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus. She is currently chair of the Senate Education Committee and the Senate Democratic Caucus as well as a member of the Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee. She also served on the California Commission on the Status of Women and was instrumental in restoring that commission after it was vetoed by Governor Brown.
Her legislative priorities have been to improve California’s schools, environment, and communities, and to create quality jobs in her district and throughout the state. She has an extraordinarily long list of successful legislation that was signed into law, including bills to eliminate the statute of limitation on rape, require prompt testing of rape kits, permanently extend overtime for domestic workers, ban secret settlements in sexual harassment, assault and discrimination cases, enhance charter school transparency and accountability, end unfair and discriminatory treatment of Girls State participants, maximize climate investments in low-income communities, and require all public universities to provide medication abortion.