New state Senate leader makes history, and plans for change

Monique Limón is the first Latina in charge of the California Legislature’s upper house

- GEORGE SKELTON COLUMNIST

GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Times

STATE Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón is a liberal progressive.

People often ask me how things have changed at the state Capitol since I began covering news there many decades ago. My latest short answer: Look at the new California Senate leader.

In fact, look at the entire Senate. Actually, the other legislative house, too, the Assembly.

There was only one female legislator when I arrived very young and green in 1961. She was an Assembly member, Democrat Pauline Davis from mountainous Plumas County in the northeast. You can thank her persistence for highway rest stops.

There wasn’t one Latino in the entire 120-member Legislature. The first two in modern times were elected the next year.

Today, the new Senate president protem - Democrat Monique Limón of Goleta in Santa Barbara County - is the upper house's first Latina leader and the first mother who is leader of the Senate.

And there are more female senators than males, 21 to 19.

The Assembly's getting there, too. Women hold 38 of the lower house’s 80 seats. In all, 49% of all legislators are women — 59 of them.

A woman wasn't elected to the Senate until 1976 when conservative Democrat Rose Ann Vuich, a farm owner, won a seat from Dinuba in the San Joaquin Valley. Vuich made it clear she was “not a part of the women’s liberation movement.” But whenever a male colleague rose to address the “gentlemen of the Senate,” she reminded them of her presence by ringing a small bell.

Even by 1980, only 9% of California legislators were women. The first Latina senator — Democrat Hilda Solis, now a Los Angeles County supervisor — wasn't elected until 1994. Now, there are 13 Latina senators, including three Republicans.