‘Everyone just counted you out': Lena Gonzalez '09 and her unlikely road to the Senate floor

By the time Lena Gonzalez '09 enrolled at Cal State Long Beach, she was a working mother in her mid-20s who'd spent years collecting classes at a community college. Raised in North Long Beach by a truck-driving father and a mother who'd emigrated from Mexico as a child, she was a first-generation college student with too much on her plate. Nobody, she said, expected her to finish.

"Everyone just counted you out," Gonzalez recalled. 'You're a mom, you're not going to make it happen.'"

CSULB disagreed, offering not just a program but a safety net.

A Hispanic Serving Institution, the university had built infrastructure specifically for students like Gonzalez: commuters, parents, first-gen students. Gonzalez took full advantage of the offerings, particularly the Latine Resource Center.

"If I felt like I was overwhelmed, they were so helpful," she said. "No questions asked, no judgment. It was like, 'How do we help you get this done?' Even if you felt like you were falling behind, there was always someone there to catch you."

If I felt like I was overwhelmed, [Latine Resource Center staff] were so helpful. No questions asked, no judgment.

Today, Gonzalez is among the most influential voices in Sacramento. Well into her seventh year representing California's 33rd District, she is chair of the California Latino Legislative Caucus and recently completed terms as both Senate Majority Leader and chair of the California Senate Transportation Committee - the first Latina in more than 50 years to hold the latter post.

"Whether it's a working-class family, growing up in Long Beach, having children, being a woman, being Latina - it's all of these different elements that resonate with someone in my district pretty closely," she said.

"I often tell people, 'I am who I represent.'"

A major pivot

At CSULB, Gonzalez was initially interested in interior design, but the 2008 recession and the election of the nation's first Black president changed that trajectory.

"I was so inspired by Barack Obama," she said. "Feeling like youth can just rise up and be part of this pivotal moment was really exciting for me."

She switched her major to political science, landing in the constitutional law classroom of late Professor William Leiter, the kind of teacher who didn't hand out praise easily, she said, and meant something more because of it.

"Constitutional law can be so dry and boring, but he made it come to life," she said. "I realized how important the Constitution was - the exercise of free speech and our rights."

I realized how important the Constitution was - the exercise of free speech and our rights.

By the time Gonzalez was nearing graduation, CSULB had begun allowing students to earn credit through internships, a new option that year. She was considering law school and looking at courthouse internships when she noticed something else: a young man named Robert Garcia '02 '10 was running for Long Beach City Council.

She sent him an email, asking for an internship working on his campaign, and got the job. Despite the sometimes-unglamorous side of local campaigning, the fit felt right - so right that when Garcia later decided to run for mayor, "the first thing he said to me was: You've got to run for my seat."

She did - and won.

That was 2014. Five years later, Gonzalez was elected to the Senate and has been there ever since, including a term as Senate Majority Leader. Meanwhile, Garcia, who is still a close friend, became a U.S. Congressman representing California's 42nd District.

A full-circle moment

Though she no longer chairs the Transportation Committee, Gonzalez is still a member and now chairs the Select Committee on Ports and Goods Movement, which oversees the very freight corridors her father spent his working life driving. It was never a hard sell for her, she said, even if others didn't understand it at first.

"Why would you want Transportation?'" they used to ask.

"My father was a union truck driver," she said. "Being a little girl in your dad's big rig, helping him drive . . . you grow up with transportation front of mind."

Thinking back to her time on campus, Gonzalez said it was the accumulation of support and encouragement from every direction, especially the Latine Resource Center that made the biggest difference.

"We're gonna keep pushing you," she said, paraphrasing the spirit of the place. "No matter what, you're not gonna fail."

After a while, she started to believe it. She never stopped.

"It just felt like everybody was on my team. Everyone," she said. "I don't know that you can get that just anywhere."