United States Senator from CA


Alex Padilla is California's senior Democratic senator and the state's first Latino senator, originally appointed in 2021 and elected in 2022.
Alejandro Padilla, a Democrat and the first Latino to represent California in the U.S. Senate, was appointed to the seat vacated by Vice President Kamala Harris in January 2021 and elected to a full term in 2022. The son of Mexican immigrants who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, Padilla earned a mechanical engineering degree from MIT and served as Los Angeles city councilmember, council president in his twenties, state senator, and California Secretary of State from 2015 to 2021. As ranking member of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee in the 119th Congress, he focuses on strengthening democracy and election integrity, while his membership on Judiciary, Environment and Public Works, Budget, and Energy and Natural Resources committees enables his advocacy for immigration reform, voting rights, and clean energy. In 2025, he secured up to $1.2 billion for the ARCHES hydrogen hub from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and continued speaking on the Senate floor against efforts to restrict clean energy tax credits.